Who Is Nicholas Stanford?: The New York Times Music Critic and His Secret Role in the Rise of the “Liberal Media” Claim

Abstract

In 1955, New York Times music critic John Briggs joined forces with a southern newspaper editor to launch a secret campaign against “liberal” bias in the northern media. While still working for the Times, Briggs wrote columns for the Charleston News and Courier under the pseudonym “Nicholas Stanford.” This study argues that Briggs’s work for the Charleston newspaper helps fill a gap in the literature concerning the “liberal media” claim and its role in the rise of the conservative political movement. It shows how the Brown ruling fueled the “liberal media” claim in the South. It also contends that conservatives employed the attack line successfully to undermine the claim of objectivity, a core tenet of the professionalized journalism that emerged in the twentieth century.

Notes

1 From author’s review of News and Courier archives, 1955–60, as well as correspondence between Waring and Briggs, in Thomas R. Waring papers: John Briggs, South Carolina Historical Society (SCHS). Examples of Nicholas Stanford columns include: Nicholas Stanford, “‘Fifth Amendment’ Group Provides Familiar Scene,” Charleston News and Courier, August 10, 1955, 3A; Nicholas Stanford, “How Philadelphians Handle Segregation Problem,” Charleston News and Courier, August 21, 1955, 13C; Nicholas Stanford, “Maine Is Last Outpost as New England Area of ‘Old America’ Fades due to Immigration,” Charleston News and Courier, August 5, 1956, 12C; Nicholas Stanford, “Against South or Germany: Propaganda Isn’t Fitting the Facts,” Charleston News and Courier, August 27, 1956, 11B; Nicholas Stanford, “When Facts Are Determined: Charge of Bias in Report on DC Schools Bogs Down,” Charleston News and Courier, January 18, 1957, 8A; Nicholas Stanford, “Still Another Biased Report on the South,” Charleston News and Courier, September 7, 1958, 3A.

2 See Nicholas Stanford columns from Charleston News and Courier.

3 See, for example: Thomas R. Waring Jr., “A Paper Curtain Hides South’s Views,” Charleston News and Courier, October 30, 1955, 1A. Waring also published a version of this article in The Masthead, a journalism trade magazine, and he referenced the “liberal” northern press in an essay published in 1954 in Harper’s. Thomas R. Waring Jr., “The Southern Case against Desegregation,” Harper’s Magazine, vol. 212, no. 1268, January 1956: 22–23, 39–45.

4 Ibid.

5 John G. Briggs to Thomas R. Waring, n.d., Waring to Briggs, June 21, 1955, TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS.

6 I discovered Briggs’s relationship with Waring and the Charleston newspaper while conducting research in Waring’s personal papers at the South Carolina Historical Society. I published the basic details in Newspaper Wars: Civil Rights and White Resistance in South Carolina, 1935–1965 (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 179–81. This research goes beyond the book’s short treatment of Briggs, to situate his alliance with Waring in the literature of the “liberal media” claim and the larger conservative moment in the United States. Most of the primary sources in this article are appearing in print for the first time.

7 Nicole Hemmer, Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2016), xii.

8 For a history of the “liberal media” claim,” see Hemmer, Messengers of the Right; David Greenberg, “The Idea of the ‘Liberal Media’ and Its Roots in the Civil Rights Movement,” The Sixties, vol. 1, 2 (2008): 167–86. For more on the rise of the conservative movement, see Donald T. Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); David Farber, The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 (Wilmington, DE: ISI Press, 1976); Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001). John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001); Allan J. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (New York: Grove Press, 2008).

9 Hemmer, Messengers of the Right, 29–34.

10 Greenberg, “The Origins of the ‘Liberal Media’ Claim.”

11 On the rise of objectivity in journalism, see Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978); David T. Z. Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism (New York: New York University Press, 1998, 2000); Richard L. Kaplan, Politics and the American Press: The Rise of Objectivity, 1865–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Andrew Porwancher, “Objectivity’s Prophet: Adolph S. Ochs and the New York Times, 1896–1935,” Journalism History 36, no. 4 (Winter 2011): 186–95; John Nerone, The Media and Public Life: A History (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015), 167–77; Dan Schiller, Objectivity and the News: The Public and the Rise of Commercial Journalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981).

12 For a contemporary articulation of objective news reporting, see former New York Times editor Bill Keller’s arguments in “Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of Journalism?” New York Times, October 27, 2013. Retrieved at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-lieu-of-a-column.html?pagewanted=all&_r=4&. For more on the debate over objective journalism, see Thomas Nagel: The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Jay Rosen, “The View from Nowhere: Questions and Answers.” PressThink, November 10, 2010. http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questions-and-answers/.

13 This message dominates early books and articles published by William F. Buckley Jr. See William F. Buckley Jr., God and Man at Yale (Chicago: Henry Regnery Publishing, 1951); William F. Buckley Jr. and L. Brent Bozell, McCarthy and His Enemies: The Record and Its Meaning (Chicago: Henry Regnery Publishing, 1954); William F. Buckley Jr., “The Liberal Mind,” Facts Forum News, June 1955: 6, 52–60, William F. Buckley Collection, Hillsdale College. https://cumulus.hillsdale.edu/Buckley/index2.html#1497892632577_31. See also Hemmer, Messengers from the Right, 16–20; Farber, Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism, 39–76.

14 Buckley encouraged conservatives to see their primary foe as “Liberalism—always with a capital L” in his 1954 book, McCarthy and His Enemies, written with L. Brent Bozell. See also Buckley, “The Liberal Mind”; and Farber, Rise and Fall of Modern Conservatism, 56.

15 See, for example, Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Random House, 2006).

16 British historian and journalist Godfrey Hodgson is credited with popularizing the term “liberal consensus” in America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon—What Happened and Why (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976). Historians have debated the notion that a political consensus emerged after World War II, dominated politics during the early years of the Cold War, and unraveled during the contentious 1960s and 1970s. A full review of the issue is beyond the scope of this article. However, a recent account of the debate can be found in: Robert Mason and Iwan Morgan, eds., The Liberal Consensus Reconsidered: American Politics and Society in the Postwar Era (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017). Other important works include: Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Vital Center: Politics of Freedom (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949); Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1960); James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1971 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Allen J. Matasow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984, 2009).

17 Graham J. White, FDR and the Press (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 2–3. See also Betty Houchin Winfield, FDR and the News Media (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 127–147; William Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932–1940 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009).

18 For more on the origins of liberalism, see British philosopher John Locke’s Second Treatise Concerning Civil Government (1680s), which strongly influenced the US Declaration of Independence. See also John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859) and Utilitarianism (1861).

19 Farber, Rise and Fall of Modern Conservatism, 1–2.

20 Ibid.

21 Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindberg, and America’s Fight over World War II, 1939–1941 (New York: Random House, 2013), 224–38; Hemmer, Messengers from the Right, 28–35; Farber, Rise and Fall of Modern Conservatism, 25–29; Lichtman, White Protestant Nation, 104–22.

22 Hemmer, Messengers from the Right, 32.

23 Felix Morley, “An Adventure in Journalism,” in A Year in Human Events (Washington, DC: Human Events, 1945), x–xi; “The Who, What, How, and Why of Your Washington News Service,” Human Events, April 21, 1961, both as quoted in Hemmer, Messengers from the Right, 32.

24 For examples of criticism from the left that emerged during and after the contentious politics of the 1960s, see Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: The Mass Media and the Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985, 2004); Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 1988).

25 Hodgson, America in Our Time, 67–98; Mason and Morgan, eds., The Liberal Consensus Reconsidered, 2. Also, see note 15.

26 Buckley, “The Liberal Mind,” 6.

27 For example, see William F. Buckley Jr., “Harvard Hogs the Headlines,” Human Events, vol. 8, no. 20, May 16, 1951; Buckley’s provocative first book, God and Man at Yale (1951), accused his alma mater of force-feeding students “propaganda” supporting New Deal economic policies and denigrating Christianity. His follow-up, McCarthy and His Enemies (1954), written with brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell, claimed that “Liberals” were soft on communism because they underestimated the existential threat it posed to the United States.

28 Nerone, Media and Public Life, 180.

29 Ibid., 180–81.

30 For a review of the debate over “powerful” versus “minimal” media effects, see Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “Creating the Hybrid Field of Political Communication: A Five-decade Evolution of the Concept of Effects,” in Kate Kinski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 15–46. For Buckley’s views on liberal magazines of the 1920s, see Jeffrey Hart, The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2005, 2007), 8; and Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley and the Rise of American Conservatism (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 13.

31 William F. Buckley Jr., “Publisher’s Statement,” National Review, November 19, 1955, 2.

32 Daniel C. Hallin, The “Uncensored” War: The Media and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 116–17.

33 In 1948, for example, Truman became the first president since Reconstruction to propose sweeping civil rights legislation. Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2001), 54–56.

34 James F. Simon, Eisenhower vs. Warren: The Battle for Civil Rights and Liberties (New York: Liveright, 2018); 174–198; Mark Tushnet, The Making of Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936–1951 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 187–95; Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York: Vintage Books, 1974, 2005), 686–702; Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Introduction: Shades of Brown: Black Freedom, White Supremacy, and the Law,” in Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998), 1–38; Gary Gerstle, “Race and the Myth of the Liberal Consensus,” Journal of American History (September 1995): 579–86.

35 Thomas R. Waring Jr., “A Paper Curtain Hides South’s Views,” Charleston News and Courier, October 30, 1955, 1A.

36 The Charleston News and Courier ran excerpts from Human Events on its editorial page—see, for example: “From Human Events,” Charleston News and Courier, October 13, 1955; Copies of Human Events magazine can also be found in Waring’s personal papers.

37 Waring, “A Paper Curtain Hides the South’s View.” Other examples of Waring’s “paper curtain” campaign include: “Paper Curtain Shields Northern Eyes from Race Troubles in Own Region,” Charleston News and Courier, July 16, 1957, 8A; “You Can Pierce the Paper Curtain (advertisement)” Charleston News and Courier, n.d.; “Piercing the Paper Curtain,” Charleston News and Courier, December 3, 1958, 8A.

38 Dennis Hevesi, “John Briggs, Jr., 74: Critic Who Handled Media for Toscanini,” New York Times, August 12, 1990; Tanya Barrientos, “Music Lover John G. Briggs; Wrote for New York Times, Courier-Post,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 11, 1990. http://articles.philly.com/1990-08-11/news/25932551_1_opera-critic-classical-music-philadelphia-orchestra (user must search for the obituary; site requires payment to access full articles).

39 For examples, see John Briggs, “Soprano with One Toe in Operatic Water,” New York Times, March 16, 1958; John Briggs, “Dnepropetrovsk Fiddler Likes Autos Too,” New York Times, January 12, 1958; John Briggs, “How Small Companies Stay in Business,” New York Times, March 17, 1957.

40 John Briggs to Thomas R. Waring, June 21, 1955; Waring to Briggs, June 30, 1955, TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS.

41 “The North’s Biased Press,” Charleston News and Courier, July 5, 8A.

42 “The National Brain-washing,” Charleston News and Courier, July 5, 8A.

43 Ibid.

44 James Russell Wiggins to Thomas R. Waring, July 10, 1955; Waring to Briggs, July 15, 1955; Briggs to Waring, n.d., TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS.

45 Briggs to Waring, n.d., TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS.

46 Ibid.

47 Nicholas Stanford, “How Philadelphians Handle Segregation Problem,” Charleston News and Courier, August 21, 1955, 12C.

48 Ibid.

49 Holmes Alexander, “Philadelphia Has Serious Racial Difficulties,” Charleston News and Courier, July 30, 1958. Note: The News and Courier mistakenly ran Briggs’s Nicholas Stanford column under the byline of syndicated columnist Holmes Alexander. Waring apologized to Briggs for the mistake, but added: “Why would you care? Your name is not running on it anyway.” Waring to Briggs, August 5, 1958, TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS.

50 Roberts and Klibanoff, The Race Beat, 215–222.

51 See, for example, Thomas R. Waring Jr., “The Southern Case against Desegregation,” Harper’s Magazine, vol. 212, no. 1268, January 1956: 22–23, 39–45.

52 Holmes Alexander, “Philadelphia Has Serious Racial Difficulties,” July 20, 1958. Note: The News and Courier mistakenly ran Briggs’s Nicholas Stanford column under the byline of syndicated columnist Holmes Alexander. Waring to Briggs, August 5, 1958, TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS.

53 William F. Buckley Jr., “Why the South Must Prevail,” National Review, August 24, 1957.

54 L. Brent Bozell, “The Open Question,” National Review, September 7, 1957.

55 For more on the emergence of “color-blind conservatism,” see Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 225–64; Michael K. Brown, Martin Carnoy, Elliott Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer, Marjorie M. Shultz, and David Wellman, Whitewashing Race: The Myth of the Color-blind Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of History,” Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (2005): 1233–63.

56 John Briggs to Thomas Waring, n.d., TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS.

57 Nicholas Stanford, “Still Another Biased Report about the South,” Charleston News and Courier, September 7, 1958, 3A.

58 Ibid.

59 Waring to Briggs, November 4, 1958, TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS.

60 Briggs to Waring, n.d., 1955, TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS. Eastland chaired the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee from 1955 to 1977.

61 Nicholas Stanford, “Charge of Bias in Report on D.C. Schools Bogs Down,” Charleston News and Courier, January 18, 1957, 8A; Nicholas Stanford, “The Sense of the Meeting,” Charleston News and Courier, July 29, 1956, 8C; Nicholas Stanford, “‘Fifth Amendment’ Group Provides Familiar Scene, Charleston News and Courier, August 10, 1955, 3A.

62 Nicholas Stanford, “Can Wilkins Laugh Off ‘Front’ Ties?” Charleston News and Courier, August 23, 1956, 12A.

63 Nicholas Stanford, “Daily Worker Shows Leftist Interest in Racial Problem,” Charleston News and Courier, January 10, 1957, 10B.

64 Nicholas Stanford, “Maine Is Last Outpost as New England Area of ‘Old America’ Fades due to Immigration,” Charleston News and Courier, August 5, 1956, 12C.

65 His feature on soprano Eileen Ferrell’s bumpy transition from concert singer to opera diva was particularly engaging and funny. John Briggs, “Soprano with One Toe in Operatic Water,” New York Times, March 16, 1958.

66 J. B., “Miss Holloman Sings Debut Recital Here,” New York Times, February 26, 1954; Adam Bernstein, “Charlotte Holloman, Concert Singer and Voice Teachers, Dies at 93,” Washington Post, August 7, 2015.

67 Briggs to Waring, n.d., Briggs to Waring, n.d. TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS.

68 Waring to Briggs, July 24, 1956, Waring to Briggs, July 2, 1957, TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS. For more on anti-Semitism and the “liberal media” claim, see William Gillis, “The Anti-Semitic Roots of the ‘Liberal News Media’ Critique,” American Journalism 34, no. 3 (2017): 262–88.

69 Nicholas Stanford, “Against South or Germany: Propaganda Isn’t Fitting the Facts,” Charleston News and Courier, August 27, 1956, 13A.

70 Nicholas Stanford, “Newsstand Conspiracy?” unpublished manuscript, TRW papers: Briggs, John; Waring to Briggs, July 23, 1957, TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS.

71 Bogus, Buckley, 24.

72 Nicholas Stanford, “A Time of Crisis,” unpublished manuscript, TRW papers: Briggs, John; Wilcox note to Waring, July 29, 1958, TRW papers: Briggs, John, SCHS.

73 Dennis Hevisi, “John Briggs, Jr., 74, Critic Who Handled Media for Toscanini,” New York Times, August 12, 1990. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/12/obituaries/john-briggs-jr-74-critic-who-handled-media-for-toscanini.html; Tanya Barrientos, “Music Lover John G. Briggs; Wrote for New York Times, Courier-Post,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 11, 1990. http://articles.philly.com/1990-08-11/news/25932551_1_opera-critic-classical-music-philadelphia-orchestra (user must search for the obituary; site requires payment to access full articles).

74 Dennis Hevisi, “John Briggs, Jr., 74, Critic Who Handled Media for Toscanini,” New York Times, August 12, 1990. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/12/obituaries/john-briggs-jr-74-critic-who-handled-media-for-toscanini.html; Tanya Barrientos, “Music Lover John G. Briggs; Wrote for New York Times, Courier-Post,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 11, 1990. http://articles.philly.com/1990-08-11/news/25932551_1_opera-critic-classical-music-philadelphia-orchestra (user must search for the obituary; site requires payment to access full articles).

75 “A Time of Testing,” Charleston News and Courier, July 4, 1964, 12A; “The Face of Hatred,” Charleston News and Courier, June 23, 1964, 10A.

76 “Wallace in Wisconsin,” Charleston News and Courier, April 9, 1964, 10A.

77 “A National in Turmoil,” Charleston News and Courier, June 27, 1964.

78 Perlstein, Before the Storm, 381.

79 Transcript of speech by Vice President Spiro Agnew, delivered in Des Moines, IA, November 13, 1969. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/spiroagnewtvnewscoverage.htm.

80 Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (Athens: University of Georgia, 2009), x–xi; see also Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy; Patterson, Grand Expectations.

81 Jonathan M. Ladd, Why Americans Hate the Media and How It Matters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012, 29–64.

82 Hemmer, Messengers from the Right, xiii.

83 Ladd’s book, Why Americans Hate the Media and How It Matters, offers a particularly thoughtful analysis of the ongoing conflict between press and political actors.