Edward Kennedy (journalist)

In 2015, the film Le grand secret, directed by Christophe Remy, about Kennedy and his story, was released in France.

During his later years, Kennedy composed a memoir of his years as a World War II correspondent but was not able to locate a publishing company. His accounts were eventually published in 2012 by his daughter, Julia Kennedy Cochran, under the title Ed Kennedy's War: V-E Day, Censorship & The Associated Press, which chronicled his early days as a stringer in Paris to his firing from the Associated Press.

In 2012, Louisiana State University Press published Kennedy's memoir, Ed Kennedy's War: V-E Day, Censorship, and the Associated Press. Associated Press President Tom Curley co-wrote an introduction to the book and apologized for the way the company treated Kennedy, telling an AP reporter, "It was a terrible day for the AP. It was handled in the worst possible way." Kennedy, Curley wrote, "did everything just right." According to his daughter, Julia Kennedy Cochran of Bend, Oregon, Kennedy had long sought such public vindication from his old employer. "The AP, after 67 years, is finally apologizing for firing my father", Cochran said. "He was really a hero and should have got a lot more credit."

After the war Kennedy became the managing editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press, and three years later in 1949 he was hired by The Monterey Peninsula Herald as the associate editor, eventually serving as editor and associate publisher. Kennedy was struck by a car on November 24, 1963, and died five days later at the age of 58. A monument to Kennedy stands in Laguna Grande Park in Seaside, California, with an inscription referring to his famous scoop: "He gave the world an extra day of happiness."

In 1948, in the August issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Kennedy published a personal essay about the embargo event explaining his side of the story. The essay was titled, "I'd Do It Again". In it he wrote: "The mass of Americans took the view that once the war in Europe was over they had a right to know it. They had perception enough to see through the accusations of correspondents beaten on a story, and sense enough to know that lives are not endangered by announcing the end of hostilities; they may be lost by withholding the announcement."

The documents for Germany's surrender in World War II were signed on May 7, 1945, at 2:41 a.m. local time at General Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims, France. The surrender was subject to a time delay to ensure compliance across the entire theater, and was to take effect at 23.01 on May 8. Edward Kennedy, as the AP's Paris bureau chief, had been among a group of reporters hastily assembled aboard a C-47 aircraft, and told only when aloft that they were to cover the official signing. All of the journalists on the plane were asked to pledge that they would embargo the story until SHAEF had issued its own official announcement of the event; Kennedy complied. After the ceremony, however, the public relations officers told the reporters that instead of a few hours of embargo, they were being asked by Eisenhower to hold the news for 36 more hours until after a second surrender ceremony, this one to take place in Berlin, the German capital. The military officials explained that it was deemed important that the surrender be made by the heads of the German Armed Forces, not merely their representatives, and that the Germans formally surrender to the Soviets, as well as the Western Allies, something the Nazis were trying to avoid.

Edward L. Kennedy (June 26, 1905 – November 29, 1963) was an American journalist best known for being the first Allied newsman to report the German surrender at the end of World War II, getting the word to the Associated Press in London before the surrender had been officially announced by Supreme Allied Headquarters. This angered Allied commanders who had imposed a 36-hour news embargo before their official surrender announcement. After being forced stateside, Kennedy was fired by the AP for his actions. In 2012, the Associated Press apologized for this, saying "It was handled in the worst possible way."