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Abstract

This article studies the reporting of Alexander Werth from the Soviet Union for the BBC during World War II. Werth’s despatches, broadcast mostly under the title ‘Russian Commentary’, sought to bring to life the struggles of an ideologically opposed nation that had become an ally against Nazi Germany. The article analyses Werth’s technique as a correspondent, situating it within the wider political and propaganda climate within which he was working. It assesses his work’s significance for the study of ideas of journalistic objectivity in wartime. It looks too at the optimism his reporting expressed as the tide of war began to turn in the allies’ favour—a change that Werth saw as a sign that the Soviet Union’s wartime alliance would endure beyond the end of the conflict—a hope that was crushed by the onset of the Cold War, and renewed enmity between Moscow and the West.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DD Germany D History General and Old World > DK Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity School of Communication & Creativity > Journalism
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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