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https://theconversation.com/one-uk-journalists-close-access-to-hitler-carries-a-warning-about-trumps-media-restrictions-265278>
"
Interviewing Hitler opens in Linz, Austria, in 1938: the year before the
outbreak of World War Two. Adolf Hitler, who was born in Austria, has just
announced the Anschluss, the forced political union of Germany and his birth
country. Since seizing power in 1933, he has been overseeing Germany’s
rearmament and increasingly belligerent foreign policy moves.
Now, on March 12 1938, Hitler has returned to Austria as a hero, greeted by
enraptured crowds lining the streets. Author Richard Evans describes the
triumphant dictator soaking it all in,
standing in the cold on the balcony of the city hall, looking out at
buildings festooned with swastikas and a crowd of thousands who are looking
up at him and chanting in union: “One leader; one people; one state.”
This moment would have felt like a culmination for Hitler, writes Evans. The
near religious fervour emanating from the mass of bodies below “seemed to
confirm everything he had long believed about himself as a man of destiny”.
This moment seemed to represent “the high point of a brilliant career” for
another person present that evening, too.
Standing alongside [Hitler] was a tall Englishman with slicked-back hair and
long scar on his forehead, whose very presence on the balcony seemed the
final proof of his position as the world’s greatest journalist.
The striking figure being described is 52-year-old George Ward Price. A star
correspondent for the
Daily Mail, he enjoyed unprecedented access to Hitler
and other prominent Nazis throughout the 1930s. He cultivated it. He relied on
it. He enjoyed it.
As outlined by Evans, a former journalist, this left Ward Price standing on
very slippery ethical terrain. He shows how journalism can be compromised
through access, closeness, exceptional treatment – and the flattering idea that
one has been invited, so to speak, into the room.
This book about the past speaks directly to the present."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
