Fact checking Holocaust disinformation

This is an example of just how far right-wing disinformation will go. According to the narration in this video:  “The Holocaust stuff was about them (the New York Times)  not wanting to be seen as a Jewish-owned  newspaper, because this was America in the 1940s, there was a lot of antisemitism. They were afraid it would jeopardize their position in the market, and for them, that was just something they would not sacrifice, even for the truth. They actually forbade the word “Jew” in their news reports during that period.”  

That seemed pretty far fetched on the face of it, so we fact-checked the claim that the word “Jew” could not show up in the New York Times. Using the full text ProQuest database to search of the Times for the words  “Jews or Jewish” in the date range 1933 – 1946, we found 95,085 articles over 5114 days (14 years), for an average of  18.6  articles mentioning Jews or Jewish people  per day.

There are over 3,500 articles with the term “concentration camp,” and of those, over 750 also have the words “Jews or Jewish.”

The Prager U media “expert” also says that the New York Times w0n Pulitzer prizes during World War II for pro-Nazi coverage.  Checking the roster of Pulitzers from 1942 through 1946, there are no prizes for the Times coverage of the European war. There are two for  Pacific war coverage, and one in 1941 for general coverage of the emerging war. There are none for anything remotely resembling “pro-Nazi” coverage.

This Prager video fits with the right-wing canard that political progressives in the US are antisemitic, but unfortunately, it doesn’t fit the facts.

As an interesting side – note:  The New York Times did win a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1944 in honor of its April 4, 1943 survey about understanding of US history.   We wonder how well the Prager staff would fare on that kind of history test.

Also See: 
American Public Opinion and the Holocaust (Gallup polls)