Talk:William L. Laurence

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[edit] Should mention controversy

There has recently been some controversy over Laurence's role in reporting the aftermath of the atomic bombing. There is a claim that he won the Pulitzer for essentially spreading false US propaganda, for which some believe he should be stripped of the prize.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0805-20.htm

• I saw this when I first made the page, and it seemed to me then that the only people who cared about this were the Goodmans, and that they had basically written up one press release that was re-printed on similar-minded sites, but that besides this there was no "controversy". If any discussion of this has taken place in a major mainstream news outlet, then I think it should be included, but otherwise I am dubious. --Fastfission 00:15, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

• On a factual note: It is also worth noting that knowledge about radioactivity and the effects of the atomic bombs was almost nil at the time. When the military men dismissed the reports of radiation sickness as propaganda, they were doing so out of ignorance. There is lots of documentary evidence to suggest that not even the physicists working on the bomb project thought lingering radiation would be a major by-product, and their experience with the Trinity test had not shown anything to the contrary (there was almost no debris in the Trinity test, and so would be very little fallout). It was not until after the Nagasaki blast that Groves even assembled a team to look into these reports seriously, and not until the occupation began that they were able to confirm them with their own scientists. I think the Goodmans are essentially mistaken in their historical understanding of this, which is probably why their "call" has not been taken very seriously. The U.S. government and military was not going to report things that their scientists told them were false. If anyone is to be blamed for a "cover up" it is Robert Oppenheimer, but it is more likely that he was simply wrong about it. --Fastfission 17:54, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

• It has been getting some mainstream media attention more recently, such as in NPR's On The Media (http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/08/10/02). I came to the wiki entry specifically to get wiki's take on the topic. So at some point soon this probably merits coverage. Also the Goodmans didn't just write a press release, the wrote a book (The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them). --Psm 23:40, 16 September 2007 (UTC)