Shoah in the News: Patterns and Meanings of News Coverage of the Holocaust

Abstract

James Carroll, for whom “why?” is a frequent question and “ethics” a compelling concern, spent his springtime ’97 fellowship at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard researching and writing this extraordinary essay. “Shoah in the News: Patterns and Meanings of News Coverage of the Holocaust” is a thoughtful, provocative and powerful study that deserves wide distribution and analysis.

Carroll, who is a columnist for the Boston Globe and author of many books, including An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us, which won the 1996 National Book Award, raises a set of questions that at first seems only fascinating but on closer examination emerges as a profound portrait of the press, politics and personal loss—and in the background yet another question that has absorbed Carroll for many years: what explains the Vatican’s problematic approach to the Holocaust?

Carroll in this essay examines the years 1995-1997 and wonders why, after decades of soft-pedaling the story and for many years simply ignoring it, the press has suddenly been devoting so much front-page attention to the Holocaust. More than 600 stories have appeared in the New York Times in this relatively brief period—just about one a day. Thousands of others have appeared in other American media. Whether the stories have focused on Swiss banks, plundered artwork, Madeleine Albright’s recently-discovered Jewish roots or Daniel Goldhagen’s book on Hitler’s Willing Executioners, the Holocaust angle has been prominently featured.