Description
Product ID: | 9780300111897 |
Product Form: | Hardback |
Country of Manufacture: | US |
Title: | An Aristocracy of Critics |
Subtitle: | Luce, Hutchins, Niebuhr, and the Committee That Redefined Freedom of the Press |
Authors: | Author: Stephen Bates |
Page Count: | 336 |
Subjects: | History of the Americas, History of the Americas, History, Media studies, Political structure and processes, Entertainment and media law, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, Media studies, Political structure & processes, Entertainment & media law, USA, 20th century |
Description: | Select Guide Rating The story behind the 1940s Commission on Freedom of the Press—groundbreaking then, timelier than ever now"Bates skillfully blends biography and intellectual history to provide a sense of how the clash of ideas and the clash of personalities intersected."—Scott Stossel, American Scholar"A well-constructed, timely study, clearly relevant to current debates."—Kirkus, starred review In 1943, Time Inc. editor-in-chief Henry R. Luce sponsored the greatest collaboration of intellectuals in the twentieth century. He and University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins summoned the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the Pulitzer-winning poet Archibald MacLeish, and ten other preeminent thinkers to join the Commission on Freedom of the Press. They spent three years wrestling with subjects that are as pertinent as ever: partisan media and distorted news, activists who silence rather than rebut their opponents, conspiracy theories spread by shadowy groups, and the survivability of American democracy in a post-truth age. The report that emerged, A Free and Responsible Press, is a classic, but many of the commission’s sharpest insights never made it into print. Journalist and First Amendment scholar Stephen Bates reveals how these towering intellects debated some of the most vital questions of their time—and reached conclusions urgently relevant today. |
Imprint Name: | Yale University Press |
Publisher Name: | Yale University Press |
Country of Publication: | GB |
Publishing Date: | 2021-01-12 |