Buried by the Times

"Buried by the Times" is a book by Laurel Leff, an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University. It is an account of the coverage of Nazi atrocities against Jews that culminated in the Holocaust by the New York Times. 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 took the position that Jewishness 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 America and to universalism. He did not want the "Times" to be or even appear to be too Jewish. According to Leff, Sulzberger out of his way to ensure the "Times" would not portray Jews as the particular victims of Nazism, gave very little print to the news of genocide targeting Jews as it emerged from Europe and did not support the rescue of European Jews. [cite news
url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/28/AR2005042801313.html
title=Looking Back in Anger
publisher=Washington Post
last=Novick|first=Peter
date=May 1, 2005|accessdate=2008-06-26] [cite news
url=http://www.weeklystandard.com/Check.asp?idArticle=5432&r=ofzdt
publisher=The Weekly Standard
first=Jack|last=Fischel
title=Sins of Omission: How the New York Times didn't report the Holocaust
date=April 2, 2005|accessdate=2008-06-26]

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 to acknowledge its predecessor organization in the 1930s "was wrong to turn its back on Jewish refugee journalists fleeing Hitler". [cite news
url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CEEDE113EF933A15751C0A9609C8B63
title=Accusation From Nazi Era: Journalists Failed the Jews
publisher=New York Times
first=Katherine Q.|last=Seelye
date=February 20, 2006|accessdate=2008-06-26] [cite web
url=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5218113
title=Journalism Schools Rejected Holocaust Refugees
publisher=National Public Radio
date=February 15, 2006] 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. [cite news
url=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/13/business/media/13naa.html
title=Newspaper Group Acknowledges a Holocaust Mistake
publisher=New York Times
first=Katherine Q.|last=Seelye
date=March 13, 2006|accessdate=2008-06-26]

Honors and awards

* Best media history book, American Journalism Historians Association
* Best history book, "ForeWard" magazine

References

External links

* [http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/voices/transcript/?content=20080703 Interview with Laurel Leff] from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum