An amazing thing happened last week. Amazing only in that it is so late in coming. It seems that the Associated Press finally apologized to one of its long dead reporters. It only took them 77 years to admit they were wrong.
If you didn’t see the story, let me recap. Edward Kennedy was a war correspondent in World War II. As the war came to a close, he was one of the privileged few to witness the Germans unconditional surrender in Reims, France. He was about to get the biggest scoop in history.
Only one problem. Winston Churchill and Harry Truman had agreed to keep the secret one more day so Stalin could enjoy a second, coordinated surrender in Berlin. Kennedy never got the memo. Playing the unpleasant role of scape goat, he was instead taken to task by the AP and summarily and unapologetically fired.
He had been accused of breaking a pledge that he and 16 other reporters had made to keep the surrender a secret. It was a condition of being allowed to witness it.
Now, one has to wonder why Ed’s career was destroyed so, given the fact that he filed the article with the AP and the AP could have just killed the story. They were his boss.
Which brings me to the topic of today – how nothing like this can ever happen again.
Not because it was unconscionable. But because technology makes it way too easy to share everything.
I wonder what World War II would have been like in the age of Twitter and Facebook. Sure, the Allies could keep a lid on everything back then. It was seen as patriotic for the press to allow their wartime reports to be censored for security reasons.
But now, everyone carries their own portable reporting devices with them. Reporters are a dying breed, largely because their own role in controlling the flow of news has become something of a dinosaur.
If D-Day were to happen today, hundreds of Frenchmen would be snapping photos of all these ships mysteriously arriving off their shores. O.K., so it wouldn’t be that mysterious at all. Folks in England would have already been sending friends photos of the troops massing and shipping out.
We’d all see the whole thing unfolding on Facebook. If you remember, the Germans had their little coding machine that they thought was so unbreakable they never bothered to change the codes. We had one of their machines and they didn’t know it. So we knew everything they were up to.
We would today, too. Screw the Enigma machine. We have Twitter. I could see it now. Frenchmen Twittering – “Americans parachuting in from sky.” “Boats landing on coast.” “Invasion imminent?”
While Churchill and Roosevelt could be heavy handed with the media, appealing to their patriotism and sense of duty, I don’t think they would have had a clue how to handle Facebook and Twitter.
Obviously, fighting an axis of evil led by the mustached one requires us to make sacrifices. We readily lived with rationing, blackouts and metal drives. But give up Facebook and Twitter to stop a madman? Are you nuts?
And then there’s poor Ed Kennedy, trying to follow the rules, filing the story only because he assumed the war was over, which it was the moment he witnessed the surrender. How could he have possibly known that Churchill and Roosevelt had created a photo opp for Stalin, so they “delayed” the end of the war by a day.
I can only wonder how many additional allied troops died in that intervening day. Everyone assumed the war was still going. I’m sure the Germans did. But if they had Facebook, they could have just posted the news to their friends: “Wir geben. Sie hat gewonnen.”
Within seconds everyone would have known the war was over. It is indeed an amazing medium. To think that within minutes news can be shared with friends all over the world.
I think this technology would have changed history. If only the Romans had had iPhones instead of chiseled stones or papryrus and a quill. These were pretty slowtech. By the time you chiseled “Beware of Greeks that bare gifts,” the Trojan Horse would have already been through the gate. But give the guards a Twitter account and they would have been able to alert the entire Roman Empire that something seemed a bit funny about the giant horse with a belly that snickered loudly, like someone was pulling the wool over someone else’s eyes.
Certainly, Caesar would have been given a heads up about his bud, Brutus. Someone would have Tweeted that Brutus had it in for him: “Watch your back, Caes. Brutus is our to get you. He wants the salad to be named after him.”
Caesar would have had none of that and Unfriended Brutus on Facebook. And that would be that.
Of course, one could argue that that is what set the whole thing off in the first place. Caesar may have Unfriended him already. People do whacky things when you Unfriend them. They really take it personally I’ve found, though no one has gone as far as to stab me in the back (though one of my exes came real close.)
But back to the AP and reporter boy. I can’t help but feel sorry for this guy. He was just doing his job, filing stories about the war. He got the story of a lifetime and filed it with his boss, who then promptly hung his ass out to dry. And Ed got to live out his life in shame, dying a hollow, broken man.
Ed died in 1963 in a tragic car accident. The AP never apologized to him during his brief life. But then they chose to 77 years later. That’s supposed to make everyone feel better. It’s like the U.S. apologizing for slavery a couple hundred years later. Oh, they did? Well, there’s another RobZerrvation topic then.
It was equally sad that Ed’s daughter put on her brave face for the story. She said dad would be thrilled to have received the apology… 77 years late. Sure he would. Wait until I’m dead to say you’re sorry. I think it’s safe to say that Ed doesn’t really give a crap. He’s on the other side of the Pearly Gates and I’m pretty sure there’s no AP teletype up there to let him know that his former employer has forgiven him.
His new employer forgave him too, I hear. He does that kind of thing. In fact, Ed is running the news bureau for the Heavenly Times. He’s working on a story right now about the Rapture with a humorous side piece on the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Speaking of the scoop of a lifetime!
In the Emerald City, wondering if God is a benevolent, loving Editor,
– Robb