On July 16, 1945, William L. Laurence did not show up for work. Only the then editor-in-chief of New York Times, Edwin L. James, and his wife knew where the journalist was. While the typewriters were rattling at 41 Park Row, Manhattan, Laurence was at the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico. There he witnessed the Alamogordo test at 5:29 a.m. local time, which proved that the atomic bomb was ready. Just 24 days later, Laurence was the only reporter to see the Nagasaki detonation up close.
Thousands lost their lives in the tremendous destruction. Laurence built his career on this. The eyewitness accounts and a subsequent series in the Times on the development, production and importance of the bomb as part of the Manhattan Project earned him a Pulitzer Prize and made him one of America’s most recognized science reporters. Now the New York Times in a separate article dedicated to her former star reporter and his influence on war reporting. For as much as Laurence basked in the attention he deserved during his lifetime, the background and motivations of his research are questionable today. The story of its success is also the story of a double game.
After his death in 1977, he left no personal record
“Do you feel pity or compassion for the poor devils who are going to die? Not when you think of Pearl Harbor and the death march on Bataan,” writes William L. Laurence in his report on the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. They are cold words from an enigmatic man. For someone who has received two Pulitzer Awards in his lifetime and worked for one of the world’s most prestigious newspapers for 34 years, remarkably little is known about Laurence. The Lithuanian veteran left no personal record after his death in 1977.
“This large iridescent cloud with its mushroom cloud, I thought when looking at it, is actually a protective screen,” wrote William L. Laurence after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
(Photo: Science Source / Mauritius Images)
So what remains are only the numerous articles by the journalist. And the impact it has had on the perception of nuclear power among the US population. Laurence constantly emphasized the potentially positive effects of nuclear energy and pushed critical voices into the background. His description of the atomic bombing on Nagasaki was correspondingly optimistic: “This large iridescent cloud with its mushroom cloud, I thought when I looked at it, is actually a protective screen that will protect humanity forever and everywhere from the danger of annihilation in a nuclear war Because no aggressor could start a war now without the certainty of absolute and rapid annihilation. ” Not least because of this enthusiasm for nuclear weapons, the reporter was nicknamed the “Atomic Bill” by contemporaries.
Many journalists at the time wavered between objectivity and patriotism
However, there was more than just a personal preference behind the journalist’s partisan reporting. In the article about her former reporter quoted the New York Times the author Alex Wellerstein. According to him, Laurence used his privileged access “to take positions that were favorable to the government” and “willingly made himself an accomplice in the government’s propaganda project”. This is how Laurence described the cause of death in his radioactive radiation on September 12, 1945 in the New York Times published editorial than Japanese propaganda. Rather, the detonation of the bomb was devastating. Washington feared that the news of an agonizing death from radiation would undermine American moral superiority and generate public sympathy for the Japanese.
By today’s standards, Laurence’s role within the Manhattan Project was thus a clear conflict of interest. Arthur Gelb, a former senior editor of the Times who passed away in 2014, always emphasized the scope of the war: “We fought to survive. You have to remember the times. And now people are trying to rewrite history when they talk about Laurence as a villain.” According to the author Michael S. Sweeney, Laurence was not very different from the many other journalists who were loyal to the fatherland in times of war.
Many different roles: partly crook, partly journalist, partly joker
Vincent Kiernan, author of a biography of Laurence due to appear in Cornell University Press in 2021, sees it differently. Laurence made his decisions based on what was best for him, and not necessarily based on what was in the public’s best interest. To this end, Laurence got to be Times-Warage during the war with additional payments not only from the Manhattan Project but also from the Army Chief of Staff, resulting in “a track record of ethically questionable behavior”.
Amy and David Goodman share this view. In 2001 the two journalists demanded that Laurence should be stripped of the Pulitzer Prize. They accused the reporter of knowingly covering up the deadly radiation power of the atomic bomb and of contributing to a false reporting of the atomic weapons.
the New York Times When asked by SZ, she herself stated that she was of the opinion that admitting journalistic mistakes is an essential part of her commitment to fairness, accuracy and integrity. With its own publication about the shortcomings of Laurence’s work, the publishing house would have come to terms with its past.
Laurence ultimately received the Pulitzer Prize. The fact remains obscure whether the Times-Reporter consciously indulged the political entanglements or rather fell unchecked into his fascination and awe for the power of nuclear weapons. According to Wellerstein Laurence was partly a crook, partly a journalist, partly a joker – “unlikely in every respect, a character from real life with more oddities than would be bearable in pure fiction”.