Is This the Best Philosophy Can Do? Henry R. Luce and A Free and Responsible Press

Introduction

In media studies, A Free and Responsible Press (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1947a) stands apart. Few works in the field have received such accolades, decade after decade. J. Edward Gerald (1963) refers to its “timeless quality” (p. 103). Norman E. Isaacs (1986) calls it “the most important assessment yet made of modern communications and its obligations” (p. 100). James Curran (2011) considers it “still perhaps the most cogent and elegant report on media policy ever published in the English language” (p. 9). Textbooks on media ethics quote the Commission’s five criteria for a responsible press (Gleason, 1998; Mirando, 1998), and some instructors require students to memorize them (Blanchard, 1998; Lambeth, 1986).

The story behind A Free and Responsible Press is well known. Time Inc. editor-in-chief Henry R. Luce gave the University of Chicago US$200,000 for a study of press freedom. University president Robert Maynard Hutchins chaired what he dubbed the Commission on Freedom of the Press. The members—13 Americans and four foreign advisers—began meeting at the end of 1943. When they published their report in 1947, Luce deemed it a disappointment. Scholars have theorized that concerns about Time Inc.’s autonomy and profits drove Luce to sponsor the project and then to distance himself from its conclusions.

Much has been written about the Hutchins Commission, as it has come to be called, which laid the foundations for the social-responsibility theory of the press (Peterson, 1956). Much, too, has been written about Luce, one of the most influential American publishers of the 20th century; “perhaps only Walter Lippmann in a different way was as important a figure of the same era,” writes David Halberstam (1979, p. 46). But accounts of the relationship between Luce and the Commission have been limited in scope, depth, and nuance. Although the perspectives of Hutchins and his colleagues have been well represented, little has been written to illuminate Luce’s perspective.

The explanation may lie with the one-sidedness of the documentary record. The manuscripts collection at the University of Chicago includes Robert Hutchins’s personal papers; papers of three other Commission members; records of the University of Chicago Press, which published the Commission’s books; and internal documents of the Commission. Archives elsewhere contain Commission documents and the papers of Commission members and staff. As for Luce, some of his letters appear in Commission-related archives, but collections are spotty. Luce’s personal papers in the Library of Congress have little to do with the Commission.

The collection likeliest to shed light on Henry Luce’s perspective—the corporate archives at Time Inc.—has been all but impregnable. Gaining access to the files is “very difficult,” according to Luce biographer Alan Brinkley (personal communication, December 26, 2011). Jill Lepore (personal communication, May 29, 2012), the Harvard University historian and New Yorker writer, said it took her 4 years to talk her way into the collection.

After a long series of entreaties, bolstered by endorsements from current and former executives and journalists at the corporation, Time Inc. agreed to open its files for this study. Many of the documents are not available elsewhere, including a manuscript of A Free and Responsible Press with Luce’s extensive, often scornful marginalia. The new papers challenge conventional depictions of Luce, his relations with the Commission, and his critique of A Free and Responsible Press. The documents cast doubt on the hypothesis that corporate self-interest largely motivated Luce.

This article addresses two historical questions and their broader implications: Why did Henry Luce sponsor the Commission on Freedom of the Press? Why did he reject its report? Following a literature review, the article recounts the background of Luce, his relationship with Hutchins, the formation of the Commission on Freedom of the Press, Luce’s friendships with three Commission members, his dealings with the Commission, his objections to A Free and Responsible Press and his efforts to change it, and his subsequent relations with Hutchins. A brief conclusion considers implications of the findings. Throughout, the paper relies on primary sources, including, in addition to the Time Inc. materials, the papers of Commission members, the official documents of the Commission, and notes of interviews conducted by a Luce biographer.

Literature Review

The Commission on Freedom of the Press is the subject of a vast and venerable literature: reviews and commentary in scholarly journals in the 1940s (Desmond, 1947; Lee, 1947), Four Theories of the Press in the 1950s (Peterson, 1956), a monograph and a dissertation in the 1960s (Bryant, 1969; Murrill, 1962), and then a flood of studies starting in the 1970s and continuing through (so far) 2015 and 2016 (Lebovic, 2016; Pickard, 2015). Leading works of history include published accounts by Margaret A. Blanchard (1977), Jerilyn S. McIntyre (1979, 1987), Roger Simpson (1995), Stephen Bates (1995, 2009), Jane S. McConnell (1997), Brett Gary (2005), and Victor Pickard (2015), plus several master’s theses and PhD dissertations (Armitage, 2001; Blevens, 1995; Bryant, 1969; Fackler, 1982; Golike, 1995; Pickard, 2008; Weber, 1971). Many other scholars have discussed the Commission in the context of social-responsibility theory, including J. Herbert Altschull (1990, 1995), Jeremy Iggers (1998), Andrew Calabrese (2000), and Clifford G. Christians and P. Mark Fackler (2014). Of those relying on primary sources, McConnell (1997) and Pickard (2015) devote the greatest attention to Luce, particularly his possible influence over the Commission’s composition and its conclusions. McConnell notes that “there has been no analysis of [Luce’s] criticisms in prior research” (p. 160, n.166).

With little direct evidence concerning Luce’s expectations at the outset or his disenchantment at the end, scholars have drawn inferences. In a common interpretation, Luce hoped the Commission would quell public criticism of the press, allay the threat of new regulations, or both; instead, to his irritation, A Free and Responsible Press denigrated American journalism, albeit without recommending additional regulations. Pickard (2015) considers it “likely . . . that Luce, like other 1940s press barons, saw the writing on the wall” and “attempted to steal a march instead of waiting for governmental intervention” (p. 144). Initially a conjecture, Pickard later presents Luce’s motive as fact: Partly as a result of the Commission report, “calls for press regulation receded from mainstream discourse”; therefore, “Luce did get his wish” (p. 187). According to Altschull (1995), Luce funded the Commission as “a counterstrategy” to “head off any government intervention” (p. 138). According to Iggers (1998), Luce hoped the Commission would “stave off more onerous government restraints” (p. 67). Calabrese (2000) writes that Luce wanted “ideological support for his own profitable enterprises” (p. 53). An exception is McConnell (1997), who ascribes creation of the Commission to Luce’s concern about press responsibilities, his support for freedom of expression, and “his interest in promoting the United States and democracy” (p. 162), among other factors.

For some scholars, too, Luce’s consternation over the final report stemmed from the fact that, in his view, he did not get what he paid for. Rather than endorsing Time Inc. practices, according to Calabrese (2000), “the Commission disappointed Luce with a scathing report” (p. 53). Christians and Fackler (2014) assert that Luce, in criticizing the report, “spoke for himself and for industry organizations such as the American Newspaper Publishers Association and others, which saw the report as an opening wedge for government control of the media” (pp. 351-352). Although noting that Luce had wanted a more philosophical analysis than the Commission provided, McConnell (1997) observes that “[i]t is possible that [his] rejection was a response to opinion with which he disagreed,” for he “had not anticipated the independence of the intellectuals” (p. 161). Here, Pickard (2015) is a partial exception. He suggests that Luce merely “professed to be dissatisfied” with the Commission’s “industry-friendly” conclusions (pp. 145, 192).

The inferences about Luce’s motives are logical, if sometimes overdrawn. Luce built a corporate empire, championed free enterprise, bristled at criticism, and often required Time Inc. journalists to write articles reflecting his own views—all consistent with the theories about his motives in sponsoring the Commission. Further, Luce’s Fortune faulted A Free and Responsible Press for, among other things, overstating the perils of monopoly in the press (Editorial, 1947).

It appears that none of the scholars analyzing Luce’s motives gained access to the Time Inc. archives covering the pertinent period. ¹ A Hutchins biographer (Ashmore, 1989), a Luce biographer (Brinkley, 2010), and an in-house corporate historian (Elson, 1973) did consult the archives, but their discussions of the Commission on Freedom of the Press, mostly brief, owe little or nothing to the internal papers. ² In addition, a posthumous collection of Luce’s speeches and writings includes a portion of his comments on A Free and Responsible Press (Luce, 1969).

Luce and Hutchins

Born in 1898 in China, where his parents were missionaries, Henry Robinson Luce graduated from Yale University in 1920. In 1922, he and a Yale friend, Briton Hadden, left their jobs at the Baltimore News to start a weekly “news-magazine,” as they called it. Time launched in 1923, followed by Fortune in 1930 and Life in 1936; Hadden died in 1929 (Brinkley, 2010; Wilner, 2006). The publishing empire made Luce “the most powerful private citizen in the U.S.,” in the estimation of a Yale friend, William Benton, who underwrote the final expenses of the Commission on Freedom of the Press through his ownership of Encyclopaedia Britannica (Swanberg, 1969). ³

Luce magazines aimed to uplift as well as inform. Time covers featured John Dewey, Alexander Meiklejohn, George Santayana, Franz Boas, and Lewis Mumford (Bates, 2011). Fortune at first was dominated by a claque of left-wing literary intellectuals—including Dwight Macdonald, James Agee, and future Hutchins Commission member Archibald MacLeish—whom Luce called the Old Bolsheviks (Swanberg, 1968c; Vanderlan, 2010). Luce said he wanted the magazines to enhance “America’s intellectual health” (Kobler, 1965, p. 32).

Another of Luce’s Yale friends was Robert Maynard Hutchins, who became the president of the University of Chicago in 1929. Luce magazines publicized the university and Hutchins, including two Time covers featuring Hutchins, and published occasional articles by Hutchins (Bates, 2011; Hutchins, 1943; McNeill, 2007).

The two men shared wide-ranging interests, traditionalist beliefs about culture, and considerable chutzpah: Luce (1941) proclaimed “The American Century”; Hutchins helped select the “Great Books of the Western World” (Beam, 2008). Even so, the relationship was in some respects improbable. Friends, colleagues, and biographers describe Luce as fidgety, humorless, brusque, sometimes boorish (Benton, 1959, 1965; Brinkley, 2010; Matthews, 1967; Swanberg, 1968a, 1968b; Wilder, 1968). Hutchins, by contrast, was magnetic, debonair, and witty (Ashmore, 1989; Beam, 2008; Mayer, 1993; McNeill, 2007). William Benton (n.d.) thought Luce envied Hutchins. Further, Luce was a moderate Republican (Brinkley, 2010); Hutchins (1975) was a liberal who voted Socialist in the 1932 presidential election. In addition, Luce (1941) was an outspoken interventionist; before Pearl Harbor, Hutchins (1941) was an equally outspoken isolationist.

Religion, finally, fascinated and animated Luce. According to his onetime employee and longtime friend Theodore H. White (1978), “faith was [Luce’s] motive force” (p. 207). Luce prayed, attended church, spoke unselfconsciously about his faith, and questioned friends on whether they believed in God (Benton, 1959; Martin, 1992; Matthews, 1967). He also socialized and debated with theologians and Christian philosophers such as John Courtney Murray, Paul Tillich, and two members of the Hutchins Commission, Reinhold Niebuhr and William Ernest Hocking (Brinkley, 2010; Jessup, 1969; Swanberg, 1969). In “The American Century,” Luce (1941) called on the United States to become “the Good Samaritan of the entire world” (p. 65).

Hutchins (1975), though he too was the son of a pastor, claimed he never gave any thought to the existence of a Supreme Being. Their mutual friend Benton, yet another son of a clergyman, remarked that Hutchins moved past his religious upbringing; Luce never did (Swanberg, 1969).

“Almost thou persuadeth me to be a Christian,” Hutchins (1945) told Luce, “but not a Republican—that would be too expensive.”

Creating a Commission

Time Inc. records recount the story behind the Commission on Freedom of the Press. The discussions began “quite casually,” a company executive recalled (Hodgins, 1943b, p. 1). Lunching with Luce in 1942, Hutchins talked of corporate-sponsored scientific research at the University of Chicago.

Luce (1946b) raised the possibility of a different sort of sponsored research. If, he said, the university put faculty to work on a scientific question for, say, the Wrigley Company—Does chewing gum aid digestion?—then why not put faculty to work on a philosophical question for Time Inc.—What is freedom of the press?

“[W]hat was uppermost in my mind were my own troubles as an Editor . . .,” Luce (1946b, p. 1) recounted in a document in the corporate archives. “I thought I knew enough about the nature of things to know that the troubles of my occupation were related to philosophy and morals—even more directly and immediately than is the case with most occupations.” Untangling those troubles, he believed, would require “the very best philosophical talent and effort.”

Hutchins brushed off the suggestion. The project would be too difficult to organize, he said.

If the University of Chicago cannot answer such a question, Luce replied, then academic philosophers are useless.

In subsequent encounters, Luce brought up the notion. Hutchins expressed no interest.

Then in 1943, Hutchins and Luce sat together at a board meeting of Encyclopaedia Britannica (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1947b). Rather than following the discussion, they began passing notes about Luce’s idea. “[B]y the time the meeting was over, a scheme had taken shape in [Hutchins’s] mind,” wrote Luce (1946b, p. 2). Time Inc. agreed to fund a 2-year study for up to US$60,000 per year (Hodgins, 1943a).

According to some scholars, Luce funded the Commission in hopes of deflecting criticism of the press, diminishing the threat of regulation, and safeguarding Time Inc. profits. Hutchins (1966) endorsed this theory in an interview: “[I]f anybody said [Luce] had no sense of responsibility in his publications, he could say, ‘Why, I financed the Commission on Freedom of the Press’” (p. 28).

One cannot, of course, definitively ascertain Luce’s motives, but press responsibility was an abiding, even obsessive concern. He addressed it in speeches and articles. At gatherings, he sometimes refused to talk about anything else. In 1940, for example, he dined with leading figures from business, law, academia, journalism, and other fields, for a discussion of the Nazi threat to Europe. According to one of those present, Francis Pickens Miller (1971, p. 95), Luce insisted that they focus on “a publisher’s moral responsibilities” in such a crisis. “He would not drop the matter,” writes Miller, “and the rest of us became increasingly wearied . . . .”

Moreover, the accusation of predominant self-interest overlooks the fact that Luce was inquisitive as well as acquisitive. Theodore White (1978) terms him “a true intellectual” (p. 207), and Alan Brinkley (2010) calls him an “intellectual omnivore” (p. 416). Objects of Luce’s curiosity often became objects of his philanthropy, too. Brinkley notes that he regularly sponsored studies by ad hoc commissions and committees, for he “believed that putting smart and eminent people together . . . was always a good way to solve a problem” (p. 415). Many of the projects had no prospects of boosting Time Inc. profits, and some were largely philosophical, such as a proposed committee to articulate the principles of liberalism (Brinkley, 2010). Hutchins well knew of Luce’s largesse because he was often its beneficiary. Luce backed the Aspen Institute, which Hutchins helped launch (Allen, 2002). In the 1960s, Hutchins regularly asked Luce to support his Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and Luce often obliged (Hutchins, 1963b; Kelly, 1981). Luce’s explanation of why he underwrote the Hutchins Commission may not represent the entire truth, but it is consistent with his practice of sponsoring intellectual projects unrelated to corporate concerns.

Hutchins and Luce together chose members of the Commission on Freedom of the Press, though as McConnell (1997) notes, Luce’s role was subsequently played down. Religion, later a foundation of his philosophical critique of A Free and Responsible Press, linked Luce to three Commission members: the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the philosopher William Ernest Hocking, and the poet Archibald MacLeish.

Luce (1942b) considered Niebuhr a “top-grade philosopher” (p. 1). He helped fund Niebuhr’s journal Christianity and Crisis (another example of philanthropy unrelated to profits), published his articles in Life, and put him on the cover of Time (Bates, 2011; Niebuhr, 1944, 1946b, 1948). In 1946, Niebuhr (1946a) denounced Luce’s (1946a) “The American Century” in unsparing terms, as a manifestation of “egotistic corruption” that is “remarkably similar to the Messianic errors castigated by Christ” (pp. 78, 11). In a private reflection found in the Time Inc. archives, Luce wrote, “Very well, I acknowledge and confess and repent” (p. 2). He went on to express “my admiration for Niebuhr and gratitude to him” for illuminating the “pitfalls and heresies” in the essay.

In 1942, at the urging of Time writer Whittaker Chambers, Luce (1942a) got to know Harvard philosophy professor Hocking; he came to regard him as one of “my favorite intellectuals” (Luce, 1958). A fellow internationalist-minded Republican, Hocking (1920, 1942a, 1942b, 1944) wrote for Life as well as Fortune. Luce persuaded him to move to New York and help plan a cultural and political magazine, though it never got off the ground (Brinkley, 2010; Hocking, 1945, 1947). When Luce expressed displeasure with a draft of A Free and Responsible Press, Hocking and Niebuhr, along with Hutchins, were the ones who tried to placate him.

Luce may have been closer to Archibald MacLeish than to anyone else on the Commission, including Hutchins. “I loved him very much, although I thought him wrong as hell much of the time,” the politically liberal MacLeish said (Swanberg, 1968a, p. 1). In youth, MacLeish (1958) considered the ministry; instead, he became a poet who won a Pulitzer Prize (his third) for J.B., a verse play based on the Book of Job. MacLeish was one of the inaugural writers at Fortune, where Luce gave him time off to write poems (Donaldson, 1992). A contemporary called MacLeish “a veritable Donne and Bradstreet” (Vanderlan, 2010, p. 179). Luce bared his private life to MacLeish, including the dissolution of his first marriage (Brinkley, 2010; Swanberg, 1968a), and told him that the two of them were bound by faith. In a letter located in the corporate archives, Luce (1949, p. 1) wrote, “With however many and long wanderings from that knowledge, you and I have known and agreed that God lives.”

The Official Frown

Luce attended the first sessions of the Commission on Freedom of the Press (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1943, 1944a). “He then absented himself from further meetings, in the conviction that the commission should reach its own conclusions and that it should not labor under any impression that the donor was trying to influence them,” Hutchins (1963a, p. 2) later recounted, either misremembering or misrepresenting the facts.

Actually, Luce expected to continue attending meetings, with the support of Hutchins (1944b). But other Commission members decided that it might compromise the group’s independence (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1944b). Hutchins passed the news on to Eric Hodgins, a Time Inc. vice-president who served as liaison to the Commission. The corporate archives contain Hodgins’s (1968) account:

Bob Hutchins phoned me from Chicago: “I have a difficult and possibly fatal assignment for you.” I did not interrupt the long pause before he went on: “You’ve got to find some way of telling Harry that when the Commission meets in New York he is invited for the dinner only, and that . . . when the Commission starts deliberating, he must not linger, as he has been doing.”

Hodgins (1944) presented the directive as diplomatically as he could. He told Luce that “a slightly delicate matter but not a weighty one” had arisen. Members of the Commission believed, Hodgins said, that “although they profit very greatly from your presence at their meetings, they would have to turn the official frown upon it as being construable as an impropriety.” Luce was “terribly hurt,” according to Hodgins (1968, p. 4). Although he knew he should not be attending the meetings, “he had found it so hard to resist.” Later, Hocking would speculate that the exclusion edict magnified Luce’s unhappiness with A Free and Responsible Press.

Luce also may have been put off by Hutchins’s attitude toward money. Luce agreed to a two-year study at US$60,000 per year (Hodgins, 1943a). A few months later, Hutchins (1944a) told Hodgins that US$120,000 would not be enough, but “I have not felt like spending much time trying to figure out . . . the right amount.” Luce agreed to raise the grant to US$100,000 a year (P&O, 1944), though he later said that if Hutchins had proposed US$200,000 at the outset, “I would have told him it was too much” (Hughes, 1950, p. 21). In 1946, Hutchins asked for another US$25,000. This time Luce said no, and Hutchins got US$15,000 from Encyclopaedia Britannica, owned by William Benton, which proved to be enough (Hutchins, 1946b; Luce, 1946d).

In a letter to Luce, Hutchins (1945) struck a sardonic but perhaps ill-advised note about money: “The Commission has been worth $200,000—to the members.”

Completing the Report

In July 1946, Luce visited William Ernest Hocking at his farm in New Hampshire. Afterward, Hocking sent Luce a draft of his “Freedom of the Press: A Summary Statement of Principle,” which ultimately appeared as an appendix to A Free and Responsible Press. In a letter, Hocking (1946c) seemed concerned about Luce’s response to the Commission’s handiwork: “A fragment of the debate will be helpful in understanding what emerges; and it seems to me to the interest of all concerned that, in your mind at least, there should be the three-dimensional picture—process plus result . . .” (p. 1).

A few weeks later, perhaps after receiving a report from Hocking, Hutchins indicated that he anticipated problems with Luce: “I think the report will be regarded by our benefactor as deficient,” Hutchins said at the final meeting of the Commission (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1946c, p. 42). They had drafted a concrete, policy-oriented document related to problems of the day, rather than the “monumental philosophical treatise” Luce was expecting. Hutchins made the statement in passing, and nothing more was said about Luce’s expectations.

In any event, it was too late. The report was in its ninth full draft, with one more to follow, and on its third author, Hutchins, after the Commission had rejected drafts by Archibald MacLeish and staff director Robert D. Leigh. ⁴ Hutchins wanted unanimous approval, and gaining the endorsements of a dozen independent-minded intellectuals proved a ticklish task (Hutchins, 1947a; Leigh, 1946). To keep them on board, Hutchins resorted to circumlocution, ambiguity, and in one instance, duplicity. At the last minute, MacLeish insisted on restoring three passages from earlier drafts, including an assertion that the press ought to sacrifice some of its “huge profits” to better serve the public (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1946d, p. 81). “I am unyielding,” MacLeish (1946, p. 2) wrote in a telegram. He then left for Paris, as a delegate to the first meeting of UNESCO, and Hutchins simply ignored his demands (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1947a; Donaldson, 1992).

“I Say the Hell With It”

When he received the draft report, almost 3 years after the Commission’s launch, Luce read it right away. The Time Inc. archives contain the manuscript with his handwritten commentary in the margins (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1946e). Alongside the epigraph, a quotation from John Adams, he wrote, “excellent” (p. iii). After that, most comments were negative. The Commission, he thought, blamed the press for all the flaws of American political life, with no attention to lazy citizens and craven politicians. Luce also thought the report failed to credit the positive contributions of the press, not least Time Inc.’s Life magazine and March of Time newsreel. The report’s charges of errors in the press irked him, too. He circled a reference to Time-Life Inc. and scrawled beneath it: “Gross factual inaccuracy!” (p. 33). The company was Time Inc.

In addition, Luce thought the draft overstressed the perils of concentrated ownership. The declining number of newspapers, he wrote, is less important than “what’s in the newspaper” (p. 32). When the Commission said that the largest magazines were owned by a handful of corporations, he wrote, “When in the history of magazines was this not so?” (p. 33).

Further, Luce complained about what he deemed gaps in the Commission’s arguments. He wanted terms clarified: what constitutes an “adequate” press, or a press that is “available” to all (pp. 1, 15)? When the report said that Americans could spread their views more readily in the late 18th century than today, Luce wrote, “This seems to be the basis of your argument & it is a statement completely unsupported by evidence or logic” (p. 12).

Repeatedly, Luce descended into churlishness. Responding to the report’s assertion that “there are no simple solutions,” he wrote, “A real understanding of a problem often yields a brilliantly simple solution!” (p. 71). When the report said “[w]e see” that news of public affairs accounts for only a small part of the media product, Luce wrote, “we see” that professors spend only a small part of their time talking to students (p. 47). A reference to “concentrations of private power . . . strong enough to thwart the aspirations of the people” prompted Luce to remark, “It may thwart you, but you are not the people” (p. 72). Other marginalia include the following: “Shabby superficial paragraph,” “childish,” “God!” “Jesus!” and “Nuts!” (pp. 32, 48, 67, 67, 81). Across the top of one page, he scrawled, “after 2nd reading I think whole thing so naïve & unsophisticated I say the Hell with it” (p. 83). Of Hocking’s appendix, signed by all Commission members, Luce wrote, “Is this the best philosophy can do?” (p. 21 [appendix]).

Luce circulated the draft to members of his senior staff. Their reviews, too, were negative. Editors and executives called the report “irritating” (Matthews, 1946, p. 1), “over-adjectived” (Jessup, 1946, p. 1), “platitudinous” (Fixx, 1946, p. 1), and “a flop” with “neither the fire and conviction of the crusader . . . nor the detached and timeless penetration of the true philosopher” (Barnes, 1946, p. 1). Eric Hodgins (1968), the liaison between Time Inc. and the Commission, later said he was “appalled” by “how bad and how shallow” (p. 4) A Free and Responsible Press had turned out. He attributed it to “faulty and feckless advance planning, for which HRL [Luce] must bear some of the blame, but Bob Hutchins, who always talks a better game than he plays, the major responsibility for a $200,000 disaster” (p. 4).

Luce evidently gave Hutchins a preliminary critique right away. In a letter to Commission members on October 18, 3 days after sending the draft to Time Inc., Hutchins (1946a) reported that Luce “thinks there are not enough pats on the back” to the media industries. Two Commission members agreed; others evidently did not respond (Clark, 1946; Redfield, 1946). Hutchins added a paragraph saying that the best American media outlets “have achieved a standard of excellence unsurpassed anywhere in the world” (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1947a, p. 52).

On October 29, 1946, he sent a revision to Roy E. Larsen at Time Inc. In a cover note, Hutchins (1946d) said, “I am sorry I ever met Harry Luce.” Soon he would have reason to feel even sorrier. After calling for more pats on the back in October, Luce produced harsh critiques in November and December.

Call for a Rewrite

“I am disappointed,” Luce (1946d, p. 1) told Hutchins in a letter dated November 29, 1946, “having perhaps expected too much.” Luce said he found the account of the press’s performance “elementary, naïve, superficial, uncritical and obsolete.” He added,

As to the general philosophical treatment of the problem, I give your distinguished Commission a gentleman’s “C” and no more. In this area, which I regard as the most important of all, I believe that each member of the Commission could have done a better job by himself than has been done for or by the whole Commission.

At the outset, Time Inc. had pledged to respect the Commission’s independence and “publish the results whatever their nature” (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1943, p. 5). Luce had acquiesced when told to stop attending Commission meetings. Now, though, he pressured Hutchins to modify the report.

Some of the major flaws, said Luce (1946d), could be remedied with “comparatively little more effort” (p. 1). So, he said, “I earnestly request that you call a special meeting of the Commission in which I may present my full opinion of the Report, together with a plea that the job is worth doing better.” He was speaking “as a friend of the Commission,” he said. “You may deny me the right to speak in this capacity. In that case I will ask you to define the capacity in which I am entitled to be heard.” (p. 1)

In the days that followed, the two Christian philosophers on the Commission, Reinhold Niebuhr and William Ernest Hocking, discussed how to proceed. Niebuhr (1946c) and Luce had a “long talk” about the report over lunch on December 5. According to Niebuhr, Luce took issue with the report on several grounds. He argued that it would be more effective if it said pointedly that “since there is no legal way of enforcing the responsibility of the press without destroying its freedom, there must be a tremendous burden upon the conscience of those who control the press.” Two days later, Niebuhr and Hocking met with others in New York to discuss the draft manuscript of another Commission book. Afterward, according to Hocking (1946b), “Reinhold took me aside for a very private talk about the main Report, said that he had talked with [Luce], that Hutchins is worried, etc., and asked me what I thought.” Hocking said he believed that a full Commission meeting with Luce would be a mistake.

Hocking worked on a letter to Luce that afternoon. Two drafts can be found in Hocking’s papers; no copy exists in the Time Inc. archives, so he may not have sent it. Hocking (1946b) said that the credibility of both Luce and the Commission rested on “[t]he fact that you have had no hand in the Report . . . If even a rumor were to start that you had called for a meeting, and that changes were made, that handsome picture would be spoiled.” Responding to one of Luce’s substantive criticisms—that the report overemphasized the importance of monopoly and ownership concentration—Hocking said that the final draft “has a much fairer perspective” than some earlier versions. It had taken “considerable effort” to reconcile “a right and a left wing in the Commission,” wrote Hocking (1946a), including a “brother with strong Morris Ernst leanings [who] is also a great Sir Galahad”—presumably Archibald MacLeish, who had wanted to vilify large media properties in the style of Ernst’s (1946) The First Freedom. As for the report’s prose, Hocking (1946b) said that “poor Bob Hutchins was on the griddle all summer, after two draftsmen had failed to satisfy the Commission, and was working like a Navvy against time. Under those conditions, Pegasus makes no flights!”

Luce’s third Christian ally on the Commission, MacLeish (1947), was in Paris. Later, in a letter to Luce, he called criticism of the report’s style “a little irrelevant.” He added, “Teaching one’s grandmother to suck eggs has nothing on the effort . . . to teach Bob Hutchins how to write clear English.”

Both Niebuhr (1946c) and Hocking (1946d) promoted the idea of an informal conversation between Luce and a few members rather than a full Commission meeting. Hocking thought they had been “needlessly strict” in excluding Luce from deliberations, and “this blow-off may have a slight emotional basis which a small informal and unofficial conference might wholly relieve.”

In a phone conversation with Luce on December 9, Hutchins proposed a different and slightly disingenuous compromise. “He could tell me privately what he thought of [the report] . . . and I would take up any meritorious suggestions . . . with the Commission without indicating their source,” Hutchins (1946c) recounted to Niebuhr. Luce maintained that there was nothing improper in his efforts to influence the report. According to Hutchins,

He said . . . that he was not an ordinary donor, that he had had some share in the paternity of the idea. I replied that it would have been possible to organize a commission consisting of Mr. Luce and the present members, which would collaborate in a study of the freedom of the press, but that this had not been done. On the contrary, all parties had insisted on the complete independence of the Commission from Time, Inc., from the outset. We would not play it both ways. He agreed.

Luce and Hutchins arranged to meet. First, though, Luce said he would lay out his criticisms in writing. On December 15, 1946, he sent Hutchins (1946d) what he called a “stream-of-consciousness” summary of “what’s biting me.”

Responsible to Whom?

Luce’s critique took the form of a 22-page “General Commentary” in two parts, which incorporated several passages drafted by a Fortune editor, William Schlamm (Luce, 1969, p. 61; Schlamm, 1946). Hutchins seems to have kept it out of the documentary record; it has not been located among his personal papers at the University of Chicago or in the collections of Commission documents at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Brown University, or the University of Washington. Part II of Luce’s (1969) memo appears in The Ideas of Henry Luce, under the title “Critique of a Commission,” but not Part I.

Luce (1946b) rattled off a series of points in Part I. He reiterated his contention that the report oversimplified the workings of the news media. (Oversimplification was a complaint frequently leveled at Time, a response that Luce tried to preempt: “TIME may often be grossly in error but it is rarely . . . so elementary!” p. 5). He complained that the Commission used press to encompass newspapers, magazines, movies, radio, and books; why not Tin Pan Alley, universities, and comic books? He charged that the report’s offhanded references to “our kind of society” implied universally shared ideals and visions. “If the Commissioners really think that the differences between the New Republic and the New York Times are relatively trivial—hardly more than Tweedledee and Tweedledum—that would be a dramatic observation: it should be explicitly made!” (p. 6).

Luce’s (1946b) major criticism went deeper. He said he found the report “disappointing in the essential respect in which it was hoped that it would be excellent” (pp. 3-4): philosophy. In sponsoring the study,

I was not concerned . . . about getting more freedom for my publications, nor about warding off any particular threats to their freedom except as I, like everyone, was bound to be concerned about the general freedom in the world. I was interested in a contemporary clarification of the foundations of my particular freedom as an editor in a general context of freedom. (p. 4)

He envisioned an analysis of responsibility as a moral imperative. “I wanted to know when and why it is needful to cry: ‘Give me liberty or give me death!’” And he wanted a sophisticated analysis of the tension between freedom and order, one that addressed the question “[H]ow do you restrain freedom in the interests of more freedom?” Instead, the Commission focused on “prudent expediencies,” by arguing that “unless I and my fellows discharge our obligations more fully, our freedom may be taken away—somehow. Now this may be a very salutary warning but, as philosophy, it is scarcely inspiring.”

Luce (1946b) mused on what had gone wrong. “[P]erhaps the whole idea was a bad one—or not well enough thought-out, or organized on too small a scale” (pp. 2-3), he wrote. Maybe “a good philosophical production must be, ultimately, individual.” He continued,

Several members have told me that the experience of intellectual fellowship which the Commission afforded was most enjoyable and rewarding. But I am bound to say that the Draft Report is a rather tasteless dish with little suggestion of the intellectual ferment that went on among the cooks in the kitchen. (p. 3)

In Part II of the memo, Luce (1946c) focused on the issue of accountability. “[W]ith what seems to me the most appal[l]ing lack of even high-school logic,” he wrote, “the Draft Report fails to state: Who is accountable? And to whom? And for what?” (pp. 6-13; cf. Altschull, 1995, pp. 201, 301-305). The question of “to whom” loomed largest for Luce. “[I]n order to establish the moral responsibility of the press,” he wrote, “you must first disclose a doctrine of the moral responsibility of individual man.” For Luce, Christianity supplied the answer, but the Commission, he said, simply left it unanswered:

[I]t is certainly not clear whether the Commission believes in responsibility to God or only to Society. And I suppose the Commission is divided on this point and did not wish to admit such a scandal of disagreement among wise men. (p. 11)

But, gentlemen, we look to you for the Truth as you see it. We will not accept from you any common currency of ambiguity.

If you can all agree on a doctrine of moral responsibility to something called Society—without having to press the question of God to a conclusion—you are entitled to do so . . . But then state your doctrine clearly. Why am I responsible to Society? And who is Society? And where is it? (pp. 12-13)

If, however, such a doctrine proved insupportable, then the Commission had to adopt the alternative—explicitly. “[T]he Commission,” wrote Luce, “must not be afraid to announce the greatest and most exciting discovery and rediscovery man ever makes: man is responsible to his Creator . . . .”

Although Luce probably was unaware of it, William Ernest Hocking had said in one Commission meeting that he considered the concept of God “essential as a background to the whole theory of rights,” but he supposed that the Supreme Being had no place in their discussions. In response, Hutchins cited a different Almighty: “I made my reference to Mr. Luce” (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1946b, pp. 78, 84).

Luce traveled to Chicago and met with Hutchins on December 17 (Luce, 1946e). After listening to Luce’s objections, Hutchins all but ignored them. His final changes to the report were little more than cosmetic. In response to Luce’s overarching question—To whom does a publisher owe responsibility?—Hutchins (1946e) added a few sentences to the end of the fifth chapter, including the conclusory assertion that a journalist’s “responsibility is to his conscience and the common good.” He made other changes in the foreword, which would be published under his own name. “I decided to put it all in the Foreword, not because I couldn’t get—or even assume—Commission approval, but because I couldn’t get the stuff into the Report in any artistic way,” he told Luce (1946b) on December 26. “What I need is art lessons.”

Hutchins (1946e) showed Luce’s comments and his own revisions to just one person: their mutual friend William Benton, publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica, who had given the Commission US$15,000 to complete its work. Benton (1947) said that the “fascinat[ing]” critique showed that Luce “attach[es] great importance to this report.” Benton, a former adman, continued,

I am troubled as to whether you did enough with his various comments . . . You aren’t as impressed with a client as I am. Further, we must both concede that Harry Luce is no ordinary client, as his comments amply demonstrate. (p. 1)

Hutchins (1946f) made no further revisions. “I am so sick of the subject,” he had earlier told Walter Lippmann, “that I hate to look at the report again.”

Ideal Benefactor

Fortune prepared to publish the text of A Free and Responsible Press (minus Hocking’s appendix) alongside an editorial. A Fortune editor sent Hutchins a draft of the editorial. It characterized the report as “deeply disappointing, an opportunity missed,” with prose that is “often opaque” and “sometimes seems devious” (Editorial—Solow, 3rd Revision, 1947, pp. 1-2). Irate, Hutchins (1947c) told Benton that the editorial was “simply a condensation of Harry’s memorandum” (p. 1). Referring to the arch-conservative publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Hutchins said Luce was acting “just like Colonel McCormick: get sore at any criticism, no matter how mild, and then misrepresent your critic from hell to breakfast” (p. 1).

Luce did not speak out publicly, but the Fortune editorial—toned down from the original draft—did repeat some of his criticisms. It took issue with the report’s assessment of the press and its emphasis on monopoly (subject of “unwarranted fuss”), and it faulted the prose: “the obscurities of this report are literally inexcusable” (Editorial, 1947, pp. 5, 2). No mention was made of the report’s silence about God. It also went unmentioned in a Time article, which called the report “disappointing” (“Let Freedom Ring True,” 1947, p. 68).

In April 1947, Luce thanked Commission members for their work. He said that although he concurred with the Fortune editorial, “I believe you have performed a real service to The Press and to the cause of Freedom” (Luce, 1947a). The Time Inc. archives contain another draft of the letter (Luce, n.d.-a), which talked of God:

Nothing in a long time has brought me such great good cheer[,] for your Report is a marvelously striking demonstration of how utterly dependent we are on the mercy of God . . . [M]y only serious criticism of your Report is that you did not think it expedient so to violate the contemporary tabus [taboos] regarding the Almighty as to publicly and humbly confess this ultimate reliance. (p. 1)

He decided to omit these sentiments from the final letter

Hutchins (1947b) told Luce he had been “the ideal benefactor,” and he apologized for the fact that “very difficult personal problems in the past three years have prevented me from giving the Commission the kind of leadership it ought to have had and the kind which you were entitled to expect from me.” Hutchins did not elaborate. According to biographers, his marriage was unraveling at the time (Ashmore, 1989; Mayer, 1993).

Elsewhere, Hutchins adopted a breezier tone. He told a Time Inc. executive that the group might be remembered as the Luce Commission rather than the Hutchins Commission. He added, “I certainly will do everything to encourage it” (Auer, 1947).

In September 1947, Luce (1947b) scrawled a short note to two of his executives. “Well, now that it’s about all over, let me say I’m sorry I got you into such a bad thing,” he wrote, and added, with a reference to the corporate tax rate at the time: “But I really don’t think it did Time Inc. much harm—and the dollars were mostly 30¢ dollars.”

Divine Folly of Perfection

According to a Time Inc. executive, the experience of the Commission on Freedom of the Press produced “a long period of coolness” between Henry Luce and Robert Hutchins, but they gradually resumed their friendship (Grover, 1955). Luce participated in projects at Hutchins’s Fund for the Republic in the 1950s and his Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in the 1960s. He helped pay for some of them, too, though he declined to underwrite a reunion of the Commission on Freedom of the Press in 1964 (Kelly, 1981; Luce, 1964).

In 1965, Luce (n.d.-b) spoke at a dinner honoring Hutchins. His prepared remarks, found in the Time Inc. archives, might be construed as a reference to A Free and Responsible Press and its unrealistic standards (in his view) for American journalism:

[Hutchins] has roamed the whole world of human folly and conflict. He has taken truth in hand like a sword and gone forth to slay the dragons of iniquity and to rally the faint-hearted servants of the common good….

I think Bob has sometimes erred. In his zeal for the best, he has sometimes been ungenerous to the good. Yet the good can only be saved and advanced by the divine folly of perfection.

This nation is nearer the truth today than it could have been without Bob Hutchins. (pp. 2-3)

Two years later, Luce gave a speech at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. In a letter afterward, Hutchins asked him to elaborate on an idea he had mentioned about antipoverty policy. “I would like to take your suggestion up in a serious way, and I would like to be sure that I had it straight,” wrote Hutchins (1967a). “It seems to me that I got into a lot of trouble some time back because I took one of your suggestions seriously. It had something to do with the freedom of the press.”

Luce (1967) replied, “Yes, I did get you into some trouble on the Freedom of the Press, although I can share the blame with a number of distinguished collaborators.”

It was their final exchange. Less than 3 weeks later, Luce died.

Conclusion

Through a study of Time Inc. files previously unexamined by media scholars, this article has illuminated and contextualized the relationship between Henry R. Luce and the Commission on Freedom of the Press.

Much of the previous scholarship contends that Luce was driven by self-interest both in sponsoring the Commission and in rejecting its findings. The self-interest hypothesis frames the narrative as a conflict between profit and intellectual integrity. In this version, Luce expected the Commission to reach conclusions helpful to Time Inc. Instead, the men conducted an independent investigation and produced a highly critical report. Luce’s presumed motives overshadow and even discredit his critique of A Free and Responsible Press.

By contrast, the new documents suggest that intellectual curiosity played a substantial role in Luce’s decision to fund the Commission. He judged the report a disappointment because of apparent flaws, gaps, and contradictions in the philosophical argument, including its omission of God; because of what he considered uninformed and overstated criticisms of the press; and, perhaps, because of personal pique over his exclusion from Commission meetings.

The findings of this study hold implications for social-responsibility theory, which is widely taught in the classroom and widely discussed (not always favorably) in the literature. The theory is rooted in the Hutchins Commission’s analysis (Peterson, 1956). Scholars and teachers who discuss the theory in depth ought to weigh Luce’s philosophical critique.

“It would take me at least two months to figure out and to write what I thought about Harry,” Hutchins (1967b) told William Benton after Luce’s death. “All I can say now is that he was a fascinating man, and I will miss him.”