ABSTRACT
We have just seen that, in spite of much press opposition to its findings, the Hutchins Commission (Commission on Freedom of the Press) had a significant impact on journalistic thinking and prepared the soil of social consciousness so that an emphasis on press responsibility could take root. The Commission’s report, released as a book soon after World War II, especially influenced vast numbers of journalism students who had to study it in journalism and communication schools. It even made inroads in journalism education in other countries. Without a doubt the Hutchins criticism and recommendations influenced the rise of public or civic journalism that made its debut in the early 1990s. Edmund Lambeth noted (1998a, p. 15) that the Hutchins Commission provided reformers a “philosophical counterbalance to classic, laissez-faire liberalism.”
