Prejudice and the Press Critics: Colonel Robert McCormick’s Assault on the Hutchins Commission

Many publishers responded negatively to A Free and Responsible Press, the 1947 report of the Commission on Freedom of the Press, but none more negatively than Colonel Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. Convinced that the report was "part of a plot" to destroy the First Amendment, McCormick underwrote a 642-page rebuttal, Prejudice and the Press: A Restatement of the Principle of Freedom of the Press with Specific Reference to the Hutchins-Luce Commission, by Tribune reporter Frank Hughes. The story behind Prejudice and the Press represents an unknown chapter in the midcentury battle between conservative publishers and liberal press critics. Although Prejudice and the Press is meandering, snide, and suffused with red-baiting, it effectively rebuts a key foundation of A Free and Responsible Press.