Daniel Schorr, Crusading Journalist,
Never Forgot His Jewish Roots
By Ron Kampeas
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Washington
I
t took about seven years for Daniel
Schorr to tire of being a journalist for
Jewish media.
The distaste of digesting for JTAs read-
ers the news of the emerging Holocaust,
combined with what he saw as the blink-
ered parochialism of Jewish news, led him
to quit JTA in 1941 and search for work
elsewhere.
But Schorr never stopped being a Jewish
journalist: Events and his conscience
would not let him.
Schorr, the crusading broadcast jour-
nalist who died last Friday at 93, is best
known for his clashes with the powerful,
including his employers. His tough report-
ing of the Watergate scandal earned him
three Emmys and a spot on President
Richard Nixon's enemies list. His revela-
tions several years later of CIA malfea-
sance won him threats of prosecution and
ended his 23-year career with CBS.
Schorr never forgot his roots in print
and parochial journalism, however, recall-
ing his stint with the Jewish Daily Bulletin,
JTAs daily newspaper, and then after the
Bulletin with JTA in his 2001 autobiogra-
phy, Staying Tuned, a Life in Journalism.
His job at JTA was "cable rewrite": He
would convert the reports condensed from
"cables," written to save money when cable
operators charged by the word, to everyday
English.
"At JTA, we received chilling cable
reports of anti-Semitic depredations in
Europe from refugees, Jewish organiza-
tions and neutral travelers" he wrote.
"These reports occasioned screaming
headlines in the Yiddish press, but were
largely ignored by the general newspapers.
Editors were being counseled by the State
Department to be wary of Jewish propa-
ganda.
"Years later, declassified records would
show how far the American and British
governments went to keep Americans in
ignorance of the extermination of the Jews
in Europe. For fear of distracting the Allies
from pursuit of the war, it was saidr
Schorr's account of his seven years at
JTA — starting as a high school student
stringing for the Jewish Daily Bulletin
— demonstrates how little has changed in
how Jewish reporters cobble together news
Jews can use.
Among other assignments, he wrote,
he "provided a weekly packet of mimeo-
graphed news and editorial material for
several dozen Anglo-Jewish weekly news-
papers around the country. Their demand
was as great as their financial resources
were small.
So, I churned
out copy
using several
pseudonyms,
as well as my
Daniel Schorr
own name.
"The rule
was to emphasize the 'Jewish' angle. In my
music column I favored conductor Bruno
Walter over Leopold Stokowski, pianist
Arthur Rubinstein over Claudio Arrau.
(For free concert tickets and phonograph
records I had relented on my contempt for
music criticism.) Each week I summarized
`The War and the Jews: Each year I did an
article asking, 'Was Columbus a Jew?' (No,
but his navigator may have been Jewish.)"
It wasn't all free concerts: Schorr vol-
unteered for Bund duty, covering the
Daniel Schorr on page 70
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Obituaries
July 29 • 2010
69