More on "An Aristocracy of Critics"

I offered some observations last week about the book An Aristocracy of Critics, which is a study of the 1940s-era Hutchins Commission, and its report about a "free and responsible press." 

What strikes me reading it is the extent of my sympathies for Robert McCormick, who wore the black hat in the imagination of the authors of the book that issued from the Commission's work.

McCormick, often called Colonel McCormick in acknowledgement of his First World War service, when he was on the staff of General Pershing, ran the Chicago Tribune from the early 1920s until the mid 1950s. The Trib's infamous "Dewey Wins" fiasco occurred on his watch. 

Well before that headline, though, McCormick was often regarded as an unscrupulous and arrogant presence. 

In the 1930s, everyone associated with the New Deal despised him. Everyone interested in assisting the western allies against the Axis powers ... likewise. He used his position as the owner of the Tribune to campaign ceaselessly against both of those developments.  

During the "hundred days" in 1933, FDR secured passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, which (until the Supreme Court struck it down) gave the executive branch sweeping control over the economy. As part of the system it created, various industries defined by the NRA had to create their own self-regulatory codes, with those codes to be signed or vetoed by the President. Newspaper publishers were one such industry. In the code they created under this mandate, as a consequence of McCormick's insistence, the publishers expressed their concern that the government was trying to use this system as a way to control content through the control of paper and ink. Accordingly, they included a press freedom clause/demand in their code. 

Roosevelt signed the press code, though he issued with it what Bates calls a "testy" statement that the free-press language was "pure surplusage."

At any rate, there was no love lost between Roosevelt and McCormick. Why is this important for The Aristocracy of Critics? Because as the author, Bates, tells his story, it becomes clear that Henry Luce, the impresario of Time Inc., wanted to be a different sort of press baron from McCormick. He accepted the then-prevalent view of McCormick's irresponsibility. And he wanted to define a 'mainstream' press with himself at the center and McCormick exiled to the edges.

For the most part Luce got what he wanted. For example, the report lists five goals for the responsible press: 

1. truthful reporting; 

2. including all the important viewpoints and interests in society; 

3. providing a representative picture of the components of society (no stereotyping!); 

4. expressing the ideals toward which the community should strive; and 

5. offering transparency regarding itself, as an industry. 

Notice anything missing?  One of the classic goals of a press has been that of serving as a vigilant watchdog against abuses of power. That is certainly what McCormick thought he was doing. 

But after the successful war against Nazism, and with a cold war taking shape, the Commission seems to have been of the view that the press ought to be as much a cheerleader for the powerful in the US as a watchdog. Luce was the fellow, after all, who declared that the remainder of the century and well into the next would be "the American century." He wasn't criticizing that prospect but celebrating it. And the Commission, while it toyed with the notion that news organs should act as watchdogs of each other, didn't see them as watchdogs against public power.  

I for one am happy that the report based on such ideals had no more than the rather slight influence it has had.