A US war correspondent who was fired for breaking a military embargo and scooping the world on the German surrender in World War II got an apology today, 67 years after the event.
The Associated Press offered the posthumous apology to reporter Edward Kennedy, who defied military censors and filed a dispatch on 7 May 1945 which detailed the surrender and, in turn, the end of the war in Europe.
The news was perhaps the biggest scoop of the war but led to Mr Kennedy’s dismissal by the AP and his expulsion by the US military.
However AP president and chief executive Tom Curley apologised today saying it was “a terrible day for the AP”, who had handled the incident “in the worst possible way."
Mr Kennedy was among 17 journalists taken to a ceremony in Reims, France which saw German forces sign a surrender, however the journalists all had to pledge to keep the news a secret to allow a second ceremony to be staged by Russian forces in Berlin.
The journalists were first told the news would only be held up for a few hours, but the embargo was later extended until 3pm the following day; 36 hours later.
In a memoir, Mr Kennedy said he tried to no avail to get a military censor to lift the embargo.
He then used a military phone which was not monitored by the censors to file his account to AP's office in London, which put out the dispatch within minutes.
Mr Curley said Mr Kennedy did the right thing.
"Once the war is over, you can't hold back information like that. The world needed to know," the outgoing wire service chief said.
Mr Kennedy died in a traffic accident in 1963 however his daughter, Julia Kennedy Cochran, said she thought the apology “would have meant a lot to him."
