Michael Malice

So there were several reasons.

First of all, if you were a Western journalist in the Soviet Union, you were under very strict circumstances.

First of all, you could be deported at any time.

There was no pretense that you have a right to be a journalist, especially as a representative of a capitalist by which they meant Western paper.

Second, it was a complete nightmare getting your articles filed.

because you had a censor that you had to go through and the censor's job, whose life depended on it, was to make sure that your story was advantageous to the Soviet Union or at least neutral.

And they had all sorts of techniques.

They spied on you all the time.

They followed you around because you're a foreigner.

But also that censor had to answer to somebody.

So all the censor has to do is be like, look, I'm having trouble with my supervisor.

And the reporter could be like, well, can I talk to the supervisor?

It's like, well, I'm sorry, that's not possible.

And he's on deadline, but it's too bad.

bureaucracy doesn't recognize the needs of deadlines.

There was a lot of pressure on Western journalists to have to get through this net, and that's literally constant.

Every story, it's going to be a fight.

So at a certain point, you're just going to be like, all right, and you're going to pre-censor yourself.

If you know, all right, if I include this, it's not going to get through, what are you supposed to do?

I think human beings are naturally, and also a lot of these journalists were pro-Soviet.