Buried by the Times
Encyclopedia
Buried by the Times a book by Laurel Leff, an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University, is an account of the New York Times coverage of Nazi atrocities against Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 that culminated in the Holocaust. The book makes the argument that the paper's publisher deliberately chose to "bury" such news in the back pages for ideological reasons.

According to the book Arthur Hays Sulzberger
Arthur Hays Sulzberger
Arthur Hays Sulzberger was the publisher of The New York Times from 1935 to 1961. During that time, daily circulation rose from 465,000 to 713,000 and Sunday circulation from 745,000 to 1.4 million; the staff more than doubled, reaching 5,200; advertising linage grew from 19 million to 62 million...

, who was publisher of the Times from 1935 to 1961, took the position that Jewishness
Who is a Jew?
"Who is a Jew?" is a basic question about Jewish identity and considerations of Jewish self-identification. The question is based in ideas about Jewish personhood which themselves have cultural, religious, genealogical, and personal dimensions...

 is solely a matter of belief, that it does not and ought not to have any ethnic or national component, no ethnic peoplehood. He opposed the creation of a Jewish state. His political commitments were to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and to universalism
Universalism
Universalism in its primary meaning refers to religious, theological, and philosophical concepts with universal application or applicability...

. He did not want the Times to be or even appear to be too Jewish. According to Leff, Sulzberger went out of his way to ensure the Times would not portray Jews as the particular victims of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

, gave very little print to the news of genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

 targeting Jews as it emerged from Europe and did not support the rescue of European Jews.
Leff's ongoing work on American responses to the Holocaust continues to draw attention. Her research paper Rebuffing Refugee Journalists: The Profession's Failure to Help Jews Persecuted by Nazi Germany asserting that journalists, unlike physicians and attorneys, failed to establish committees to help Jewish refugees secure positions that would have made them exempt from immigration limits and allowed them to come to the United States, inspired a campaign to get the Newspaper Association of America
Newspaper Association of America
The Newspaper Association of America is a trade association representing approximately 2000 newspapers in the United States and Canada. Member newspapers represented by the NAA include large daily papers, non-daily and small-market publications, as well as digital and multiplatform...

 to acknowledge its predecessor organization in the 1930s "was wrong to turn its back on Jewish refugee journalists fleeing Hitler".
The Newspaper Association of America responded by issuing a statement regretting that its predecessor organization did not give a full public airing to the issue at the time and by holding a special session on the topic at its annual meeting.

Honors and awards

  • Best media history book, American Journalism Historians Association
  • Best history book, ForeWard magazine

External links


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