and bring the screen down. let us end with the words of the man whose memory we honor in this library paired with images of the struggles, civil rights and human rights struggles we face today. john f. kennedy. ♪ >> the united states of america is opposed to discrimination and persecution on grounds of race and religion. anywhere in the world including our own nation. >> this nation was founded by men of many nations and background. it was founded on the principle that all men are created equal. and this is a matter which concerns this country and what it stands for. >> i believe in an america religious intolerance will some day end. for all men and churches are

treated as equal. >> for every american who enjoyed the privileges of being americ american. >> change has come to america. >> ask the support of all of this. thank you very much. [ applause ] next on american history tv, a discussion on world war ii reporting and censorship and experience of associated press reporter ed kennedy. mr. kennedy was fired in 1945 after he defied a military embargo by reporting on

germany's surrender a day before the official announcement. in early may of this year, the associated press apologized for firepling kennedy. the national press club hosted this one-hour event. >> welcome to the national press club. i'm rick dunham, washington bureau chief for hearst newspapers and houston chronicle. and in my extracurricular life i'm president of the national press club journalism institute which is the educational and charitable arm of the national press club that handles everything from the cutting edge journalism training to book racks and other book events at that time national press club. this is event, among other things, a fund-raiser for the press club journalism institute and the good programs we do so that every book you buy, not only will benefit the authors as it should but will benefit the national press club journalism institute. if you haven't already bought the book, i would recommend it.

and that's the end of my ad there. i want to briefly introduce our guests to set the stage and then we have a special guest, the -- daughter of the man we will be talking about who will introduce our discussion. first up, i actually do have one short ad for the -- upcoming programs that we will be having training programs on may 2722. we will be talking about building a community and building your brand on twitter. i'm going to be the instructor for that class. may 29, don't fear the math, turning numbers into stories and stories into award winners. part of our data power journalism series. on june 12, social media trends for social media managers taught by amy webb of webb media who really is one of the leading trend spotters in the country. and june 25, excelling at data reporting. another part of our data power journalism series. with that, let me talk about the

book a bit. and to me it is pretty personal. two summers ago i was driving around northern france with my wife and then 16-year-old nephew and we stopped at a small schoolhouse. we went into the museum there. and at it was the -- table at which the germans surrendered, where general alfred yodel signed the documents as the germans surrendered the allies. there were photographs of famous war correspondents such as andy rooney and -- ed kennedy of the associated press and that's -- where i -- are i started my personal search for the story of ed kennedy. it -- it told snippets at the museum of -- of -- this distinguished journalist and ever since then, i have been reading all i can culminating with this book we will be

discussing today. and for people who don't know in -- in detail, ed kennedy was one of the most famous of the war core departments, world war ii, and may 7, he became the most famous or infamous american correspondent of the war. army officials that day allowed aing select number of reporters, including him to witness the historic moment of the surrender but -- they -- instructed them that the story once was under strict mill tar embargo. and a move that was courageous but eventually costly and ed kennedy defied the embargo after the news was broken out of berlin. and -- and the scoop generated tons of interest and instant controversy. the rival news organizations, including hearst international news service were quick to

protest and the ap first publicly rebuked and ultimately dismissed ed kennedy. a little bit of background on him during his time as a foreign correspondent, he covered the spanish civil war, rise of mussolini, unrest in greek, ethnic feuding in the balkans which we saw come back again 60 years later during world war ii, he reported from greece, from italy, from north africa, from the middle east, before going to cover the liberation and eventually the surrender negotiations. so -- let me just introduce our panel and then i will turn the floor over to julie kennedy cochran for a few words. the -- we have the two authors of the forward to this book. john maxwell hamilton who is executive vice chancellor and provost at -- louisiana state university. better known to all of us as lsu. he came to lsu in 1992 after

more than 20 years as a journalist and public servant. most of that time he worked on foreign affairs. both from the covering and the -- taking part of -- before he assumed his current position at lsu he was the founding dean of the manship school of mass communication. he was a reporter for the milwaukee journal, christian science monitor, and abc radio. longtime commentator for marketplace which is broadcast nationally by public radio international. it is government work. he oversaw nuclear non-proliferation issues for house foreign affairs committee, advised the head of the u.s. foreign aid program in asia during the carter administration and managed world bank program attorney general indicate americans about economic development and in the course of his career he's gone to more than 50 countries in africa, asia, europe and latin america. so he has both covered the foreign news and he's also written extensively on foreign news gathering and sought to

improve the quality of it. and next to him is a man that does p need an introduction. tom curly became vice president and chief executive officer of associated press. also known as ap. june 1, 2003, he's the 12th person to lead ap since its founding in 1846 and under his dynamic leadership, ap is evolving, has evolved from a wire service into an interactive global news network. and at the same time, that he worked on the changing technology of news, he has been deeply committed to the people's right to know and one of the country northeast visible and aggressive advocates for open government. and in my -- other extracurricular role as a member of the steering committee of reporters committee unforced error freedom of the press we have worked very closely with tom, establishing coalition of

groups and pushing for accessible, accountable and open government. and just quick bio on him. he started early like i did in journalism. i started 17, he started at 15. writing for the he -- easton express. pennsylvania hometown of easton. after graduation from rochester institute technology he got a job as an editor at the rochester times union. he worked his way up and up and up and by 1991, he was president and publisher of "usa today." the nation's largest selling daily newspaper. he also -- from 1998 to 2003 was president -- vice president of senior vice president of the newspaper, owner, newspaper's owner, gannett. publisher of more than 100 newspapers in the united states. tom is retiring from ap at the end of the year. but we will talk about some -- breaking news from ap in a few

minutes. with that, let me turn the floor over to julia kennedy cochran to talk to -- introduce the program and talk a little about her father and also thank members of the family for being here. we are very glad you are all here. thanks. julia? >> good evening and thank you all for being here. three, four years ago when i started the project to publish my father's memoir, which he hadn't been able to get published during his lifetime, it was with great trepidation i wrote a letter to tom curly asking for the ap's help. because, as you know, it had been 60-odd years since my father had been fired by the ap and we had never heard anything from them about it.

in fact, i myself worked for the ap for three years right after college as a reporter on the new york city desk and nobody ever spoke to me about it during that time. so i expected that either they would ignore me or just tell me that they weren't interested in helping me. it was with pleasant surprise that i found that tom was dash was very willing to help me and allowed me to use the ap archives and for that, i also thank valerie who is head of the ap corcoran archives, to do research on my father's time at the ap. then i was surprised to find that tom agreed to co-write the introduction to the book. and it is a very powerful introduction for any of you who have already read it. drawing on a lot of ap corporate

communicati communications, internal communications, and material from the national archives that i didn't even know existed. then last week, the ap issued its public apology for firing my father over the surrender incident. my phone began ringing off the hook. i am really surprised -- how much interest there still is in this old story. i guess it really just shows that freedom of the press is still an important issue these days. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> i would like to just mention that several members of my family are here tonight. that include may husband, my daughter emma, and her husband, steve. and my dear cousins, thurston balfour and daughter. thurston is probably the only person in the room who knew my father during world war ii.

so -- he has talked to me a lot about that. so -- thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thanks, julia and thanks to everyone from the family for being here. why don't i -- before starting to ask questions just turn the floor over and whichever order you would like just to -- start things out and then i will -- i will start with some questions. >> good. i will be briefer than i thought i would be because you covered some of the points that -- i was great drama. and i think -- and as kennedy himself says in the book and as tom and i try to highlight in the inrow ducks, it was a monumental news story in which a reporter had a choice and -- part of that choice was deciding whether to honor the pledge that had all of these 17 reporters

who had gone to -- would hon bore not breaking the story until they were allowed to. or deciding to break it because they felt that the reasons for the embargo had been obviated by the government. the government pledged -- roosevelt pledged the censorship would only be applied to stories whereas, in fact, this was a story that was being held, that sorry, v-day was being held because the russian wantsed to hold it back day so they simultaneously. that was a political reason, not a military reason. and so as a result of that, ed kennedy had to decide what he was going to do with the story. angry. fact that the

germans announced -- german government announced over the radio that the war was over and troops should prepare to step down in germany. it was virtually -- at this point the german has virtually -- more than -- virtually lost. had really lost. the radio station was controlled by the allies. and so from kennedy's point of view, the war really was over and the embargo had also been broken. so there were two issues involved. announcement and second of all, the embargo was being driven by political considerations and not military ones. he went to the sensor. tried to reach the chief and thec -- the head of all of the information and couldn't get him on the phone. then went to the sensor. and -- he said sorry, it is not released which is what sense

censors do. will was month way he could send the story. it would be impossible to do that. and off he went. and thought it over and what the censor didn't know is he had access to a military line to london. and was able to use that line to send -- it was a -- a very sketchy line. it didn't work all that well. the voices faded in and out. him the war -- surrender had been -- germans surrendered and told him to send the story to new york. which they -- they did. and so a day earlier than what would have happened otherwise, the united states knew the war was over. the ap --'s first reaction in -- right afterwards was to be proud of what he did done. but because of a variety of pressures that came to bear, changed his mind.

in the meanwhile revoked his credentials. revoked all of the ap's credentials but that was short-lived but they didn't give kennedy back his credentials. they even started a process, started an investigation and if you go and look at the national archives which we did, wonderful stuff in there about how they were running around trying to fintd out how had did it and couldn't figure out how they got the line and -- what's particularly wonderful are the number of journalists who wrote in and said that kennedy should be punished. in fact, by an extraordinary vote, i don't remember the number of -- 47-2 or something, all the reporters, except for those two, sign ad petition condemning what kennedy shdone because they didn't like the idea he had broken the embargo and, of course, they were sitting there without having the story. "the new york times" reporter drew middleton actually said that it was the biggest, greatest double-cross in the history of journalism. which is an interesting thing

for a journalist to say because we all know in journalism school you don't say something is the greatest and biggest or anything else but heaves pretty goddamned mad. so he -- he made this rather hyperbolic statement. tom believes that, in fact, the times was probably clearly one of the more powerful forces that was moving against kennedy. at any rate, he was brought back and there was than a summary execution. he was fired slowly. and essentially disappeared from the ap. he could have, i think, is probably fair to say, saved his job if he had recanted. if he had said i really made a mistake and i shouldn't have done it. this he refused to do. and so if you buy the argument that tom and i make which is he did the right thing, we believe it is an act of great journalistic courage, and it also has lessons for today

because some of the things that made this particular story possible don't exist. you know. the -- military censors can't control lines the way they used to because of changes in technology and so forth. but as tom and anybody else who is in journalism knows, the government all the time is trying to withhold information, oftentimes claiming it is national security when it is really something else. before i turn the table over to tom, i want to say that it is also a great act of courage on his part that the ap has now issued a correction. it would have been very easy not to have ever said anything about this, let the book come out, and -- not worry about what happened and let it just be an -- you can have various points of view. tom has been a very creative leader at the ap and one of the things he has done, by the way, that is interested in writing about journalism and journalism history, finds that repository papers, which is growing all the

time, thinks it is the work of valerie and staff as a very important resource for people who want to understand where to understand where we've been. but any way, i think we all owe a great debt to the ap for issuing the correction and for tom for making sure that it happened. >> when i got to ap in 2003, the vice president of communications suggested that we needed to update our history. the history of ap was last written in 1940. she said the reason it hadn't been updated was because of this incident. i had no knowledge of the incident until that moment. and i said, well, why don't we do some reporting and find out what happened and let's get to the bottom of it but move forward. we just can't stop history because we don't like how one story turned out.

well, several times of writing the book, i was told this is really bad and this one wasn't going to go down very well. i said, would somebody please get the facts and let's come forward. and so knowing full well in the history of 160 some years na any incident, including this, would be all of two paragraphs in the book and it was and it didn't seem satisfied. when julia's letter came in and announced that there was a manuscript, that opened another door. it was pretty clear that this was the moment to find out what happened. and the only thing that was crazy that happened along the way is that jack promised julia that he would get someone famous to write it. he clearly failed at this but he came to me and sized me up to see where i was going to come down on this issue. i knew where i was going to come

down on what kennedy had done and reporting, we had done enough of that investigations to know where things stood on that. but i was fascinated to try to figure out what management knew, when it knew it, who was involved, and how it played out. and the story turned out to chilling, frankly, at every turn. the correspondence hour by hour and we constructed a case. at no point was ed kennedy ever treated well and it was a great tragedy. he was ap's lead reporter. he was the front line bureau chief who managed the correspondence across the front as the story moved from north africa, italy, and finally into paris. he was the chosen person to go to witness the signing.

and there had been a false report of the german surrender a day earlier and when the word came in, when he got through on the phone to london, the desk held the story for eight minutes, clearly talked it over, they put his by-line out and it, in effect, told the world this time the story is true. the war is over. and so it was a compelling story in every aspect of this. and it certainly was compelling to look at it from a management standpoint and to go back through the lessons that could have been learned and should have been learned and it seemed to me that there was only one way to go. mistakes are made. bad mistakes are made. but if you don't learn from them, that's the greatest mistake of all. so it was time to get this out, put it on the table, and move

forward. and this work, this effort, this collaboration, has led to many good things, including the fact that several new developments or several new pieces of information have come forward even in the last week as the reports of this book and this incident have come out and helpful information, things that we previously didn't know. so truth is revealed incrementally and then julia has generously agreed to donate the paperwork to the archives. i think we've come full circle and done the right thing and it's very important for ap to have this case put on the record and finally looked at and closed, in a sense, so that we can move forward as we should. >> i wanted to ask you, tom, you're talking about lessons.

what are some of the key lessons for -- that ap learned out of this? and then what are some of the lessons for modern day journalism? it just seems, even with the story ap had this past week where the government wanted ap to hold on, you are having similar issues with, if not censorship, cases of national security being invoked by the government. >> sure. the security journalism issues are, in some ways, timeless and this week has been another week where there have been lots of backing and forthing and lots of reports and then things that are made up by others and erupt into a public uproar as well. but in this case, the facts are clear. one of the things is you look at the facts, put them in the public, and find out what you did right, what you did wrong, and then you go forward.

you don't just put things in the closet and try to hold them back. the other thing is to try to understand who is in charge. and ap hailed ed kennedy for about 36 hours. there was an uproar from the journalism community. the board lead at the time, at the time that he was called and that kneejerk reaction led to a public repudiation of ed kennedy in the worst possible way. but if you look at what the desk did, what ed kennedy did, there were a lot of things that were right. i spent more time as an editor than a reporter so i have good things to say about editors. they do matter, they count for a lot, and good editors make a difference. clearly in this case we had our lead reporter on the story.

his name, his background, his scope of coverage lent credibility as no other. he never thought about it. he waited 96 minutes from the time the germans announcement began before he published and he was very thoughtful. he went to the military. he told them the story had to go. and even then he went back to his room for 15 minutes. so the desk handled it well. i think ed kennedy handled it well and you trust your reporters. >> and i wanted to ask jack a little bit about the theology about all of this and in my own research i've found a new yorker article contemporaneous talking about the controversy and the debate, which sounds like it could be something in the new yorker in 2012. but it says, in part, whether a

promise extorted as this one was and an airplane several thousands feet of is a moral question, i suppose that kennedy should have refused to promise anything and thus made sure nol newspaper event would want to miss but i can't imagine any correspondent doing it. i do not think kennedy imperiled the lives by sending the story as some of the critics have charged. he probably saved a few because he prolonged the shootings. any way, i wanted to see if you could take us back in time, put yourself in ed kennedy's position and sort of the talk about the theological arguments of embargoes and the right of the public in the world to know. >> theology is certainly my specialty. so -- i would say -- first of all, i would say you probably

it was a.j. and there isn't anybody as good as a.j. but i think that's a very good way to analyze a key part of this. about it -- a rather weak paragraph in the story, which is -- this is, of course, the achilles heel of his story. he pledged he wouldn't break the story but he did. he broke the pledge. but the thing you need to kennedy, he was extremely that recall is an expression of the frustration that he had been seeing. and so he's defending kennedy