His death will be little noticed outside the journalism and history communities and that’s a shame, because as much as any reporter in the twentieth century, David Halberstam bore witness to that century, to its’ best and to its’ worst.
Halberstam was 73 when he was killed in an auto accident on Monday. He wrote books on a variety of subjects, but his contribution to journalism and history rests on the weighty subjects of war, race and society.
When he graduated from Harvard in 1955, he could have had many jobs. But he chose to start at a small newspaper in Mississippi. He was fired after a year when his reporting on civil rights hit too close to home in the rural South of that time.
He then joined The (Nashville) Tennessean, one of the country’s top papers, where his civil rights reporting helped set a standard.
Then it was on to The New York Times and reporting on Vietnam, reporting for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, reporting that also antagonized two administrations with his criticism of a war that was the most divisive in U.S. history.
His Vietnam experience would lead to the book “The Best and the Brightest,” one of the top books on the Vietnam War. In it he chronicled the hubris, arrogance, miscalculation and lies that characterized the American experience in Vietnam. It should be required reading for any student of journalism or history.
He wrote a trilogy on war that started with “The Best and the Brightest”; then came “War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals”. That trilogy will be complete this fall with the publication of “The Coldest Winter,” his look at the Korean War.
Several more of his books are worthy of readers’ time, including “The Children,” on the civil rights movement; “The Powers That be,” his book on media conglomerates; “The 50’s” about a decade of change and “Firehouse,” about a fire company that lost almost all its members on September 11th.
If all he had written were sports books, he would still be considered among the best. Baseball has inspired the best writing among this country’s major sports and his writing on the pennant race of 1949, the World Series of 1964 and the trip of three teammates to see a dying Ted Williams ranks among the top baseball writing ever.
He wrote of the NBA, of Michael Jordan, and of Bill Belichick. His book on rowers in the 1984 Olympics, “The Amateurs,” probably came closer to capturing what it means to compete for the sheer joy of it than almost any other writing you will find.
All of this is noteworthy on the highest levels, but his biggest legacy may be the fact he was a reporter’s reporter, never taking at face value the pronouncements of government or people in positions of power. He was continually challenging the “official” line. It is of such challenges that great journalism is made.
Our profession right now does not rank very high in the estimation of the general public. There are reasons for that, some of them valid, but it’s important for those of us who report and those of you who consume that reporting to know that reporters who reach the top in journalism report not what you ‘want’ to hear, but what you ‘need’ to hear. Halberstam was such a man. He leaves a huge void.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK
“Judgment at Nuremberg” 1961
This movie concerns the second of the Nuremberg war crimes trials after World War Two. The first trial, the better known trial, concerned Hitler’s top aides, the men who planned and carried out the holocaust. Many were executed.
The second trial was that of judges, lawyers and doctors who helped facilitate the holocaust and, in many ways, their crime was more chilling because they were educated and cultured, the cream of German society.
It takes place mostly in a courtroom, but still remains one of the most frightening movies you will ever see, especially when films are shown of the Nazi death camps.
The movie was nominated for 11 academy awards and won two. It also has one of the great all-star casts in history: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell (who won the Oscar as best actor), Marlene Dietrich and even a young William Shatner.
This is not a popcorn movie. It deals with questions of life and death, honor and shame, morality and depravity and the responsibility of human beings to each other.
When it is over, it will haunt you. It was meant to. It is one of the greatest films of the last fifty years.
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