“Good” Censorship?

Daniel Schorr was a veteran reporter and news commentator who worked as a senior news analyst for National Public Radio (NPR). As Schorr was traveling “somewhere in the eastern corner of Poland, near the Soviet border,” during his work for CBS in the 1950s, he came upon a group of people who told him that they “were going to Israel.” Schorr was intrigued, and he interviewed them on camera. When he returned to Warsaw, Schorr told the Israeli Minister in Warsaw about the group of people he had met on their way to Israel. The Israeli Minister explained to Schorr that an agreement had been worked out with the Soviet government that would allow people to be “repatriated” to Poland from the Soviet Union, at which point they would make their way to Israel in secret, because the Soviet Union was at that point not allowing any emigration to Israel. Schorr had interviewed these people on camera, and he felt some pressure to adhere to the standard journalistic principle of uncensored reporting. However, this conflicted with his most basic humanitarian instincts: if he aired the film, these people would no longer be able to leave the Soviet Union for Israel.

Daniel Schorr was a veteran reporter and news commentator. He served as the last of Edward R. Murrow’s legendary CBS team and famously interpreted national and international events as senior news analyst for National Public Radio (NPR).

Schorr’s career of over six decades earned him many awards for journalistic excellence, including three Emmys, and decorations from European heads of state. He was also honored by civil-liberties groups and professional organizations for his defense of the First Amendment. In 2002, Schorr was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His analysis of current issues was broadened by his firsthand perspective on recent history. At home, he covered government controversies from Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hearings in 1953 to the Clinton impeachment hearings in 1998 and 1999. Abroad, he observed superpower summits from the Eisenhower-Khrushchev meeting in Geneva in 1955 to the Reagan-Gorbachev conference in Moscow in 1988.

Schorr’s twenty-year career as a foreign correspondent began in 1946. Having served in US Army intelligence during World War II, he began writing from Western Europe for The Christian Science Monitor and later The New York Times, witnessing postwar reconstruction, the Marshall Plan, and the creation of the NATO alliance.

In 1953, his coverage of a disastrous flood that broke the dikes of the Netherlands brought him to Murrow’s attention. He was asked to join CBS News as its diplomatic correspondent in Washington, from where he also traveled on assignment to Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

In 1955, he received accreditation to open a CBS bureau in Moscow. His two-and-a-half-year stay culminated in the first-ever exclusive television interview with a Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, filmed in his Kremlin office in 1957 for CBS’s Face the Nation. However, Schorr’s repeated defiance of Soviet censorship eventually landed him in trouble with the KGB. After a brief arrest on trumped-up charges, he was barred from the Soviet Union at the end of 1957.

For the following two years, Schorr reported from Washington and the United Nations, covering Nikita Khrushchev’s tour of the United States in 1959, interviewing Fidel Castro in Havana, and traveling with President Dwight D. Eisenhower to South America, Asia, and Europe.

In 1960, Schorr was assigned to Bonn as CBS bureau chief for Germany and eastern Europe. He covered the Berlin crisis and the building of the Berlin Wall, and reported from throughout the Soviet bloc.

Reassigned to Washington in 1966, Schorr settled down to “become re-Americanized,” as he puts it, by plunging into coverage of civil rights and urban and environmental problems. In 1972, the Watergate break-in brought Schorr a full-time assignment as CBS’s chief Watergate correspondent. Schorr’s exclusive reports and on-the-scene coverage at the Senate Watergate hearings earned him his three Emmys. He unexpectedly found himself a part of his own story when the hearings turned up a Nixon “enemies list” with his name on it and evidence that the President had ordered that he be investigated by the FBI. This “abuse of a Federal agency” figured as one count in the Bill of Impeachment on which Nixon would have been tried had he not resigned in August 1974.

That fall, Schorr moved to cover investigations of the CIA and FBI scandals—what he called “the son of Watergate.” Once again, he became a part of his own story. When the House of Representatives, in February 1976, voted to suppress the final report of its intelligence investigating committee, Schorr arranged for publication of the advance copy he had exclusively obtained. This led to his suspension by CBS and an investigation by the House Ethics Committee in which Schorr was threatened with jail for contempt of Congress if he did not disclose his source. At a public hearing, he refused on First Amendment grounds, saying that “to betray a source would mean to dry up many future sources for many future reporters … It would mean betraying myself, my career, and my life.”

In the end, the committee decided six-to-five against a contempt citation. Schorr was asked by CBS to return to broadcasting, but he chose to resign to write his account of his experience in a book, Clearing the Air. He accepted an appointment as Regents Professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, and for two years wrote a syndicated newspaper column.

In 1979, Schorr was asked by Ted Turner to help create the Cable News Network, serving in Washington as its senior correspondent until 1985, when he left in a dispute over an effort to limit his editorial independence. Since then, Schorr has worked primarily for NPR, contributing regularly to All Things Considered, Weekend Edition Saturday, and Weekend Edition Sunday, and participating in live coverage of important events.

Schorr apprenticed within a tradition of uncompromising ethics and clear standards. Nonetheless, even with such strict guidelines, his decision-making process has not always been easy. He describes a particularly difficult situation he faced during his time in Poland:

“I was faced—during that same period working in Poland—I was faced with a big professional ethical problem. We were roaming around the country, we were somewhere in the eastern corner of Poland, near the Soviet border. A part of Poland on the other side of the border had been Poland, but the Soviets had seized a part of it and compensated the Poles by giving them part of Germany, almost physically moving the country westward.

And as we walked through the village and we looked around, we ran into an amazing sight—a group of people with all their furniture, furnishings piled up on horse-drawn carts, like a scene from Fiddler on the Roof. And [I] went up and asked what this was, and not speaking Polish, but they spoke Yiddish and I can still speak some Yiddish—they explained to me that they were on their way to Israel. They were going to this railroad station, get on a train to Vienna, and then from Vienna they were going to Israel.

And this was quite remarkable, because this was in 1959, in a period where the Soviets and Soviet satellites were not allowing any emigration to Israel in order not to offend the Arabs. So how could they be going to Israel? I interviewed them in Yiddish, camera, got the thing, very interesting little thing. Went back to Warsaw, went to see the Israeli Minister in Warsaw—was something of a friend of mine, we used to play chess together—and I told him what I saw. And I said, ‘What is the story with these people going to Israel?’

And he said, ‘You saw them? And what, you filmed them and interviews?’

‘Yeah.’

‘All right sir, since you know this much, I’ll tell you the rest of that story and then you decide what you’re going to do with it.’ These people came to that part of the Soviet Union which was Poland, until a couple of years ago, and they’re very unhappy to be in the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union government doesn’t want them very much, either. So we made them an arrangement, we worked out a secret agreement between the Soviet government and the Polish government and the Israeli government that these people would be, quote, repatriated, unquote, to Poland, but they would not stay in Poland, because they didn’t want to. They would go right on, as fast as possible, to Israel.

The Soviets said they would go along with this arrangement unless it became public. If it became public, it would stop. And so he said, ‘Mr. Schorr, you have your story. And now decide what you want to do. If you broadcast this, several, fifteen thousand Jews will be lost in the Soviet Union.’

If I have any ethic, any journalistic ethic at all, the major part of that ethic is that you don’t stand between—you don’t censor the news. You’re not God. What you legitimately find out that’s interesting has to be passed on. And here I was facing this question.

I would [have] loved to have talked to Murrow about it and asked what he thought, but if you talk on an open phone from Poland, that wouldn’t work. Cameraman, at the end of every day, would pack up the film that we shot that day and ship it off by plane to New York. ‘This reel of film,’ I said, ‘let me hold this for a day or so.’ And I held it for one day, and two days, and three days, and four days. And I never shipped it. And I could not today articulate what my justification was for not shipping it, because I would be embarrassed.

I must have talked about it, but I don’t remember clearly, because I was working with people—I had a cameraman, a sound man, and a producer. I must have talked to them, but I have no memory of talking to them. I only remember that I woke up every morning saying, ‘What am I going to do about that film?’ And the next thing I remember was we finished—what we did was we shipped the film, but we kept notes on what was on the film. And then in the end, I had to do stand-ups, narrations where—a little bit on camera, a lot of voice-over. There was a lot of work to be done, mostly completed while I was in Poland.

And I don’t know to this day what we ever did with that film, whether we destroyed it or whether, when it was all over, we shipped it or whatever. I only remember that when I was in New York after that, I went to see Murrow and told him what had happened. And sort of waited for what he would say about it. All he said was, ‘I understand.’ That’s all he said.”

Daniel Schorr describes a profound dilemma: to adhere to the standard journalistic principle of uncensored reporting or to respond to his most basic humanitarian instincts.

What is the importance of uncensored reporting? Do you believe there was a solution whereby Schorr could have upheld his journalistic responsibilities and also protected the individuals in the film? Have you ever questioned standards or principles in your own work?