Newshawks in Berlin, by Larry Heinzerling and Randy Herschaft, with Ann Cooper, reveals how The Associated Press covered Nazi Germany from its earliest days through the aftermath of World War II. Heinzerling and 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 by AP that sometimes prioritized business ambitions over journalistic ethics. The book also documents the AP’s coverage of the Holocaust and its unveiling.
Larry Heinzerling (1945–2021) was a reporter, foreign correspondent, and news executive during a forty-one-year career at The Associated Press. He worked in foreign bureaus in Nigeria, South Africa, and Germany and served as director of AP World Services and deputy international editor.
Randy Herschaft has been an investigative journalist at the AP for three decades.
Ann Cooper, Heinzerling’s wife, worked with Herschaft to complete the book following Heinzerling’s death in 2021. She is professor emerita at the Columbia Journalism School, a former executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and former NPR bureau chief in Moscow and Johannesburg.
From the Foreword to the book: Newshawks “describes the journalists and their work through a real-time prism….Issues they faced – how to report in a dictatorship, whether to embed with military forces, how to report on accounts of atrocities that cannot be independently verified – these all remain dilemmas for today’s journalists covering war in Ukraine, protests in Iran, dictatorship in Myanmar, or human rights violations in every region of the world.
Moderating the discussion is Andrew Nagorski, a journalist and author who spent more than three decades as a foreign correspondent and editor for Newsweek, serving as bureau chief in Hong Kong, Moscow, Rome, Bonn, Warsaw, and Berlin.
Type of Event
Andrew Nagorski moderates: Book Night: ‘Newshawks in Berlin - The Associated Press and Nazi Germany’
