It may be argued that Dirty Secrets, Dirty War: The Exile of Editor Robert J. Cox should have been written three decades ago, most likely in 1981, when Cox was enjoying, as I do now, a Nieman fellowship.

Cox was then in his second year of exile, the bitter prize he had been awarded for making the English-language newspaper Buenos Aires Herald into one of the main advocates against state terrorism in Argentina. more...

In the 1960s and 70s, Central and South America were rife with dictatorships which used secret police, the military, right-wing death squads and tight control of the media to quash dissent and keep power. One of the most egregious of these police states was Argentina, still recovering from its anti-democratic Peronist era. In that nation, the right-wing government was explicitly anti-Communist and anti-Semetic. Thousands of people disappeared, thousands more were exiled, thousands more imprisoned and tortured. more...

The Associated Press has an article today about the book Dirty Secrets, Dirty War: The Exile of Robert J. Cox by CNN web producer David Cox. The book tells the story of Robert Cox, who was the editor of the Buenos Aires Herald during the dirty war in Argentina. The Herald was one of the early papers to report about the junta's growing repression. "They warned him and tried to keep him in bounds, but he would publish lists of those who disappeared," recalled F. Allen "Tex" Harris, a U.S. diplomat in Argentina at the time. more...

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Journalist Robert Cox risked his life chronicling the fierce first years of Argentina's "Dirty War," the 1976-83 dictatorship that left thousands missing. Yet even decades later, he couldn't bear to write his own story of confronting a deadly junta.

Now his son has told the story for him, giving readers the scoop on an editor at a small English-language daily in South America - the Buenos Aires Herald - who dared to write about kidnappings and killings at a time when most colleagues kept silent. more...

The point here is not that journalists should be endangering life and limb to get a story. It is rather that mainstream journalism—the part of the business suffering so much—has not been doing an aggressive job. That could be the reason many consumers are turning away. In the past few days I have been reading Dirty Secrets, Dirty War: The Exile of Editor Robert J. Cox (Buenos Aires, Argenitna: 1976-1983). This is a book written by Cox’s son David. He writes about how his father edited an English language newspaper in Argentina during the time a junta of generals ruled. The dirty secrets were that in a supposed war with terrorists, the people of Argentina were the victims of their government. To maintain power, the generals kidnapped, tortured, murdered and caused the disappearance of thousands of Argentineans thought to be disloyal, oppositionist or insurgent. The story relates how Cox assumed the responsibility for writing about these abuses when no other paper in Argentina regularly did. He did it despite warnings that he would suffer severe consequences, and he quit and took his family out of the country only after it became obvious that he was about to “disappear.” more...

The Argentine Dirty War that took place roughly between 1976 and 1983 featured atrocities and human rights abuses difficult to believe. The conflict of this time was the result of an ineffective government and radicalism that came from both ends of the political spectrum in vain attempts to wipe one another out.

With totalitarian violence from both left and right, ordinary citizens were caught in the middle. The military rule of General Jorge Rafael Videla, his junta and the military regimes that followed during the Dirty War are estimated to have been responsible for the disappearances of up to 30,000 people. more...

I was born and raised in Argentina, and the Buenos Aires Herald was an indelible part of my upbringing. Delivered to our home daily, my parents encouraged me to read the Herald as a way to improve my English skills.

Despite being an avid reader of the small newspaper, the story of Robert J. Cox was one I never read. more...

Former Buenos Aires Herald Editor Robert Cox and his son, David Cox, said it was their dedication to journalism and humanity that kept their family courageous enough to continue reporting the truth and helping people during Argentina’s Dirty War. The father and son, along with Robert Cox’s wife, spoke at the University of Texas at Austin Thursday to share how an English-language newspaper managed to shed light on atrocities happening in Buenos Aires that the rest of Argentine publications ignored. more...

David Cox is the son of Robert J. Cox, former editor of the Buenos Aires Herald and one of the few journalists courageous enough to report on the many “disappearances” and horrific violence that took place during Argentina’s guerra sucia. David, 13 years old when his father and the rest of the family finally fled Argentina after years of close scrapes, here presents the memoir his father, writing in the foreword, admits that he still finds too painful to author himself. more...

It was a human nightmare. And a journalist's crucible.

March 1976. Following the coup against Isabel Peron, the armed forces of Argentina formally exercised power through a right-wing junta whose leaders would rule until Dec. 10, 1983. They called their repressive governing program the National Reorganization Process. more...

The crimes of Argentina's late-1970s military dictatorship emerge through the eyes of a courageous journalist in this stirring homage, written by his son. Robert Cox was the editor of the English-language Buenos Aires Herald, the only Argentinean paper that consistently covered kidnappings and murders by government security forces during the “dirty war” against leftists and other opponents. Testimonials reprinted here attest that Robert's reporting and editorials, many reprinted here, saved the lives of many of the “disappeared” and helped break the press establishment's conspiracy of denial. more...