12. When the Associated Press Self-Censored to Appease the Nazis
In May 1846, five New York City newspapers pooled their resources to share the costs of covering the Mexican-American War. The resultant cooperative, the Associated Press (AP), proved a success, and grew over the years as other media outlets joined. Today, AP is owned by its member newspapers and TV and radio stations, who contribute stories to its pool and use material written by its staff journalists. AP has generally been a paragon of good journalism and earned 54 Pulitzer Prizes since the award was established in 1917. However, a significant deviation from good journalism occurred during the Third Reich years, when AP collaborated with Nazi authorities to facilitate its work in Germany.
When Hitler & Co. took power in 1933, they pressured international news organizations to conform to Nazi standards. One such standard was the Editor’s Law, enacted by the new regime to limit what newspapers could publish. It also restricted the profession of journalism to Aryans, and mandated that Jews be removed from newsrooms. Foreign journalists in Germany thus had to collect and transmit news from a country whose government wanted nothing to do with independent and objective journalism. Most international news organizations refused to comply with such conditions, and withdrew from Germany rather than sacrifice their journalistic integrity and common decency. AP was not among them.
