Give Ed Kennedy the Posthumous Pulitzer He Deserves

• Kennedy broke his word when he broke embargo. Actually, it was Eisenhower's command that broke the embargo. As Ike's Chief of Staff, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith acknowledged after the war, the Allies ordered German radio to broadcast news of the surrender repeatedly to ensure that German forces stood down. The Germans complied, and Kennedy filed his story only after learning of the German broadcasts. He told the senior censor that these broadcasts had nullified the embargo, and he was no longer pledged to honor it.
• Kennedy failed to inform his bosses that his dispatch broke the embargo. This is true, but he faced a Hobson's choice. Kennedy had dictated his story to the AP London bureau by phone. The London bureau then had to relay the story to New York headquarters for editing, using a trans-Atlantic cable minded by a military censor. Kennedy thus had two options. He could dictate the story without a warning to editors that it was unauthorized, and get it into print. Or he could include a note telling editors that he was breaking the embargo, ensuring that the censor could stop the dispatch. Kennedy made a difficult choice, but not a deceitful one.
• Kennedy betrayed his fellow correspondents by failing to inform them of his intentions in advance. Come on. Wire reporters are paid to be first. If he had stopped to confer with his nearly 60 rivals, not only would he have lost the scoop, but also might inadvertently have alerted the authorities, making it impossible for anyone to file the story.

The most important point, though, is that more than a scoop was at stake with this story. Human lives were in the balance as well. On average, about 60 Americans were dying per day as the war in Europe wound down, and countless others, according to histories of the conflict. So Kennedy's report that the war was over might well have saved some lives, while bringing relief to millions of families of service members. Kennedy's story also revealed the diplomatic subtext described above. To give Stalin time to set up his propaganda surrender ceremony, President Truman had risked an increased death toll by keeping the war on officially for another day or two. Stalin's "Berlin surrender" version took root in the Soviet Union, where Victory Day is celebrated on May 9. Thanks in part to Ed Kennedy, however, VE Day in the West commemorates the real surrender in Reims.

The Ed Kennedy controversy became a huge story in the United States following Germany's surrender. Editorial writers and members of the public came to his defense, incensed that their own government would bottle up the best news of the war. In the face of this bad publicity, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall ordered Eisenhower to go after Kennedy, according to documents in the National Archives. Ike's public relations chief held a press conference castigating the reporter for violating security. Meanwhile, government and other pressure led Associated Press President Robert McLean to apologize publicly for Kennedy's conduct before all the facts were in. Kennedy's AP career was over.

The Pulitzer board has awarded special citations recognizing a journalists' body of work, not merely an article or series. The case for a Kennedy Pulitzer is stronger if one takes into account his entire career as a war correspondent, starting with the Spanish Civil War in 1937 and continuing through desperate battles in North Africa and Crete, the beachhead at Anzio, Italy, and the allied invasion of Southern France. Through it all, he butted heads continually with Army censors and PR officers who sought to keep journalists under tight control. In September 1944, Kennedy took a jeep and broke away from headquarters, driving from southern France toward Paris, eluding retreating German units, mapping areas that had fallen under control of the Resistance, and documenting a Nazi massacre of men, women, and children. He arrived in Paris only to have his credentials suspended for traveling without permission. Eric Sevareid, who covered the war for CBS, described Kennedy in his 1953 memoir as "one of the most rigidly honest, most unflaggingly objective journalists, who never ceased in his efforts to free the news . . . He did more to hold the military to the letter of the censorship rules . . . than any other journalist I know."

Dealing with Army PR was a Kafkaesque experience then, as it can be today. Eisenhower said in his farewell press conference for war correspondents in Europe that there had been no serious censorship of their copy. In that same press conference, he reminded them to clear any statement they wanted to quote with a PR officer. He also said he regarded journalists accredited to his command as "auxiliary staff officers" whose job was to support the war effort through "objective" reporting. In reality, of course, one can't be both a quasi-soldier and an independent reporter. Ed Kennedy chose to be the latter, and it very nearly destroyed him. Even 50 years after his death, awarding a prize to Kennedy might convey a useful message following the recent decade of war: We need more Ed Kennedys and fewer "auxiliary staff officers" in the press.