Reviewed by:

• Ben Robertson: South Carolina Journalist and Author by Jodie Peeler
• Melita M. Garza

The title for this compelling biography of war correspondent, social justice journalist, and author Ben Robertson (1903–1943) unfairly confines him to the red hills and cotton fields of Carolina he wrote so eloquently about. The book itself remembers Robertson as so much more. The prologue immediately places Robertson in the context of pivotal twentieth-century journalism, with famed broadcaster Edward R. Murrow describing Robertson as his “best friend” (p. 2). Subsequent chapters connect the now largely and lamentably forgotten Robertson with more celebrated journalists, including Ralph Ingersoll, founder of the newspaper PM and formerly of Fortune and the New Yorker, Ernie Pyle of Scripps-Howard, and Helen Kirkpatrick of the Chicago Daily News, among others. This book is a reminder, to paraphrase physicist John Wheeler, that the past exists only as it is reported in the present (Michael Dummett, Truth and the Past [New York, 2005], p. 74). The same is true for journalism history, whose borders have been expanded by Ben Robertson: South Carolina Journalist and Author.

Jodie Peeler, a Newberry College communications professor, elegantly traces Robertson’s life story, beginning with his Scots-Irish immigrant ancestors and ending with Robertson’s tragic death off the coast of Lisbon. Peeler makes extensive use of historical archives and special collections from South Carolina to Texas. She not only plumbs Robertson’s papers at Clemson University, one of Robertson’s alma maters, but also delves into the papers of contemporaries and family members. The author also judiciously selects from Robertson’s published works, including articles from the short-lived progressive New York newspaper PM and Robertson’s books, most notably his work of vivid war reportage, I Saw England (New York, 1941). While Robertson’s family memoir, Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory (New York, 1942), is a staple of southern literature, his journalistic story has [End Page 147] received scant scholarly attention. Peeler’s contribution is to put Robertson’s story into a compelling narrative that contextualizes Robertson as a son of the South and an actor in big-time journalism who grappled with injustice, inequality, and racism. Peeler manages to do all of it without resorting to hagiography.

Instead, Robertson is situated in the nuances of his own time. Peeler shows how Robertson’s progressive views contrasted starkly with those of fellow Clemson classmate and rabid conservative J. Strom Thurmond. Yet, at the same time, she identifies the deficiencies that another fellow Clemson graduate, Robertson’s close friend Harry S. Ashmore, found in Robertson’s romantic, idealized notions of upcountry Carolina. Thurmond later became a senator from South Carolina, and Ashmore later won the Pulitzer Prize for editorials supporting school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. On a divergent path, Robertson would globe-trot in pursuit of stories, taking up residency in Honolulu, Australia, Java, Manhattan, Washington, D.C., London, and Russia, residing at the ornate Hotel Metropol Moscow with other major journalistic figures covering World War II.

Robertson’s passport to this world was the Missouri School of Journalism and its founder, Walter Williams, who later became the University of Missouri’s president. Williams riffled through his Rolodex to help open newsroom doors for Robertson. In New York, Robertson became known as a southern charmer given to “character-driven journalism” (p. 56). Once overseas, he became an unequivocal advocate for U.S. involvement in the war and for independence for India. Ultimately, Robertson’s chief contribution was that along with Murrow, Kirkpatrick, and many others, he navigated the tenuous line between propaganda and advocacy journalism, helping move reporting beyond mere stenography and the practice of false equivalence. While Peeler might have enriched this discussion by connecting it with competing theories of journalistic objectivity, her book insightfully and importantly reveals that more than eighty years before today’s news fairness debates, the Piedmont born-and-bred Robertson found that both sides are not always deserving of equal time.

审核人：

• 本·罗伯逊：南卡罗来纳州记者，作者朱迪·皮勒（Jodie Peeler）
• 梅利塔·加萨（Melita M. Garza）

这本引人入胜的战争通讯传记，社会正义记者和作家本·罗伯逊（Ben Robertson（1903-1943））的标题不公平地将他限制在他如此雄辩地撰写的卡罗来纳州的红色丘陵和棉田中。这本书本身还记得罗伯逊。序言立即将罗伯逊置于20世纪举足轻重的新闻业背景下，著名广播员爱德华·R·默罗（Edward R. Murrow）将罗伯逊描述为他的“最好的朋友”（第2页）。后续章节有更著名的记者，包括拉尔夫·英格索尔，报纸的创始人连接现在基本上和可悲的遗忘罗伯逊PM和以前的财富和纽约客，斯克里普斯-霍华德派尔，和芝加哥的海伦·柯克帕特里克每日经济新闻等等。物理学家约翰·惠勒（John Wheeler）的这本书提醒人们，过去的存在只限于现在的报道（迈克尔·达米特，《真相与过去》 [New York，2005]，第74页）。新闻史也是如此，本·罗伯逊（Ben Robertson）扩大了疆界：南卡罗来纳州记者和作家。

纽伯里学院传播学教授朱迪·皮勒（Jodie Peeler）优雅地追溯了罗伯逊的生活故事，从他的苏格兰爱尔兰移民祖先开始，到罗伯逊在里斯本海岸不幸去世。Peeler广泛使用了从南卡罗来纳州到得克萨斯州的历史档案和特殊收藏。她不仅浏览了罗伯逊母校之一的克莱姆森大学的罗伯逊的论文，还深入研究了当代人和家庭成员的论文。作者还审慎地从罗伯逊的已出版作品中进行挑选，其中包括短暂的进步纽约报纸PM和罗伯逊的书籍中的文章，最著名的是他生动的战争报道文学作品《我看见英格兰》（1941年，纽约）。在罗伯逊的家庭回忆录中，《红山与棉花：内陆的回忆》（纽约，1942年）是南方文学的主要内容，他的新闻故事[End Page 147]受到学​​术界的关注。Peeler的贡献是将罗伯逊的故事变成一个引人入胜的叙述，使罗伯逊成为南方之子和大新闻界的演员，并与不公正，不平等和种族主义作斗争。Peeler设法做到了所有这些，而无需借助造影术。

相反，罗伯逊位于自己时代的细微差别中。皮勒（Peeler）展示了罗伯逊的进步观点与克莱姆森同学和狂热的保守派斯特罗姆·瑟蒙德（J. Strom Thurmond）的鲜明对比。然而，与此同时，她指出了另一名克莱姆森大学毕业生，罗伯逊的密友哈里·阿什莫尔（Harry S. Ashmore）所存在的缺陷，这种缺陷是罗伯逊浪漫，理想​​化的卡罗来纳州内陆地区的理想化发现的。瑟蒙德后来成为南卡罗来纳州的参议员，阿什莫尔后来因支持阿肯色州小石城学校种族隔离的社论而获得普利策奖。罗伯逊（Robertson）走在一条散漫的道路上，追寻故事，在火奴鲁鲁，澳大利亚，爪哇，曼哈顿，华盛顿特区，伦敦和俄罗斯定居，并与其他主要的新闻人物一起居住在华丽的莫斯科大都会酒店第二次世界大战。

罗伯逊通向这个世界的护照是密苏里新闻学院及其创始人沃尔特·威廉姆斯（Walter Williams），他后来成为密苏里大学的校长。威廉姆斯翻阅他的Rolodex，以帮助为罗伯逊打开新闻编辑室的门。在纽约，罗伯逊（Robertson）被誉为“角色驱动新闻”的南方魅力人物（第56页）。出国后，他成为美国参与战争和印度独立的坚定拥护者。最终，罗伯逊的主要贡献是与默罗（Murrow），柯克帕特里克（Kirkpatrick）以及许多其他人一起，在宣传和倡导新闻业之间找到了一条微弱的界限，使报道不仅限于速记和虚假对等。尽管Peeler可能通过将其与新闻客观性的竞争理论联系起来而丰富了这一讨论，