65 Facts About Martin Agronsky

Martin Zama Agronsky, known as Martin Agronski, was an American journalist, political analyst, and television host.

Martin Agronsky began his career in 1936, working under his uncle, Gershon Agron, at the Palestine Post in Jerusalem, before deciding to work freelance in Europe a year later.

Martin Agronsky returned to Jerusalem for a time and won the Alfred I duPont Award in 1961 for his coverage of the Eichmann trial there.

Martin Agronsky added the Evening Edition, an interview format, to his show, which became prominent for its coverage of the Watergate scandal.

Martin Agronsky then joined PBS, swapping the Evening Edition for a longer interview show, Martin Agronsky at Large.

Isador Agrons changed the family name from Agronsky to Agrons some time before Martin's birth, but Martin chose to use the original name when he began his journalism career.

Martin Agronsky's family moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey, when he was a young child, and he graduated from Atlantic City High School in 1932.

Martin Agronsky studied at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, graduating in 1936.

At Rutgers, Martin Agronsky was a member of Jewish fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu and represented them on the Interfraternity Council.

In 1936, upon his graduation, Martin Agronsky was offered a job as a reporter for the English-language Palestine Post, precursor to today's Jerusalem Post, which was owned by his uncle, Gershon Agron, and moved to Jerusalem.

Martin Agronsky sold his stories to both NBC and the New York Times.

Martin Agronsky was conflicted in taking the job, as on the same day he had been offered a foreign assignment job by The New York Times, his dream job, but NBC was offering $250 per week plus expenses.

Jordan wanted to put together an NBC presence throughout Europe to cover the British conflict with Germany in the Balkans and tapped Martin Agronsky to be the bureau chief there.

Martin Agronsky covered the war from all over the Balkans and much of Eastern Europe before opening a permanent NBC bureau in Ankara, the capital of neutral Turkey.

Martin Agronsky then became a foreign correspondent in Europe and North Africa, transferring to Cairo and being accredited to cover the British Eighth Army, in North Africa.

Martin Agronsky was accredited to cover "Malaya and the Dutch East Indies" in Southeast Asia; when NBC's Asia correspondent John Young had to leave Singapore in November 1941 due to lack of British accreditation, Agronsky was sent in his stead, arriving from Ankara on December 22,1941.

In Singapore, Martin Agronsky first stayed at the Raffles Hotel with other journalists, but left the week after Christmas 1941, on the day martial law was declared, to stay outside the city.

Martin Agronsky was not allowed to send news of the implementation of martial law, due to the short length of his broadcasts, and was subject to the same censorship as the local press; fellow journalist Cecil Brown was ultimately completely censored, and Agronsky was not permitted to telegraph this news for several days.

Martin Agronsky was still in Singapore as the Japanese arrived, managing to catch the last plane out before the city was captured.

Martin Agronsky was then attached to MacArthur's troops and primarily covered Japan's conquest and the Allied retreat in Asia, nearly being captured by Japanese soldiers in Kuala Lumpur and riding with the Dutch military on a Lockheed Lodestar for the final leg to Australia.

Martin Agronsky flew with the RAF on some bombing missions.

NBC was ordered to divest its radio network through the Red and Blue Networks in 1943, and Martin Agronsky's contract was among those assigned to the "Blue" network, which NBC chose to divest.

Martin Agronsky returned to the United States in 1943 when he joined ABC.

Martin Agronsky maintained his prominence as a radio journalist for ABC following the war.

An early proponent of civil rights, when president Harry S Truman gave his speech to the NAACP in 1947, Agronsky was sceptical, suggesting that it was "a political gesture"; NAACP president Walter Francis White wrote to Agronsky to disagree, showing the NAACP's support for Truman.

In 1948, Martin Agronsky helped to pioneer television coverage of American political conventions, continuing to report from them with the first major television broadcasts in 1952.

In 1948, Martin Agronsky had the most sponsors in broadcasting, with 104.

Martin Agronsky then took a principled stance against growing McCarthyism, reporting on the Hollywood 10 and House Un-American Activities Committee.

Martin Agronsky won the Peabody Award for 1952 for his coverage and criticism of Senator Joseph McCarthy's excessive accusations, with the awarding committee noting that his ability to get "the story behind the story is distinctive".

In 1953, Agronsky questioned president Dwight D Eisenhower on investigating communism in churches and on book burning.

Martin Agronsky did a one-on-one discussion show at ABC, At Issue, which aired on Sunday evenings in 1953.

Martin Agronsky was a member of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association from 1948; and became its chair, ending his term in 1954 and becoming an ex officio member of its executive committee.

In 1956, with television now the leading broadcast medium, Martin Agronsky left ABC and returned to NBC, as a news correspondent.

Martin Agronsky hosted the one-on-one interview show Look Here, where he interviewed, among others, John F Kennedy as a senator, and a young Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Agronsky interviewed King on multiple occasions, with King notably outlining his nonviolence beliefs and faith in God on Look Here.

Martin Agronsky's reports were broadcast daily in a segment of the Huntley-Brinkley Report at 6:30am as special reports; he interviewed Holocaust survivors as well as figures of interest in Israel and Germany.

Martin Agronsky called the assignment the "most moving" story of his career.

Also in 1961, Martin Agronsky interviewed Freedom Riders in the United States as the group was formed, and covered the Vienna summit.

Martin Agronsky began television coverage of the March on Washington in August 1963, at 8:30am on Today, giving a half-hour report.

Coverage then continued in different bursts across networks; Martin Agronsky reported with Nancy Dickerson from the Washington Monument during the day.

Martin Agronsky's response, saying a journalist cannot show emotion as it would be imposing feelings on the viewer, was later said to typify the view of the issue at the time.

When pressed further on the matter by Gans, Martin Agronsky added: "I wanted to cry, but you don't".

Martin Agronsky was reported to be smoking as he delivered reports from Washington, DC, during the coverage, while hiding his cigarettes from the camera.

Historian William Manchester wrote that shortly after the shooting, Martin Agronsky telephoned Ted Kennedy to ask if he would be flying from DC to Dallas, one of limited communications Ted Kennedy received in the aftermath of his brother's assassination due to telephone lines overloading as people tried to call others to talk about the news.

Martin Agronsky covered Kennedy's lying in state on the Today show.

Martin Agronsky noted that he had covered the funeral of Franklin D Roosevelt, describing the different mood by explaining that people mourning Kennedy seemed moved by his unfulfilled potential.

On November 27,1963, five days after the assassination, Martin Agronsky conducted an interview with Texas governor John Connally from his bedside in Parkland Memorial Hospital.

Connally, to whom Martin Agronsky was a good friend, had been riding in the seat ahead of Kennedy and was wounded.

Connally's office chose Martin Agronsky to be their reporter; he was found in Arlington National Cemetery late the night before and took a midnight flight to Dallas.

Martin Agronsky had interviewed Kennedy in life, with segments re-run on the 20th anniversary of the assassination in television documentary Thank You, Mr President, and co-authored and edited the 1961 book Let Us Begin: The First 100 Days of the Kennedy Administration.

From 1968 to 1969, Martin Agronsky was the Paris bureau chief for CBS.

The format had Martin Agronsky introduce a short segment on the news with political reporters.

Martin Agronsky then did a one-hour interview show weekly on PBS during 1976 titled Martin Agronsky at Large, where he interviewed such guests as Alfred Hitchcock and Anwar Sadat shortly before the Egyptian leader's assassination.

Martin Agronsky interviewed Muhammad Ali and George F Kennan, a recording of which is held in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting's Peabody Awards collection.

Martin Agronsky was the first television reporter to interview a sitting Supreme Court Justice.

Martin Agronsky's papers, containing approximately 30,000 items, are held in a collection in the Library of Congress.

Martin Agronsky returned to the US in March 1943, whereupon he expedited Smathers's return.

Martin Agronsky built a modernist house for his family in Washington, DC in 1951, though grew sick of the style by 1953.

Martin Agronsky then married Sharon Hines on April 22,1971; the marriage produced one child, Rachel.

Martin Agronsky died at his Rock Creek Park home in Washington, DC, on July 25,1999, of congestive heart failure.

Martin Agronsky's son Jonathan Ian Zama Martin Agronsky is an American journalist and biographer.

Martin Agronsky attended St Albans School in Washington, DC, before studying English at Dartmouth College; enrolling in 1964, he failed his studies twice before graduating with an AB in 1971.

Martin Agronsky used his studentship to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War, something about which he has expressed embarrassment, despite disagreeing with the war.

Martin Agronsky has written on other legal matters, including in 1987 on Miranda rights in ABA Journal.

In 1987, Martin Agronsky gave the commencement address at San Diego State University.