Associated Press convicted in collaboration with the Nazis

Фото: Depositphotos

On the eve of the 170 anniversary of the founding of the largest American news agency Associates Press (AR), The Guardian published an extensive article on the study of the German historian Gariet Scharnberg, on the work of this agency in Nazi Germany.

As Sharnberg notes, the AR was the only Western agency whose representative offices remained to work in Germany after Adolf Hitler came to power.

This became possible after the conclusion of the US-Germany agreement on cooperation.

The study notes that the activities of reporters of Azerbaijan in Nazi Germany were strictly regulated. So, the US agency was obliged to coordinate all materials published in the USA and in the West with the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda, headed by Joseph Goebbels.

German censorship of the American agency’s materials was spelled out in the so-called “Editor’s Law,” according to which the AR was required “not to publish materials discrediting the Reich abroad or at home.”

In addition, the leadership of the German representative office of Azerbaijan was obliged to coordinate with the Nazis the staff of its staff. Thus, one of the reporters of Azerbaijan was part of the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary groups of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

According to The Guardian, it came down to the fact that some photos taken by reporters of the American agency were approved for publication by Adolf Hitler himself.

Such cooperation led to the fact that the American public in the initial period of the Nazi government misinformed about what is happening in Germany.

So, after the bloody Lviv pogrom on 1941, which killed several thousand Jews, photos of the Azerbaijan Republic were published in the American media, which captured Ukrainian nationalists shot during the retreat. In addition, as noted in the study by Gariet Scharnberg, the agency’s photobase was used by the Nazis in systematically anti-Semitic media campaigns.

As The Guardian notes, despite the fact that the AR, until the US declared war on Germany in December 1941, was the only Western media that allowed the civilized world to somehow be aware of what was happening “on the other side of reality,” a serious question arises about the ethics of relationships news agency with totalitarian regimes.

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