ABSTRACT
It was soon after World War II. Into the journalistic wilderness, in the late 1940s, came a man out of Chicago warning the press it needed to shape up, to become more responsible, or its freedom might be diminished. The man was Robert M. Hutchins, and he was heading an unofficial group called the Commission on Freedom of the Press, inspired and funded in large part by Time publisher Henry Luce. The voice of Hutchins, then chancellor of the University of Chicago, and his group of intellectuals fell like a bomb on the press, infuriating it and prompting it to extreme reaction. At the same time, the commission’s 1947 book, A Free and Responsible Press, generated support from many in the public and the academy who already were aware of the press’s growing arrogance and irresponsibility. It was received with less enthusiasm from an enraged press that saw it as an attempt to curb its freedom.
