Jewish newspapers from all over the United States and Canada–Yiddish, Hebrew and English-Jewish–joined this week in editorial tributes to the work of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.
Dr. Samuel Margoshes, writing in the Day-Morning Journal, said: “The Jewish Telegraphic Agency is the only world-wide Jewish news agency supplying news daily to the Yiddish press, the Anglo-Jewish papers and some American dailies as well. By so doing, it performs a function which from a Jewish point of view, is essential and priceless. For by holding daily before Jewish public the mirror of the Jewish world, it helps to maintain Jewish consciousness and provides a sound basis for Jewish action. It has been said that about the JTA that it is the memory of contemporary Jewry. This statement is borne out every day by countless Jewish readers throughout the Jewish world.”
I. Rabinowitz, editor of the Canadian Jewish Eagle, a daily newspaper, emphasized the role which the JTA plays as a link between the Jewish communities all over the world and the contribution it makes towards strengthening “the family character of the Jewish people which is dispersed over many lands and continents.” The editorial also stressed that the JTA played an important role in strengthening the Jewish press through out the world by supplying it with Jewish news to which non-Jewish news agencies pay no attention.
The Jewish News of Detroit, in an editorial on the JTA, said: “Jewish newspapers everywhere would be in great difficulty, in their efforts to gather news about our people from all parts of the globe, without the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, whose three-lettered symbol–JTA–has become internationally known as the guarantee for accuracy in providing the world with Jewish news. The Jewish communities, however, are the major beneficiaries from this vital news-gathering agency. Without JTA, all links between them would have been endangered and some would have been broken. It is the JTA that has kept our people fully informed on what is happening in Jewish ranks–in Israel, in Europe, Africa, Asia and the remotest corners of the globe.”
The American Jewish Outlook, of Pittsburgh, wrote: “JTA, we feel, has done its most tremendous job in reporting and creating a feeling for and an understanding of the need to establish an Israel. We are not by any means exaggerating JTA’s role; equipped with elaborate and recent technical devices, the Agency has created a world-wide network by which it serves a dual purpose: that of a bridge between and among Jewish communities throughout the world, and also as an interpreter of the Jewish position to the non-Jewish press throughout the world.”
Similar editorials appeared in other English-Jewish publications. Hadoar, the only Hebrew weekly newspaper in this country, reported the JTA anniversary and emphasized that President Eisenhower, in a message from the White House, praised the JTA news coverage.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
