On his book An Aristocracy of Critics: Luce, Hutchins, Niebuhr, and the Committee That Redefined Freedom of the Press
Cover Interview of May 26, 2021
In a nutshell
In 1943, Time Inc. editor-in-chief Henry R. Luce sponsored
the greatest collaboration of public intellectuals in the twentieth century. He
and University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins summoned the
theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the Pulitzer-winning poet Archibald MacLeish, and
ten other preeminent American thinkers to form the Commission on Freedom of the
Press. Luce wanted them to rethink freedom and responsibility of the news
media. Assembling a committee to answer a philosophical question is an
audacious notion, maybe a ludicrous one, but, miraculously, it worked.
After seventeen meetings, Commission members completed their
final report, A Free and Responsible Press, which was published in 1947.
It castigated the media for imperiling democracy with short-sighted,
irresponsible behavior, including sensationalism, newsroom bias, and ads that
masquerade as news. The press mostly rejected the criticism and denounced the
critics. Even Henry Luce found the report disappointing. Yet in the years since,
it has become a classic, the most important statement ever produced on the
press and its role in a democracy. It has influenced the Supreme Court’s
approach to free speech and shaped the education of generations of journalists.
Even so, it’s little known outside schools of journalism,
and the full story behind it has never been told. My book shows how these thinkers
debated vital questions, nearly failed in their mission, and in the end reached
conclusions that are pertinent today—in some respects more pertinent now than
in 1947. Broadly, the book captures a moment when public intellectuals held
sway over matters of public interest. It also shows how a group of them, despite
diverse philosophical views (plus big egos), listened to one another, established
areas of agreement, explored areas of disagreement, and, often, changed their
minds. In this way, Commission members modeled what they were trying to promote
in American society: engaged, open-minded political discourse.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
In 1943, Time Inc. editor-in-chief Henry R. Luce sponsored the greatest collaboration of public intellectuals in the twentieth century. He and University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins summoned the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the Pulitzer-winning poet Archibald MacLeish, and ten other preeminent American thinkers to form the Commission on Freedom of the Press. Luce wanted them to rethink freedom and responsibility of the news media. Assembling a committee to answer a philosophical question is an audacious notion, maybe a ludicrous one, but, miraculously, it worked.
After seventeen meetings, Commission members completed their final report, A Free and Responsible Press, which was published in 1947. It castigated the media for imperiling democracy with short-sighted, irresponsible behavior, including sensationalism, newsroom bias, and ads that masquerade as news. The press mostly rejected the criticism and denounced the critics. Even Henry Luce found the report disappointing. Yet in the years since, it has become a classic, the most important statement ever produced on the press and its role in a democracy. It has influenced the Supreme Court’s approach to free speech and shaped the education of generations of journalists.
Even so, it’s little known outside schools of journalism, and the full story behind it has never been told. My book shows how these thinkers debated vital questions, nearly failed in their mission, and in the end reached conclusions that are pertinent today—in some respects more pertinent now than in 1947. Broadly, the book captures a moment when public intellectuals held sway over matters of public interest. It also shows how a group of them, despite diverse philosophical views (plus big egos), listened to one another, established areas of agreement, explored areas of disagreement, and, often, changed their minds. In this way, Commission members modeled what they were trying to promote in American society: engaged, open-minded political discourse.