Martin Agronsky

Martin Zama Agronsky (/əˈɡrɒn.skɪ/ ə-GRON-skih;[lower-alpha 1] January 12, 1915 – July 25, 1999), also known as Martin Agronski,[3] was an American journalist, political analyst,[4] and television host. He began his career in 1936 working under his uncle, Gershon Agron, at the Palestine Post in Jerusalem before deciding to work freelance in Europe a year later. At the outbreak of World War II he became a war correspondent for NBC, working across three continents before returning to the United States and covering the last few years of the war from Washington, D.C., with ABC.

This article is about the journalist. For the fictional Martin Agronski, see A Case of Conscience.
Martin Agronsky
Agronsky in 1962
Born
Martin Zama Agrons

(1915-01-12)January 12, 1915
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
DiedJuly 25, 1999(1999-07-25) (aged 84)
Washington, D.C.
NationalityAmerican
OccupationJournalist
Years active1936–1988
Spouse(s)
  • Helen Smathers
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1943; died 1969)​
  • Sharon Hines
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1971; div. 1986)​
Children5, including Jonathan Agronsky
RelativesAgron family
Signature

After the war, Agronsky covered McCarthyism for ABC; fearless against McCarthy, he won a Peabody Award in 1952. When broadcast journalism moved away from radio, Agronsky returned to NBC, covering the news as well as interviewing prominent figures, particularly Martin Luther King, Jr. as a young man. He returned to Jerusalem for a time and won the Alfred I. duPont Award in 1961 for his coverage of the Eichmann trial there. At the end of 1962 he recorded a documentary aboard the submarine USS George Washington, which received an award at the Venice Film Festival. A prominent news reporter, and associate of John F. Kennedy, he extensively covered the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. The next year, he joined CBS, becoming reportedly the only journalist to work for all three commercial networks. With them, he moderated Face the Nation and won an Emmy for his interviews with Hugo Black, the first television interview with a sitting Supreme Court Justice.

He left major companies in 1968, joining a local network to helm his own show, Agronsky & Co.; a success, the show pioneered the "talking heads" news format. He added the Evening Edition, an interview format, to his show, which became prominent for its coverage of the Watergate scandal. Agronsky then joined PBS, swapping the Evening Edition for a longer interview show, Agronsky at Large. In his later career, he also acted as variations on himself in film and television. He continued hosting Agronsky & Co. until 1988, when he retired from his over 50-year journalism career.

Early years

Martin Zama Agronsky[5] was born Martin Zama Agrons[6] in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 12, 1915 to Isador and Marcia (née Dvorin), Russian Jewish immigrants from Minsk in present-day Belarus.[7] Isador Agrons changed the family name from Agronsky to Agrons some time before Martin's birth, but Martin chose to use the original name when he began his journalism career.[6] Members of the family variously used the names Agronsky, Agrons, and Agron. In his career, Agronsky had a friendship with Harry Golden, who befriended and became a confidant to Isador.[8]

Agronsky's family moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey, when he was a young child, and he graduated from Atlantic City High School in 1932. He studied at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, graduating in 1936.[9] At Rutgers, Agronsky (still Agrons) was a member of Jewish fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu and represented them on the Interfraternity Council.[10][11][12]

Career

Early career and World War II

In 1936, upon his graduation, Agronsky was offered a job as a reporter for the English-language Palestine Post, precursor to today's Jerusalem Post, which was owned by his uncle, Gershon Agron, and moved to Jerusalem. He left the newspaper in 1937 to become a freelance journalist covering the Spanish Civil War.[7] During his time in Europe, he also freelanced for various American, British, and other newspapers and various wire services around the world, including a freelance piece he wrote for Foreign Affairs magazine on the rise of anti-Semitism in Mussolini's Italy that argued Benito Mussolini was hostile to the small Italian Jewish population because he believed they prevented other nations from giving him loans.[13][14]

He was still in Europe at the outbreak of World War II, and despite having no broadcast journalism training, was hired by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) as a radio war correspondent when the company expanded their coverage in 1940.[7] Max Jordan, the NBC bureau chief for all of Europe, wanted to put together an NBC presence throughout Europe to cover the British conflict with Germany in the Balkans and tapped Agronsky to be the bureau chief there. Agronsky covered the war from all over the Balkans and much of Eastern Europe before opening a permanent NBC bureau in Ankara, the capital of neutral Turkey. Although based in Ankara, Agronsky spent most of his time in Istanbul. He then became a foreign correspondent in Europe and North Africa, transferring to Cairo and being accredited to cover the British Eighth Army in North Africa. Though NBC's European war coverage was not particularly celebrated, Agronsky "was a bright spot [...] distinguishing himself under fire in the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East."[7]

When Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japan on December 7, 1941, Agronsky, now considered a seasoned war correspondent, was drafted to cover the Pacific theater and sent to Australia.[7] His journey to Australia to cover Douglas MacArthur's arrival in Melbourne took several months and took him through several countries; Agronsky was in Singapore as the Japanese began attacking, managing to catch the last plane out before the city was captured. He was attached to MacArthur's troops and primarily covered the Allied retreat in Asia.[7]

NBC was ordered to divest its radio network through the Red and Blue Networks in 1943, and Agronsky's contract was among those assigned to the "Blue" network, which NBC chose to divest. The associated assets became the American Broadcasting Company (ABC); smaller and less-renowned than the already-established networks, ABC did not have a television bureau. While other prominent war journalists found themselves able to take senior positions on television, Agronsky was instead assigned to Washington, D.C.,[7] where he did The Daily War Journal until the end of World War II. In 1948 he helped to pioneer television coverage of American political conventions.

McCarthy coverage

Agronsky maintained his prominence as a radio journalist; he won the Peabody Award in 1952 for his coverage and criticism of Senator Joseph McCarthy's excessive accusations.[7] He also reported on the Hollywood 10 and House Un-American Activities Committee. While many reporters gave milquetoast coverage of McCarthyism, said to be out of fear, Agronsky, like CBS's Edward R. Murrow after him, was openly critical of McCarthy and of the senators who enabled him. This bold stance saw Agronsky targeted with anti-Semitic hate mail and his show lose sponsors,[7][15][16] apparently pressured by McCarthy so that Agronsky's show would be taken off air;[15] ABC, however, "congratulated him and took him to lunch", and encouraged him to continue with the criticisms.[7][16] The conversation reportedly went:[15][17]

Robert Kintner: They suggested I should talk to you [Agronsky] about the way you're reporting McCarthy. Are you going to change?
Agronsky: (flatly) No.
Kintner: That's what I thought you'd say. Keep it up.

In 1953, Agronsky questioned president Dwight D. Eisenhower on investigating communism in churches and on book burning.[18]

ABC then became the only major network to broadcast the 1954 Army–McCarthy hearings on television, growing their prominence[19] and "sinking McCarthy" due to the public exposure to his excesses.[20]

He also did a one-on-one discussion show at ABC, At Issue, which aired on Sunday evenings in 1953.[21] The show was moved to Sunday afternoons as part of the public affairs block in 1954, and ended later that year when ABC faced technical and sponsorship issues, scrapping its Sunday afternoon programming. In 1954, Agronsky was replaced as chair of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association by Richard Harkness, becoming an ex officio member of its executive committee.[22]

Look Here, Eichmann trial, and NBC News

In 1957, with television now the leading broadcast medium, Agronsky left ABC (whose program was still weak) and returned to NBC, as a news correspondent. From 1957 through 1964, starting with the Dave Garroway-hosted Today show, he did all the interviews out of Washington, D.C. During this period his reputation grew.[7] He also hosted the one-on-one interview show Look Here, where he interviewed, among others, John F. Kennedy as a senator, and a young Martin Luther King Jr.[23][24] Agronsky interviewed King on multiple occasions, with King notably outlining his nonviolence beliefs and faith in God on Look Here.[25][26][27]

He covered the Eichmann trial, of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, in Jerusalem in 1961 for nine months from start to finish, for which he won the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award. Agronsky's reports were broadcast daily in a segment of the Huntley-Brinkley Report.[7] He interviewed Holocaust survivors as well as figures of interest in Israel and Germany.[28] While there, he spoke to friend Richard C. Blum, expressing his stress and his desire to leave. Blum said that Agronsky was the go-to reporter in D.C. for Israel affairs.[29] In the United States in 1961, Agronsky interviewed Freedom Riders as the group was formed.[30]

Martin Agronsky with the USS George Washington

In December 1962, Agronsky and a film crew underwent Navy training and joined the submariners of the USS George Washington, part of the American Polaris program, undersea for almost three weeks during operational duty to film the documentary Polaris Submarine: Journal of an Undersea Voyage. It won a variety of awards, including the St Mark's Plaque – First Prize at the 1963 Venice Film Festival.[31]

Agronsky reported with Nancy Dickerson from the Washington Monument during the March on Washington in August 1963. This same month, NBC wrote that Agronsky's "incisive questioning of Cabinet members[,] Congressmen and other Washington [D.C.] officials, as well as visiting statesmen from abroad, often results in important newsbreaks in the next day's papers."[31] Later in 1963, Agronsky was given special permission to travel to Moscow to report on nuclear discussions, after NBC had been banned.[31] Upon his return, he gave audiences his opinions on US foreign policy based on what he had witnessed, saying in such a global political climate, no country could remain a bystander, encouraging the general population to not be apathetic.[32]

Assassination of John F. Kennedy

In the four-day aftermath of the assassination of president John F. Kennedy, Agronsky was one of the senior journalists to lead the large television news coverage.[33][34] The coverage invented the breaking format of modern television news.[35] Sociologists from Columbia University, led by Herbert Gans, interviewed a selection of the on-air journalists covering the assassination shortly afterwards to assess its affects; many were questioned about showing emotion. Agronsky's response, saying a journalist cannot show emotion as it would be imposing feelings on the viewer, was later said to typify the view of the issue at the time. When pressed further on the matter by Gans, Agronsky added: "I wanted to cry, but you don't".[33] He was reported to be smoking as he delivered reports from Washington, D.C., during the coverage, while hiding his cigarettes from the camera.[35]

Agronsky interviewing Governor Connally at his hospital bedside, November 27, 1963
via Associated Press on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzvGIsu6KGo

Historian William Manchester wrote that shortly after the shooting, Agronsky telephoned Ted Kennedy to ask if he would be flying from D.C. to Dallas, one of limited communications Ted Kennedy received in the aftermath of his brother's assassination due to telephone lines overloading as people tried to call others to talk about the news.[36] Agronsky covered Kennedy's lying in state on the Today show. He noted that he had also covered the funeral of Franklin D. Roosevelt, describing the different mood by explaining that people mourning Kennedy seemed moved by his unfulfilled potential.[37] On November 27, 1963, five days after the assassination, Agronsky conducted an interview with Texas governor John Connally from his bedside in Parkland Memorial Hospital. Connally, to whom Agronsky was a good friend, had been riding in the seat ahead of Kennedy and was wounded.[38][39] As Connally recovered, the press were desperate to hear his story, but his aides deemed him too weak to face a conference. Instead, the combined press accepted the proposal to use a single reporter as a pool, with all networks carrying the interview live. Connally's office chose Agronsky to be their reporter; he was found in Arlington National Cemetery late the night before and took a midnight flight to Dallas.[40]

Agronsky had interviewed John F. Kennedy in life, with segments re-run on the 20th anniversary of the assassination in television documentary Thank You, Mr. President,[41] and co-authored and edited the 1961 book Let Us Begin: The First 100 Days of the Kennedy Administration.[42][43]

CBS

Agronsky moved to CBS in 1964. While there he held positions as the CBS bureau chief in Paris and moderator of Face the Nation. In 1968 he won an Emmy Award for his television documentary Justice Black and the Bill of Rights, in which he interviewed Hugo Black about his views on incorporation of the Bill of Rights.[7]

Agronsky & Company
Agronsky (right) with United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at Rumsfeld's office in The Pentagon, November 3, 1976

Agronsky became a news anchor for WTOP-TV in Washington, D.C., in 1969, and in the same year became host of the political discussion television program Agronsky & Company, produced by the same station. The format had Agronsky introduce a short segment on the news with political reporters. Shortly afterward, Agronsky left the local evening news and Agronsky & Company became a stand-alone weekly show produced and syndicated by Post-Newsweek stations (WTOP's then-owner). The show was syndicated nationally by Post-Newsweek to local stations and the PBS nationally, including WETA in D.C. He hosted the show until he retired in January 1988, and it proved to be one of the biggest successes of his career.[44]

The show generally is credited as having invented the preeminent roundtable discussion format for public affairs and political television shows that feature prominent journalists discussing current events and offering their opinions about them. Agronsky & Company did not have the spirited arguments and shouting that came to characterize many of its imitators, however. Its regular panelists included Hugh Sidey of Time magazine, Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News, and columnists Carl Rowan, James J. Kilpatrick, Elizabeth Drew, and George Will. Although some of the liberal-versus-conservative argumentation now common on American public affairs shows began with pointed arguments between Agronsky & Company panelists, Agronsky himself always exerted a calming influence. The show was held in generally high regard; Ted Kennedy once said that "Everybody who is in public life watches Agronsky."[9]

For PBS, Agronsky and Paul Duke interviewed president Gerald Ford in 1975.[45]

After Agronsky's death, Agronsky & Co. commentator Hugh Sidey told the American Journalism Review of the show:[44]

I think the first thing is, it was first of its particular nature... So it had its own flavor... And Martin was its patriarch... He was a true shoe-leather reporter... I can remember many a program when we came straight from reporting the story... We came right out of the trenches. I'm not saying that doesn't happen now... but not with the same frequency... I would often come from being with the president... Show business had really not invaded our world back then... The idea was not to shout down anybody... I think another reason for its success was the nature of the times... We had real, real problems, explosive problems, security problems--and the discussions, I think, reflected that gravity... Compared to today... the kind of melding here between entertainment and journalism... The nature of those times was quite different, and I think that helped out the program a great deal as well as the people on it.

Evening Edition and Nixon presidency

In 1971, in addition to hosting Agronsky & Company once a week, Agronsky started a five-night-a-week half-hour interview show, Martin Agronsky's Evening Edition, produced by Eastern Educational Network,[46] which became a much-viewed program during the Watergate scandal. Evening Edition extensively covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including the Cold War détente and Vietnam War.[46] It was broadcast from WETA's studio in Shirlington, Arlington, Virginia. Evening Edition aired nightly and was on before, during and after the Watergate break-in hearings broadcast on PBS that led, ultimately, to Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974. Evening Edition went off the air in late 1975.

Agronsky At Large

Agronsky then did a one-hour interview show weekly on PBS during 1976 titled Agronsky at Large, where he interviewed such guests as Alfred Hitchcock and Anwar Sadat shortly before the Egyptian leader's assassination.[44]

Impact and legacy

During his 52-year journalism career (print from 1936 to 1940 and radio and television from 1940 to 1988) Agronsky worked for all three commercial networks in the United States.[7] He is believed to be the only broadcast journalist/commentator to have worked for all three, and is the only person to work for all three and PBS. He was the first television reporter to interview a sitting Supreme Court Justice.[47]

The moderator-led panel discussion format of news shows was, in 1984, described as "Martin Agronski style".[3] Agronsky & Company pioneered the "talking heads" news format.[47]

His papers, containing approximately 30,000 items, are held in a collection in the Library of Congress.[48][49]

Personal life

Agronsky married Helen Smathers, a United States Army nurse whom he met while covering MacArthur in Melbourne, Australia, in 1942. Agronsky returned to the U.S. in March 1943,[7] whereupon he expedited Smathers's return. They were married in Baltimore, Maryland, at City Hall, grabbing a stranger off the street to be their witness. They went on to have four children: Marcia, Jonathan, David, and Julie. After Helen's death in 1969, Agronsky then married Sharon Hines in 1971; the marriage produced one child, Rachel. Agronsky and Hines divorced after fifteen years.[7]

Death

Martin Agronsky died at his Rock Creek Park home in Washington, D.C., on July 25, 1999, of congestive heart failure. He was 84.[44]

Filmography
Year Title Role Notes Refs.
1953–1954 At Issue – Host; television
1957 Look Here – Host; television
1962 Polaris Submarine: Journal of an Undersea Voyage – Narrator; television documentary
First aired in 1962 in the US and 1963 in the UK (on BBC Television)		 [31][50]
1960–1964 Today – Reporter; television
1964 After Ten Years: The Court and the Schools – Correspondent; television special
1962–1968 The Huntley–Brinkley Report – Reporter; television
1964–1968 CBS Reports – Reporter; television
1965–1968 Face the Nation – Moderator; television
1971 Vanished Reporter Television mini-series
1973 What You Don't Know Can Kill You – Reporter; television [51]
1971–1976 Martin Agronsky's Evening Edition – Host; television
1981 First Monday in October TV Commentator Film
1983 Thank You, Mr. President – Archive footage; television [41]
1969–1987 Agronsky & Co. – Host; television
2018 Hope & Fury: MLK, the Movement and the Media – Archive footage; television documentary

Awards and honors
Year Association Category Work Result Refs.
1948 Newspaper Guild Heywood Broun Award Career Won [42]
1949 Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award Career; Agronsky was also inducted into the Washington, D.C., chapter's Hall of Fame Won [48][52]
1952 Peabody Awards Area of Excellence: News Coverage of the excesses of Senator Joseph McCarthy; ABC radio Won [5]
1953 Alfred I. duPont Award Excellence in broadcast journalism ABC Special commendation [22]
1961 Alfred I. duPont Award Excellence in broadcast journalism Eichmann trial coverage; NBC Won [5]
1962 Press Club of Atlantic City National Headliner Award Career Won [42]
1962 Overseas Press Club Best Movie Photography from Abroad Polaris Submarine: Journal of an Undersea Voyage; NBC (with Scott Berner) Won [53][31]
1963 CINE Golden Eagle Award Polaris Submarine: Journal of an Undersea Voyage Won [31]
1963 Venice Film Festival St. Mark's Plaque Polaris Submarine: Journal of an Undersea Voyage Won [42][31]
1968 Emmy Awards Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of News Commentary or Public Affairs CBS Reports: "Justice Black and the Bill of Rights" Won [7]
1995 Rutgers University Hall of Distinguished Alumni Career Honored [47]
Honorary degrees
Location Date School Degree
 New Hampshire 1977 Southern New Hampshire University Doctor of Laws (LL.D)[54]

In 1987, Agronsky gave the commencement address at San Diego State University.[55]

See also

Notes
  1. IPA and respelling per Peabody Awards introduction.[1] During Agronsky's life, there was debate on how his name should be pronounced.[2]

References

Citations
  1. The Peabody Awards 1952.
  2. United States House Committee on Naval Affairs 1942.
  3. Campbell-Thrane 1984.
  4. Roberts Forde & Ross 2011.
  5. Cox 2013.
  6. Museum of the Jewish People 2020.
  7. Carnes 2002.
  8. Marlowe Hartnett 2015.
  9. AP 1999.
  10. Greek101 2003.
  11. Rutgers University 1934.
  12. Rutgers University 1935.
  13. Zander 2016.
  14. Agronsky 1939.
  15. Bayley 1981.
  16. Bliss 2010.
  17. Shogan 2009.
  18. Eisenhower 1953.
  19. Bender, Brown & Rosenzweig 2012.
  20. Shafer 2005.
  21. New York Times 1953.
  22. Codel 1954.
  23. Agronsky & King 1957.
  24. Agronsky 2016.
  25. Joseph 2020.
  26. Chappell 2013.
  27. Shan Johnson 2006.
  28. W.B. 1995.
  29. Geraci, Lage & Rubens 2014.
  30. Holt et al. 2011.
  31. NBC 1963.
  32. Martin 1963.
  33. Bodroghkozy 2013.
  34. Dickerson 2013.
  35. Rosenberg 1988.
  36. Manchester 1996.
  37. Downs & Agronsky 1963.
  38. Agronsky 1963.
  39. Connally & Agronsky 1963.
  40. Read 2014.
  41. Shales 1983.
  42. Taft 2016.
  43. Agronsky et al. 1961.
  44. Robertson 1999.
  45. Duke & Agronsky 1975.
  46. Agronsky 2018.
  47. Rutgers University 1995.
  48. Ellis 2010.
  49. Agronsky 2010.
  50. BBC Television 1963.
  51. AP 1973.
  52. Society of Professional Journalists 2021.
  53. Overseas Press Club 1962.
  54. Southern New Hampshire University 2010.
  55. Day 1987.

Sources
Audio-visual media
  • Agronsky, Martin; King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1957). "Martin Luther King, Jr., on Nonviolence - The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom | Exhibitions - Library of Congress". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 2021-11-02. Retrieved 2021-12-11.
  • Downs, Hugh; Agronsky, Martin (November 25, 1963). "Lee Harvey Oswald Shot On Camera". Today, NBC. Archived from the original on 2021-05-23. Retrieved 2021-12-11 – via YouTube.
  • The Peabody Awards (1952). "Personal Award: Martin Agronsky for Outstanding Radio News Coverage". Archived from the original on 2021-09-03. Retrieved 2021-09-03.
  • Read, Julian (January 6, 2014). "JFK's Final Hours In Texas". Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Archived from the original on 2021-12-11. Retrieved 2021-12-11 – via YouTube.
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