A “Moral Challenge”: Journalists, Joe McCarthy, and the Struggle for Truth, 1950–1955

Abstract

News coverage of US Sen. Joseph McCarthy has long been studied, and consistent throughout this extensive research is the implication that he influenced journalism standards—specifically, objectivity. Drawing on trade publications and professional magazines to examine those implications, journalists not only discussed McCarthy coverage but acknowledged that reporting on the senator was difficult. Often, journalists were confronted by their own shortcomings and prompted to question their practices. Many felt objectivity hampered their ability to portray the truth about the senator; indeed, some believed that objectivity spread misinformation. Journalists responded by discussing, and in many instances embracing, interpretive reporting to provide context. They saw covering McCarthy as an opportunity to improve journalism. Between 1950 and 1955, journalists reconsidered objectivity and expanded the idea of fairness beyond simple balance. It also led journalists toward a responsibility to interpret and explain facts as well as convey a fuller truth. These strategies could still benefit journalists today.

Notes

1 Bill Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies: The Incredible Denver Post (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1976), 311–12; “Hoyt Insists on ‘Fair Play’ in Staff Memo,” Editor & Publisher, February 28, 1953, 12. Hoyt’s cluttered desk appears in a 1950 photo accompanying a retrospective about the editor; see Dick Kreck, “The Publisher That Banished Commentary,” Denver Post, October 15, 2017, https://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/15/denver-post-publisher-ep-hoyt/. A similar photo appears in Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 309.

2 Richard H. Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), 6–7; David A. Nichols, Ike and McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower’s Secret Campaign Against Joseph McCarthy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017). Among McCarthy’s most persistent radio critics was Elmer Davis, whose ABC commentaries routinely blasted the senator’s tactics; see Elmer Davis, But We Were Born Free (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1954). Increasing print coverage was illustrated by a 13-part investigative series by The Associated Press; see “5 AP Men Do 13-Part Profile on McCarthy,” Editor & Publisher, April 3, 1954, 8.

3 Thomas C. Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography (New York: Stein and Day, 1982) and David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York: Free Press, 1983); Edwin R. Bayley, Joe McCarthy and the Press (New York: Pantheon, 1981), 215; and Lawrence N. Strout, Covering McCarthyism: How the Christian Science Monitor Handled Joseph R. McCarthy, 1950–1954 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999).

4 W. Joseph Campbell, Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism, 2nd ed. (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), 45. The others were the New York Post’s Wechsler and syndicated columnist Drew Pearson.

5 Donald A. Ritchie, Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 70–91; James Aronson, The Press and the Cold War, revised ed. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990), 64, 101; Nancy E. Bernhard, U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 67. See also Julie B. Lane, “Positioning for Battle: The Ideological Struggle over Senator Joseph McCarthy and the American Establishment,” American Journalism 33, no. 1 (2016): 61–85; and Thomas Doherty, Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture (New York: Columbia University Press), 2003.

6 Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense, 186; Douglass Cater, The Fourth Branch of Government (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 70, 73; Aronson, The Press and the Cold War, 73; Bernhard, U.S. Television News, 165.

7 Gaye Tuchman, “Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen’s Notions of Objectivity,” American Journal of Sociology 77, no. 4 (1972): 665–66; Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 6, 160; Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 42; and David T.Z. Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 95.

8 Conrad C. Fink, Media Ethics in the Newsroom and Beyond (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988), 21; Ron F. Smith, Ethics in Journalism, 6th ed. (Ames: Iowa State Press, 2008), 41.

9 The Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free and Responsible Press: A General Report on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines and Books (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1947) (Midway Reprint), 22. Emphasis in original.

10 John Herbers, “McCarthyism, 1950–1954,” in Thinking Clearly: Cases in Journalistic Decision-Making, edited by Tom Rosenstiel and Amy S. Mitchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 18.

11 Elizabeth Skewes, “Time Delays Are Not Enough; Media Must Call Out Lies,” Journal of Media Ethics 33, no. 2 (2018): 97–99; Kati Tusinski Berg, “Media Ethics, Fake News, Politics, and Influence in Public Life,” Journal of Media Ethics 32, no. 3 (2017): 179–86.

12 Barbie Zelizer, “Journalists as Interpretive Communities,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication no. 10 (1993): 230; Alf Pratte, “Media Associations Driven by Economic Needs,” Newspaper Research Journal 22, no. 1 (2001): 94–107; and Glen Feighery, “Two Visions of Responsibility: How National Commissions Contributed to Journalism Ethics, 1963–1975,” Journalism & Communication Monographs 11, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 167–210.

13 David R. Davies, The Postwar Decline of American Newspapers, 1945–1965 (Westport, CT: ABC-CLIO/Greenwood, 2006), 27. See also Will Mari, “Not Just Another Trade Pub,” The Quill, Fall 2018, 29–32.

14 Oshinsky and Reeves exhaustively detailed McCarthy’s activities. In 1950, Reeves observed, a culminating event was a Senate report debunking McCarthy’s accusations as unproven. The report was published in early summer, but the outbreak of the Korean War shifted focus from the senator. After McCarthy attacked General George Marshall in June 1951, Oshinsky described “a slowdown in Senate business, particularly the more controversial items,” for the rest of that year. In mid-1952, a Senate subcommittee effort to oust McCarthy “sank into moribundity while the nation’s attention was riveted upon the national party conventions and the primary contests,” Reeves wrote. Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy, 304–08, 405; Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense, 225. See also Raynor Memorial Libraries, Marquette University, “Senator Joseph McCarthy Timeline,” https://www.marquette.edu/library/archives/cdm/JRM/index.php; and Wisconsin Historical Society, “Joseph R. McCarthy Career Timeline,” https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS3935.

15 Joseph R. McCarthy, “Communism in Government,” Problems of Journalism: Proceedings of the 1950 Convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (Washington: ASNE, 1950), 79, 90.

16 Masthead note, Nieman Reports, January 1955, 2; “Toward a Professional Literature,” The Quill, January 1951, 3. The gendered “newspapermen” reference was literal: There were only a handful of women among the Nieman Fellows through the 1950s, and Sigma Delta Chi remained closed to women until 1969. See https://nieman.harvard.edu/alumni/ and https://www.spj.org/spjhistory.asp.

17 “Scope of Authority,” Editor & Publisher, May 30, 1953, 34; “Fifth Amendment Phonies,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, January 4, 1954, 106.

18 Graham Gibbs, Analyzing Qualitative Data (London: Sage Publications, 2007), 45.

19 “McCarthy Asks Cost of ‘Subsidy’ for 3 Papers,” Editor & Publisher, August 29, 1953, 14.

20 McCarthy, “Communism in Government,” Problems of Journalism 1950, 92, 94, 98; “Washington Committee Report,” APME Red Book 1954 (New York: The Associated Press, 1954), 41–42.

21 Robert H. Estabrook, “The Free Man’s Color,” Nieman Reports, April 1951, 24; “Not a Whodunit but a Who Did It?” Broadcasting-Telecasting, May 10, 1954, 122; Louis M. Lyons, “Prejudices of a Broadcaster,” Nieman Reports, July 1954, 23; Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy, 109–10.

22 Jack Anderson and Ronald W. May, McCarthy: The Man, the Senator, the “Ism” (Boston: Beacon Press, 1952), 367; “Washington News,” APME Red Book 1951 (New York: The Associated Press, 1951), 61; Louis M. Lyons, “The AP Report,” Nieman Reports, April 1952, 27; “Hoyt Quizzed on His Views,” Editor & Publisher, June 27, 1954, 13.

23 “McCarthy Would Make Broadcasters Keep Records,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, June 15, 1953, 9; “McCarthy’s Newest Machination,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, June 22, 1953, 114 (punctuation per original).

24 “McCarthy-Pearson Bout,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, January 1, 1951, 63; Jack Anderson with James Boyd, Confessions of a Muckraker: The Inside Story of Life in Washington during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (New York: Random House, 1979), 198, 213–14, 217–18.

25 Bayley, Joe McCarthy and the Press, 128, 133–135; Ritchie, Reporting from Washington, 73; “Intimidation,” Editor & Publisher, February 2, 1952, 28.

26 “McCarthy’s Commercial Sustainer,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, November 30, 1953, 132.

27 James A. Wechsler, The Age of Suspicion (New York: Random House, 1953), 5, 7; Edward Alwood, Dark Days in the Newsroom: McCarthyism Aimed at the Press (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2007), 9, 79; “Wechsler Asks ASNE Look at McCarthy Quiz,” Editor & Publisher, May 2, 1953, 10.

28 “ASNE Report,” Editor & Publisher, August 15, 1953, 34. Nieman Reports reprinted the minority report in full; see “Additional Comment on the Wechsler Case,” Nieman Reports, October 1953, 27–29.

29 “Senator McCarthy in the News,” Problems of Journalism: Proceedings of the 1954 Convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (Washington: ASNE, 1954), 98; Lyons, “Prejudices of a Broadcaster,” 23; Robert U. Brown, “Shop Talk at Thirty,” Editor & Publisher, April 3, 1954, 64; “Interpretation and Attribution,” APME Red Book 1954 (New York: The Associated Press, 1954), 22, 29.

30 Douglass Cater, “The Captive Press,” Nieman Reports, July 1950, 39–41; “The Washington News Report,” APME Red Book 1950 (New York: The Associated Press, 1950), 77.

31 Ernest H. Linford, “Colorado Newspapers As Seen by a Neighbor Editor,” Nieman Reports, October 1950, 18; Burton W. Marvin, “Wanted: More Truth For a Free People,” The Quill, June 1951, 7, 19.

32 Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy, 166–67 (emphases in original); “Barth Asserts Press Is Used For ‘Dirty Work’,” Editor & Publisher, May 10, 1952, 20; Alan Barth, “A Moral Challenge to the Press,” Nieman Reports, July 1952, 16–18.

33 David Manning White, “The Cult of Incredibility,” Nieman Reports, April 1952, 10; “McCarthy,” APME Red Book 1953 (New York: The Associated Press, 1953), 57.

34 “‘Dirty Work’,” Editor & Publisher, May 17, 1952, 38; Louis M. Lyons, “The Business of Writing,” Nieman Reports, October 1954, 16 (emphasis in original).

35 “McCarthy,” APME Red Book 1953, 54; “Senator McCarthy in the News,” Problems of Journalism: Proceedings of the 1954 Convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (Washington: ASNE, 1954), 101–02, 104.

36 “Editorial Comment,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, November 30, 1953, 25; “The Real Problem,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, December 14, 1953, 18.

37 “Isaacs Wants Equity Rule in News Pages,” Editor & Publisher, August 1, 1953, 12; Norman E. Isaacs, “Hoosier Heritage,” Nieman Reports, October 1953, 8–10.

38 “A ‘Wake’ for Joe,” Editor & Publisher, May 16, 1953, 2; “Keys to the Capital,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, March 29, 1954, 14; “More on McCarthy,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, March 29, 1954, 18.

39 “Blacklists, or ‘Cows’,” Editor & Publisher, June 6, 1953, 34; “Don’t Suppress Joe,” Editor & Publisher, May 30, 1953, 2; “Bonfire for Press,” Editor & Publisher, May 30, 1953, 45; “Sigma Delta Chi Reports on Freedom of Information,” The Quill, January 1953, 5.

40 “‘Newsweek’ Looks at Radio-TV Editorializing,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, March 29, 1954, 54; “How Papers Played TV’d McCarthy Story,” Editor & Publisher, June 26, 1954, 11.

41 “Hoyt Declares ‘McCarthyism’ Press Problem,” Editor & Publisher, February 21, 1953, 74; “Hoyt Insists on ‘Fair Play’ in Staff Memo,” Editor & Publisher, February 28, 1953, 12.

42 “5 AP Men Do 13-Part Profile on McCarthy,” Editor & Publisher, April 3, 1954, 8; “Senator McCarthy in the News,” Problems of Journalism 1954, 98; Melvin Mencher, “McCarthy: Who Made Him?” Nieman Reports, January 1953, 46–47.

43 “Sigma Delta Chi’s Code of Ethics,” The Quill, January 1952, 6; “Canons of Journalism,” Editor & Publisher, September 12, 1953, 40. Although ASNE was the source of the Canons, they were not included in the society’s annual Problems of Journalism volumes.

44 “Canons of Journalism,” 40.

45 “Radio, TV Take the Stage in New McCarthy Tempest,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, March 15, 1954, 31; “‘Free Time’ Issue Stirred Anew as Demos Get Time to Answer Ike,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, March 22, 1954, 50; “They Listened to Murrow,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, March 15, 1954, 132; “The Seeing Eye,” Broadcasting-Telecasting, June 7, 1954, 18; “Report of SDX Advancement of Freedom of Information Committee,” The Quill, December 1955, 37.

46 Wallace Carroll, “Seven Deadly Virtues,” Nieman Reports, July 1955, 26; Cater, “The Captive Press,” 40; “Interpretive Writing Called ‘Treacherous’,” Editor & Publisher, December 19, 1953, 10; Robert U. Brown, “APME Majority Approves Interpretive News Reports,” Editor & Publisher, November 20, 1954, 7; “Interpretation and Attribution,” APME Red Book 1954, 28–29; “Markel Pleads Need for Interpretation,” Editor & Publisher, April 25, 1953 (emphasis in original).

47 “Address by Dr. Hutchins, and Responses,” Problems of Journalism: Proceedings of the 1955 Convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (Washington: ASNE, 1955), 19.

48 Brown, “APME Majority Approves Interpretive News Reports,” 7.

49 A Free and Responsible Press, 21–22.

50 Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy, 165; Jack Fuller, News Values: Ideas for an Information Age (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 23; Margaret Sullivan, “Fact-Checking President Trump Isn’t Enough,” The Washington Post, May 1, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/with-trump-on-pace-for-22500-lies-before-election-day-fact-checking-isnt-enough/2019/04/30/f54bb35e-6b6a-11e9-8f44-e8d8bb1df986_story.html?utm_term=.d97abe30dd79; Sam Tanenhaus, “Who Stopped McCarthy?” The Atlantic, April 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/who-stopped-mccarthy/517782/.

51 Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense, 189.

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Glen Feighery

Glen Feighery is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah.