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The Good Old Days of the Good Old Boys

Throughout the America of the twenty-first century there is a strong sense that the media is biased and purely spreading propaganda in support of one of the two major political parties. For conservatives, most of the “mainstream media,” ranging from The New York Times to The Washington Post, to CNN, to Buzzfeed are simply the propaganda arm of a left-wing elite. In this conservative view, these publications routinely lie about everything from economics and the environment to race and religion. Liberals likewise view outlets such as Fox News and The Daily Wire as being pure rightwing propaganda, disseminating conspiracies and hatred across the airwaves and internet. There is little sense among politically active Americans that there is an objective and fact-based media outlet that presents the unvarnished truth. Some look to the “good old days” of allegedly honest and patriotic news of the World War II and Cold War eras.
However, students of the history of journalism are well aware that the US press has never been unbiased. As University of Wisconsin historian Kathryn J. McGarr argues in her new book, City of Newsman: Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington, the Washington, DC press underwent a radical transformation during the twentieth century from being a “clubby” and relatively unified group that maintained good relations with the federal government to having an adversarial relationship with the government, especially the presidency, beginning (surprisingly) with the Kennedy Era.
McGarr begins the work in 1954 with a story of then Vice-President Richard Nixon confiding in New York Times and Washington Post reporters off the record that he was not as confident in the French’s ability to handle Vietnam as he had stated in public. This scene is curious for two reasons. The first is that Nixon had a good rapport with reporters from newspapers that would later viciously hound him during his presidency. The second is that there was a surprisingly strong relationship of trust between a conservative president and reporters that he could share information in confidence with them.
McGarr writes of Washington, DC as being an insular city since its founding in 1790. DC was founded in a very rural area—Georgetown and Alexandria were initially larger. Ten years later in 1800, the National Intelligencer, Washington’s first paper was founded, appearing thrice weekly. National Intelligencer and other newspapers became key in the formation of social networks in Washington, DC. To further foment social cohesion, gentleman’s clubs such as the Metropolitan Club and the Cosmos Club were formed in the 19th century. These clubs became a hub of information helped spawn a tradition of Washington clubs at which both newsmen and politicians mingled.
McGarr argues that the Washington press prior to the 1870s was known as being a “free for all.” Politicians would, McGarr narrates, visit “Newspaper Row” between F Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.  This more off- the- cuff approach to journalists later grew more disciplined with the founding of the Gridiron Club in 1885. Mimicking the Clover Club of Philadelphia, the Gridiron Club in Washington still exists to this day. Benjamin Harrison was the first US president to speak at the club in 1892. Guests at the Gridiron participated in skits and roasts of various Washington politicians. McGarr does note that the Gridiron did include figures from a variety of economic classes and was an avenue for working class journalists to reach the heights of power. The Gridiron was joined by the National Press Club in 1926, which had its cornerstone laid by President Calvin Coolidge.
As McGarr notes in her book, during the 1950s, newspapermen (there were few women) were caught up in the patriotic fervor of the post-World War II early Cold War era. McGarr writes that journalists had special rapport with the Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhauer administrations during the 1940s and 50s. However, this relationship began to fray as the press were denied access to information by the Allen and John Foster Dulles and the CIA. Drawing memoirs of New York Times journalist Max Frankel, McGarr suggests that, nonetheless, this patriotic collaboration lasted at least until the 1960 downing of Francis Power’s U-2 spy plane, which was initially reported by the government as being simply a weather plane that had wandered off course. McGarr takes issue, however, with Frankel’s statement that reporters believed the propaganda out of Washington. Rather, McGarr argues, reports up until the Kennedy era collaborated with Washington in advancing a narrative that was allegedly in America’s interest. At the same time, McGarr notes that some reporters experienced some difficulty in filtering the news for the government. There was a trust that had existed between reporters who commingled with politicians during the second World War and the attendant beginning of the Cold War.
McGarr’s central argument is stating the obvious; as she acknowledges, Washington, DC has been and always will be an elite boys (and now girls) club. She, however, in City of Newsmen, focuses on a specific time in mid-twentieth century Washington history in which newspapermen and politicians formed a shared club and viewed themselves as being part of the same (WASPish but also Catholic and Jewish) milieu. Nonetheless, McGarr does note how many famous 20th century newspaper men, such as Scotty Reston, Wallace Deuel, and The Washington Post’s Alfred Friendly were drawn from the American hinterlands of the West and Midwest. West, Midwestern, and East Coast politicians mingled at such haunts as the famous Gridiron Club as well as the Overseas Writers group.
McGarr argues that many liberal newspaper men pushed against “isolationism” among some members of the federal government that attempted to keep the United States out of foreign wars. Arthur Sulzberger, head of the New York Times held that the Times should push for “collective security,” which held that the United States should play a role in defending foreign countries. Sulzberger believed that the United States had a role in spreading liberalism to Europe and counteracting the rise of Nazi tyranny. McGarr notes that liberal internationalists tended to hold to the belief that the United States had a duty to be constantly ready for war. Henry Luce of Time and Life magazine likewise saw America’s role as being a sort of imperial guardian of world peace. Luce famously authored the 1941 Life peace, “The American Century,” which helped to lay out the blueprint for American military and cultural hegemony during the twentieth century.
McGarr does note that the establishment press had its critics even as early as the 1950s. In the founding statement of the National Review, William F. Buckley took aim liberal figures such as Jimmy Wechsler, Arthur Schlesinger, and Archibald Macleish. Also, many figures in the black community who felt excluded from the national press—Washington was, for a time, a segregated city—likewise critiqued the establishment newsmen. Some black reporters also formed the Capital Press Club in 1944—McGarr notes that Washington has always had a significant black community that lived a paralleled existence to that of “federal” Washington.
In our day, there has been a tremendous growth of alternative media, which ranges from hard-hitting and honest criticism of the establishment to fantastical conspiracies. It remains to be seen, however, if the establishment media can be challenged or if journalism will largely remain an exclusive club.

 

City of Newsman: Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington
By Kathryn J. McGarr
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022; 304pp
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Jesse Russell is an Assistant Professor of English at Georgia Southwestern State University. He has contributed to a wide variety of academic journals, including Political Theology, Politics and Religion, and New Blackfriars. He also writes for numerous public journals and magazines, including University Bookman, Law & Liberty, and Front Porch Republic. He is the author of The Political Christopher Nolan: Liberalism and the Anglo-American Vision (Lexington Books, 2023).

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