 Between 1932 and 1933, the Soviet Union carried out a brutal genocide. In order to prop up the image of wealth and progress under communism, Joseph Stalin deliberately starved millions of his citizens to death, mostly in Ukraine. It was called the Hall of Demor, and shockingly few Americans have ever heard of it. But hopefully thanks to the new film Mr. Jones, that's about to change. Directed by Agnieszka Holland and starring James Norton, Mr. Jones is based on the true story of journalist Gareth Jones and his trip to the Soviet Union in 1933. There will be spoilers for the film. It's available now on VOD, so if you haven't seen it, I would absolutely recommend that you check it out. Then join me on this trek through the Heart of Darkness on this short edition of Out of Frame. At the time it happened and in the setting of the film, the famine in Ukraine was fairly common knowledge in the Soviet Union, although few people really knew much about the extent of its ghastly reality. Outside the USSR, however, all anyone ever heard were glowing reports on the miracle of communism passed along by foreign reporters sequestered in Moscow. Surveillance and wiretapping of journalists was widespread, and all articles had to be approved by the Soviet press office before being allowed out of the country. So despite the majority of the rest of the world being mired in a global economic crisis, this was happening at the same time as the Great Depression after all. The Soviet Union gave every outward appearance of being not only resistant to the downturn, but thriving in ways that the decadent capitalists could only dream of. It's with this backdrop in mind that we are presented with the bright, young, insatiably curious foreign affairs secretary and freelance journalist Gareth Jones. Fresh off an exclusive and alarming interview with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, Jones is convinced that war with Nazi Germany is inevitable. But due to the crippling economic reality facing the British Empire, there was no way the UK could afford another war, and Jones' concerns weren't taken seriously by the British government. So based on the reports coming from Russia, the only solution Jones could imagine to the rising threat posed by Hitler was an alliance with the Soviet Union. And yet, he's haunted by one nagging question. British engineers, new factories, how is Stalin paying for it all? Jones manages to finesse his way to a press visa to visit Moscow with the intention of interviewing Stalin. But what he finds there leads to some disturbing discoveries. His stay in Moscow is tightly controlled, and the lies used to justify it are easily unearthed. He attends a lavish party complete with booze, drugs, a jazz band, and other entertainment thrown by the New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning bureau chief, Walter Duranty. But a friend and fellow reporter in Moscow had just been killed in what the Soviet government claimed was a robbery while working on a mysterious story about Ukraine. Jones uses his finesse, once again, to find his way into the region despite the rarity of journalists being allowed to leave Moscow. And he slips his handler's leash to wander around on his own. What he finds is horrifying. Empty villages, dead bodies laying on the street, starving farmers forced to ship to Moscow the very grain they're growing while they themselves are resorting to eating tree bark and even cannibalism. Jones eventually manages to leave the country and tells the world about what he's seen. His story, however, is promptly discredited by the journalists still in Moscow, particularly Walter Duranty. And as the film states very plainly, it's Jones' word against Duranty's Pulitzer and the reputation of the New York Times. While the film suggests at least some level of victory in the end for Jones and the truth, in reality Jones' reporting was largely swept under the rug and forgotten for decades. Due to some creative record keeping in the Soviet government, particularly under Stalin, no one is exactly sure how many people were killed during the Holodomor. But the most widely accepted estimate is between 7 and 10 million individuals. That's a lot of lives simply snuffed out to be covered up so completely. How could such a huge amount of death be so effectively silenced? The easy answer would be to blame the strict surveillance and limitations placed on foreign reporters by the Soviet Union, which is exactly what the New York Times did when the Pulitzer Committee announced their decision not to revoke Duranty's Prize even after it came to light that his stories were largely fabricated propaganda. But while it wasn't easy or pleasant, Jones' story proves that it was at least possible to get out of Moscow with the truth. Around the same time as Jones' articles were being published, another Moscow-based reporter managed to smuggle out some critical writings in a diplomatic package. Ways around the censors and surveillance absolutely existed, but almost no one had the courage to take advantage of them. For those reporters who towed the Communist Party line and wrote what the Soviet press office wanted the rest of the world to read, life in Moscow was comfortable, even enjoyable. And to be blunt, some of the foreign press corps were true believers in communism, cheerfully promoting an ideology that they knew was responsible for death and depredation in one of the poorest parts of the world. These so-called journalists were covering up mass murder and catastrophic economic failure in the name of the greater good. But what's worse, in my opinion, were the reporters who didn't even care about the success of the revolution in the Soviet Union, but who were simply comfortable accepting indulgences from Communist Party elites and who were too cowardly to risk their status by actually doing their jobs. Those who best served the government were showered with money, food, luxuries, and even, apparently, prestigious journalistic awards, as in the case of Duranty, who, by the way, gave us the infamous line, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Descending from the official narrative and speaking truth, which is what journalists and storytellers are supposed to do, always comes at a price. Even in the United States, where we have robust legal protections for a free press. Of course, the price Americans pay for criticizing the state is much lower than it was in Soviet Moscow or even modern-day China. As much as our ugly cancel culture might hurt, you're not going to be tossed in a gulag or killed for publishing unapproved stories. That said, even now, even here, a large number of journalists and storytellers are still avoiding telling hard truths or breaking ranks with common convention. I don't want to downplay the costs that come due for those who would dare speak out in a way that's inconvenient or damaging to those in power, and it isn't always simple cancellation on Twitter that's at stake. Edward Snowden hasn't been home in nearly a decade. Julian Assange is currently locked away in a UK prison. Nobody knows how many Chinese, Russian, Cuban, Venezuelan, or North Korean dissidents have been quietly vanished. But even if they're not blowing the whistle on the US surveillance state, publishing leaked, high-level governmental reports, or simply daring to think independently under an oppressive regime, far too few people are even willing to say so much as I disagree in regards to anything that their particular tribe broadly supports. Supposedly telling truth to power is why a large percentage of journalists get into that business in the first place, and yet when it comes down to it, too many choose the comforts and security of their position instead. These are people who want to believe that they would be Gareth Jones, but who are in fact Walter Durante. It was fear and complacency that allowed Stalin to cover up the Holodomor. It is that same fear and complacency that today empowers people who squash critical thinking and diversity of opinion. And again, it's hard to tell the truth when everyone is trying to shut you up. The final tragedy in Mr. Jones is that a couple years after his trip to the USSR, just two days before his 30th birthday, he was shot and killed while traveling through China. The official story blamed Mongolian bandits, but some historians believe that it was the NKVD, Stalin's secret police. To quote Captain America from the Civil War comic, when the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree by the river of truth and tell the whole world, no, you move. Gareth Jones didn't move, and he paid the price for that decision. Would you? Hey everybody, thanks so much for watching. This is one of those stories and issues that is insanely important to me, both because I care deeply about the state of journalism and truth telling in the world of media, and of course because I think it's so important that people hear these stories about the evils of totalitarian ideologies like state communism. Public trust in the press has been declining for a while, and it's stuff like this that I think explains why. Let's talk about that in the comments. And please, check out the new out of frame behind the scenes podcast. The audio is available wherever you get your podcasts, but if you prefer a video version, we've set up a special channel just for that. The link for that is in the description below. It comes out every Friday, but supporters on Patreon get early access and special bonus content, so if that interests you, please consider becoming one of our patrons. And as always, be sure to like this video and subscribe to the channel, hit that bell icon, and look for our brand new out of frame accounts on Twitter and Instagram. See you next time.