The Price of Truth: The Journalist Who Defied Military Censors to Report the Fall of Nazi Germany

by Richard Fine

Overview

In The Price of Truth, Richard Fine recounts the intense drama surrounding the German surrender at the end of World War II and the veteran Associated Press journalist Edward Kennedy's controversial scoop.

On May 7, 1945, Kennedy bypassed military censorship to be the first to break the news of the Nazi surrender executed in Reims, France. Both the practice and the public perception of wartime reporting would never be the same. While, at the behest of Soviet leaders, Allied authorities prohibited release of the story, Kennedy stuck to his journalistic principles and refused to manage information he believed the world had a right to know. No action by an American correspondent during the war proved more controversial.

The Paris press corps was furious at what it took to be Kennedy's unethical betrayal; military authorities threatened court-martial before expelling him from Europe. Kennedy defended himself, insisting the news was being withheld for suspect political reasons unrelated to military security. After prolonged national debate, when the dust settled, Kennedy's career was in ruins.

This story of Kennedy's surrender dispatch and the meddling by Allied Command, which was already being called a fiasco in May 1945, revises what we know about media-military relations. Discarding "Good War" nostalgia, Fine challenges the accepted view that relations between the media and the military were amicable during World War II and only later ran off the rails during the Vietnam War. The Price of Truth reveals one of the earliest chapters of tension between reporters committed to informing the public and generals tasked with managing a war.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501765940
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2023
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.97(d)

About the Author

Richard Fine is Professor Emeritus in the English Department at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of West of Eden and James M. Cain and the American Authors' Authority.

What People are Saying About This

Julia Kennedy Cochran

A meticulously researched and succinctly written account of one of the greatest fiascos involving freedom of the press under military censorship.

Elliot King

A fascinating and well-written exploration of military-press relations during World War II. By focusing on the mechanics of the military-press interaction, The Price of Truth casts new light on the conventional story about military-press cooperation and conflict during the war.

Michael S. Neiberg

Richard Fine's excellent book provides fresh insights on two levels: the media's relationship with the military and the chaotic environment in Europe in 1945. The Price of Truth is recommended for anyone interested in these two important topics.

Robert Citino

"We know the story of World War II journalists: patriots who worked smoothly with the military to give us the best-reported war in history. As Richard Fine's meticulous account shows, none of it was nearly that simple. The Price of Truth is the best book I've ever read on the tense relationship between the war fighters and truth tellers of World War II.

Anne Matthews

Edward Kennedy's decision to break the biggest news story of the era poses a question both disturbing and necessary: What does it mean to be an honest reporter? Richard Fine's excellent book is a critical chapter in the history of news. This impeccable history demonstrates how a profound clash of duties—to the public, to the profession, to the living and the dead—still shapes our postwar media landscape.

Editorial Reviews

2023-01-31
The fierce controversy over a reporter’s wartime disclosure.

Drawing on abundant archival sources, unpublished memoirs, military documents, and hundreds of editorials and articles, Fine presents a meticulous examination of the fraught relationship between the military and the media during World War II. He focuses on the “surrender episode,” when Edward Kennedy, a respected Associated Press reporter, broke the news of Germany’s surrender despite the U.S. military’s insistence on a 36-hour embargo. “The Kennedy affair,” Fine writes, “is the story of government officials trying to bend the media to their own ends and of one journalist who risked much to do what he thought of as his duty—to inform a public sick of the fighting that the war in Europe had ended.” When Germany surrendered to the Allies in the early hours of May 7, 1945, 17 journalists were allowed to witness the event held at Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims, and they felt frustrated about not being allowed to file their eyewitness reports. Kennedy’s decision to do so was met with immediate praise from some quarters and repudiation from others, including journalists who had been scooped. By September 1945, AP, which had supported him at first, fired him. Fine’s illuminating history reveals the competitive nature of the news business, rivalries among news agencies and reporters, and volatile tensions between the military and the press that persisted throughout the war. The army’s public relations and censorship offices, writes the author, “focused more on getting out the military’s story than aiding independent reporters in getting out theirs.” Despite a nostalgic view that the war promoted cooperative efforts, the relationship was blighted by inconsistent censorship rulings and “conflicting information imperatives—the press’s to reveal and the military’s to conceal.” The “surrender saga,” Fine notes, “also calls into question another bromide about the war—that it was well-reported.” The book includes photographs of individuals involved.

A fresh contribution to the history of journalism.

Kirkus Reviews