Martin Agronsky - Years As A Correspondent

Years As A Correspondent

In 1936, Agronsky became a reporter for the Palestine Post, precursor to today's Jerusalem Post, which had been founded by his uncle, Gershon Agron. In 1937 he left the newspaper to become a freelance journalist. During this period he covered the last days of the illfated League of Nations, the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. During his time in Europe he freelanced for various American, British and other newspapers and various wire services around the world including a freelance piece he did for " Foreign Affairs " magazine on The Rise of Anti-Semitism in Mussolini's Italy. In 1940 Max Jordan the NBC Bureau Chief for all of Europe was scrambling to put together an NBC presence throughout Europe to cover Hitler's War in the Balkans with Britain. Jordan tapped Agronsky to be the NBC Bureau chief in the Balkans. At first Agronsky covered the war from all over the Balkans and much of Eastern Europe. Eventually Agronsky opened a permanent NBC Bureau in Ankara, the capital of neutral Turkey. Although based in Ankara, Agronsky spent most of his time in Istanbul. In Europe and North Africa Agronsky became a foreign correspondent for NBC, providing coverage of World War II from the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Eventually Agronsky was transferred to Cairo and accredited to cover the British 8th Army in North Africa. When Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japan on December 7, 1941 Agronsky was sent to Australia. His journey to Australia to cover General Douglas Macarthur's arrival in Melbourne from Corrigador took several months and took him through several countries. Agronsky arrived in Singapore as the city was being bombed into submission by the Japanese air force while the Japanese Army began circling the city with ground troops. After a week in Singapore, Agronsky was lucky to catch literally one of the last airplanes out of Singapore. In 1943 NBC consisted of The Blue and the Red Networks. NBC was forced to spin off one of the Networks which became ABC and Agronsky went with the new network becamming a Washington, D.C.-based correspondent for ABC Doing " The Daily War Journal " until the end of WW II. In 1948 he helped to pioneer television coverage of American political conventions in 1948. He also covered the hearings on purported communist infiltration of the United States chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Agronsky also did a one on one interview show on television at ABC titled " At Issue ".