Setting aside that you are wrong and that the papers did cover it, how do you know what would have happened. Whatever was happening to the Jewish people was happening far, far behind the front lines of the war. Why isn't it reasonable to assume that newspaper coverage and American attention would be focused on the front line battles? What evidence do you have that something would have happened had something else been true?
Other than personal incredulity, I mean.
Newspaper coverage also tended to vary wildly from paper to paper. For example in November 1943 most newspapers in the English-speaking world ran one of several stories provided by wire service correspondents assigned to the Soviet Union, these journalists had been taken to Kiev to view Babi Yar after liberation. Here is the pattern of where the stories were placed across 12 different newspapers in Britain, the US, Canada and Australia:
‘Russians Describe Massacre of Jews, Reds Say Between 60,000 and 80,000 Were Slain in Ravine and Their Bodies Burned on Pyre Later’, The Free Lance-Star, 29.11.1943, p.4; ‘Try To Hide Jew Killings’, The Milwaukee Journal, 29.11.1943, p.4; ‘Claim 60,000 Jews Massacred By Nazis at Kiev, Three Witnesses Say Germans Crushed Burned Bodies’, The Calgary Herald, 1.12.1943, p.17
(Eddy Gilmore, Kiev, AP)
‘Mass Cremation, Nazi Atrocities at Kiev’, The Manchester Guardian, 29.11.1943, p.6; ‘900,000 people in Kiev murdered or sent into slavery’, Daily Express, 29.11.1943, p.4; ‘Victims of German Occupation of Kiev, Bodies of Between 50,000 and 80,000 People Dug Up’, The Indian Express, 30.11.1943, p.1
(Reuters)
‘Bodies of 70,000 Massacred Russians Said To Have Been Buried in Ravine by Germans’, The Bulletin, 24.11.1943, p.15; ‘Kiev “Suffered Worst Of All Russian Cities”, Jewish Population of 200,000 in Third Biggest Soviet City Cut to Six by Nazis’, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 29.11.1943, p.2; ‘Tale of Horror Uncovered After Recapture of Kiev, Thousands Slain in Atrocity’, Berkeley Daily Gazette, 29.11.1943, p.2
(Henry Shapiro, Kiev, UP)
‘Kiev Massacre Uncovered’, Sydney Morning Herald, 22.11.1943, p.4 (Moscow, AAP); ‘Massacre at Kiev’, The Age, 22.11.1943, p.1
(London, AAP)
‘Kiev Massacre Story: One Grave For 80,000, Germans Tried to Hide Evidence of Machine Gun Purge’, The Milwaukee Sentinel, 29.11.1943, pp.1, 7
(Jerome Davis, Kiev, INS)
Only three out of twelve papers ran the story on the front page, despite the fact that these were on the spot eyewitness reports from western journalists, mostly with bylines. The longest and best positioned story was the report by Jerome Davis that ran in The Milwaukee Sentinel. That was a genuine 'headline story'.
One reason that such stories did
not routinely make the front page was a reluctance to foreground atrocity reports of any kind, due to the media getting their fingers burned with WWI atrocity propaganda.
Another reason they were downplayed is because they involved Jews. Stories about atrocities against US servicemen or Christians often received much better placement. During WWII, the NYT's night editorial staff, who were the ones who effectively decided on which stories went where, was composed entirely of committed Catholics, who routinely pushed stories about Catholic victims to the fore, and downplayed other groups.
