Category Archives: Resistance to injustice

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. In fact, using a full text ProQuest database 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.

The media “expert” in the video also says that the New York Times w0n Pulitzer prizes during World War II for pro-Nazi coverage.  In fact, 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. Astonishingly, there are none for “pro-Nazi” coverage.

So yes, this Prager video is promoting outright lies with the intention of portraying the New York Times as antisemitic and racist.

Also See: 
American Public Opinion and the Holocaust (Gallup polls)
Samantha Bee and Prager U   “Prager U is as much of a real college as Monsters University.”