After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, the Associated Press (AP) brought news about life under the Third Reich to tens of millions of American readers. The AP was America’s most important source for foreign news but to continue reporting under the Nazi regime the agency made both journalistic and moral compromises. Its reporters and photographers in Berlin endured onerous censorship, complied with anti-Semitic edicts, and faced accusations of spreading pro-Nazi propaganda. Yet despite restrictions, pressures, and concessions, AP’s Berlin “newshawks” provided more than a thousand U.S. newspapers with extensive coverage of the Nazi campaigns to conquer Europe and annihilate the continent’s Jews.

Newshawks in Berlin reveals how the Associated Press covered Nazi Germany from its earliest days through the aftermath of World War II. Larry Heinzerling and Randy Herschaft accessed previously classified government documents; plumbed diary entries, letters, and memos; and reviewed thousands of published stories and photos to examine what the AP reported and what it left out. Their research uncovers fierce internal debates about how to report in a dictatorship, and it reveals decisions that sometimes prioritized business ambitions over journalistic ethics. The book also documents the AP’s coverage of the Holocaust and its unveiling. Featuring comprehensive research and a memorable cast of characters, this book illuminates how the dilemmas of reporting on Nazi Germany remain familiar for journalists reporting on authoritarian regimes today.

Herschaft and Ann Cooper will be in conversation about the book with Pamela Sampson, editor and former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press.

Randy Herschaft has been for the past three decades an investigative journalist with the Associated Press. The recipient of a George Polk Award and an Overseas Press Club Award, he was a member of the Pulitzer Prize–winning AP team that, nearly fifty years later, uncovered a massacre of civilians by U.S. troops during the Korean War. In 2014, he was part of the investigative team that uncovered US Social Security payments that were being made to suspected Nazi war criminals even after their expulsion from the United States. As a result of their reporting, Congress passed a law called the No Social Security for Nazis Act and it was signed by President Barack Obama to stop the Social Security payments to Nazi war criminals. The Holocaust is personal to Randy, his great uncle was deported from France to Auschwitz and never seen again.

Ann Cooper is professor emerita at the Columbia Journalism School. She is the former executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists and was a foreign correspondent for NPR, including serving as Moscow bureau chief from 1987 to 1991.

Pamela Sampon is an editor and former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and many other publications. She is the author of “No Reply: A Jewish Child Aboard the MS St. Louis and the Ordeal That Followed.”

This book talk is part of the 2024 New York Jewish Book Festival. To learn more about the Festival, click here.