AP is reporting the death of David Lancashire, the first North American reporter to defy a US travel ban to go to China in the 1950s:
Going to China for AP, he spent six weeks traveling more than 5,000 miles through what was then known in the West as “Red China” and produced a lengthy series of stories on life behind the “Bamboo Curtain.”
It was the first reporting from China by a North American journalist since the communist takeover in 1949 and it created a sensation.
The State Department had refused AP permission to send an American correspondent to China and threatened serious sanctions. AP’s board of directors then sent Lancashire, arguing that Americans had a right to learn through their own news organizations about conditions in China. [Full text]
