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
The wide angle
A Free and Responsible Press is a classic, but many
of the Commission’s most incisive and prescient observations didn’t make it
into the book. As the transcripts of their meetings show, they deliberated under
conditions surprisingly similar to our own. They talked of polarization, rage,
and the potential for violence if racists and nativists fell under the spell of
a demagogue—much like the January 6 assault on the Capitol. The demagogue might
be partly a media creation, like Charles Lindbergh in their day or, in ours,
the star of The Apprentice. They said that partisan media make money
from polarization, but in the process they become its prisoners: The audience
won’t tolerate any deviation from the party line—as Fox News discovered when it
began losing viewers to more strident outlets. They talked of disinformation
spread by faceless organizations, including foreign governments, and of speakers
de-platformed by ideological opponents. They worried about a scenario similar
to what’s now being called post-truth politics: If arguments over facts get
bafflingly complex, Americans might conclude that truth is unknowable, the news
media untrustworthy, and democratic participation futile.
As a fellow at the Annenberg Washington Program in
Communication Policy Studies in the 1990s, I wrote a monograph about the Commission,
and I have returned to the topic periodically in the years since. I especially
enjoy following the transcripts of the committee’s
meetings, as some of the great minds of the twentieth century work
through lofty philosophical problems, with the occasional detour into such mundane
matters as comic strips and advise to the lovelorn.
Every few years, somebody proposes a reboot of the Hutchins
Commission to address current media problems, but it can’t be repeated. If
intellectuals of the same caliber still exist (some people doubt it), they
don’t have the same status. Hutchins was twice on the cover of Time, and
he thought seriously about running for president based on his stewardship of
the University of Chicago. That’s virtually inconceivable for a university
leader today.
[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
The wide angle
A Free and Responsible Press is a classic, but many of the Commission’s most incisive and prescient observations didn’t make it into the book. As the transcripts of their meetings show, they deliberated under conditions surprisingly similar to our own. They talked of polarization, rage, and the potential for violence if racists and nativists fell under the spell of a demagogue—much like the January 6 assault on the Capitol. The demagogue might be partly a media creation, like Charles Lindbergh in their day or, in ours, the star of The Apprentice. They said that partisan media make money from polarization, but in the process they become its prisoners: The audience won’t tolerate any deviation from the party line—as Fox News discovered when it began losing viewers to more strident outlets. They talked of disinformation spread by faceless organizations, including foreign governments, and of speakers de-platformed by ideological opponents. They worried about a scenario similar to what’s now being called post-truth politics: If arguments over facts get bafflingly complex, Americans might conclude that truth is unknowable, the news media untrustworthy, and democratic participation futile.
As a fellow at the Annenberg Washington Program in Communication Policy Studies in the 1990s, I wrote a monograph about the Commission, and I have returned to the topic periodically in the years since. I especially enjoy following the transcripts of the committee’s meetings, as some of the great minds of the twentieth century work through lofty philosophical problems, with the occasional detour into such mundane matters as comic strips and advise to the lovelorn.
Every few years, somebody proposes a reboot of the Hutchins Commission to address current media problems, but it can’t be repeated. If intellectuals of the same caliber still exist (some people doubt it), they don’t have the same status. Hutchins was twice on the cover of Time, and he thought seriously about running for president based on his stewardship of the University of Chicago. That’s virtually inconceivable for a university leader today.