McCarthyism Revisited: TRB's Story

Abstract

Introduction On February 9, 1950, Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin delivered a Lincoln Day speech before Ohio County Republican Women's Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. The exact number of Communists junior senator from Wisconsin claimed were in State Department was subject of great debate during next four years and beyond.1 The idea that U.S. government may have large numbers of card-carrying Communists in State Department turned up heat in a Cold War that previously had been fueled by events such as conviction of alleged spy Alger Hiss for perjury and U.S. policy toward China (Griffith 44-45). When McCarthy delivered his speech, Richard L. Strout was in his seventh year as New Republic's Wire or columnist, as well as his twenty-fifth year as a Washington correspondent for Christian Science Monitor.2 One of steadiest hands and minds in American is what Herbert Mitgang wrote in New York Times Magazine (Mitgang 63), while Dwight Jensen wrote, in Biographical Dictionary of American Journalists, that Strout was one of those rare reporters who became idolized by their colleagues during their (McKerns 681). The New Republic and Christian Science Monitor were main publications Strout wrote for during his lengthy career, but his work also appeared in New York Times Magazine, Nation, North American Review, Reader's Digest, and Saturday Review. He won many national awards and received a special Pulitzer citation for lifetime achievement in journalism. Strout was a significant Washington, D.C., journalist. Many historians have placed heavy blame on press for McCarthy's nearly five-year reign. James Boylan wrote that elite of Washington press corps failed to meet test in basic journalistic sense of offering an account that could stand even rough historical scrutiny (Boylan 31). David M. Oshinsky hinted that besides some notable exceptions the press was quite fond of while biographer Fred J. Cook asserted that generally speaking McCarthy's charges would make headlines on front page while denial would not (Oshinsky 188, Cook 178). Other historians have been kinder to press. Richard H. Rovere documented a large segment of most powerful of press that was always hostile to McCarthy, and Edwin R. Bayley contended that reporting of McCarthy in press was no less thorough than press covering Watergate, but one difference was that people in early 1950s did not care (Rovere 269, Bayley 216). Regardless of general comments pro and con about press coverage of McCarthy and any previous research, documenting Strout's struggle against McCarthyism, both publicly and privately, adds to understanding of broad effects of McCarthy era. Strout's writings in New Republic and Christian Science Monitor, and his personal thoughts revealed in his communications with Monitor management and letters to his family, provide another eyewitness account of a troubling era in U.S. history. Additionally, complications arising from doublelife Strout led as anonymous TRB and working for conservative Monitor are intriguing if not enlightening about pressures on reporters during McCarthy era. This study, like Daniel Pfaff's research into dynamics between Joseph Pulitzer II and two of his top editors at St. Louis PostDispatch during McCarthy era, qualifies as a study of freedom and equity in journalism because of what it reveals about of news editorial policy making in one of country's most important daily newspapers (Pfaff 53). Of course difference between Pfaff's approach and this study is that inner workings and policies of Monitor collide with Strout's outside writings as TRB. This study also has similarities with Karen S. …