A focus on political consensus in the United States in the early 1950s has created a false sense of a period of national unity and of the press in that period as a trusted institution. This article uses listener hate mail to radio reporters during a divisive moment—President Harry Truman’s removal of General Douglas MacArthur from his command in the Korean War in April 1951—to identify a politically rancorous discourse, aimed at the press. This period of high emotion for Americans provides a case study in audience members’ sometimes hostile relationship with journalists and does so at an early moment in the creation of a truly mass national news audience. I analyze hundreds of unpublished, archival letters, from a time when public opinion polling was relatively new and still problematic, to rethink what our baseline measurement is for media trust and better contextualize claims about its trajectory. I find three tropes that are especially resonant in the present day and became more visible parts of the public discourse with the presidency of Donald Trump: anti-press attitudes, isolationism, and antisemitism.
“A Listener” (1951) Letter to Sevareid, 20 April. ES, Box I:B4: Fan Mail – General, AP 1951.
3.
“A Mother of a boy in Korea” (1951) Letter to Davis, undated. ED, Box 3: Corr. 1951.
4.
“An American” (1951) Letter to Davis, 1 May. ED, Box 3: Corr. 1951.
5.
“An American Mother” (1951) Letter to Davis, undated. ED, Box 3: Corr. 1951.
6.
AlwoodE (2007) Dark Days in the Newsroom: McCarthyism Aimed at the Press. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
7.
BauerAJ (2018) Journalism history and conservative erasure. American Journalism35(1): 2–26.
8.
BelairFJr. (1964) Eisenhower plea. The New York Times, 15 July: 1.
9.
BotschGKopkeC (2014). A case study of anti-Semitism in the language and politics of the contemporary far right in Germany. In MFeldmanPJackson (Eds.), Doublespeak: The Rhetoric of the Far Right since 1945 (pp. 207–221). Stuttgart: ibidem Press.
10.
BrandsHW (2016) The General vs. The President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War. New York: Doubleday.
11.
BrinkleyA (1982) Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression. New York: Knopf.
12.
CimaglioC (2016) “A Tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men”: the Nixon-Agnew antimedia campaign and the liberal roots of the US conservative “liberal media” critique. International Journal of Communication10: 1–19.
CloudSOlsonL (1996) The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
15.
CoeKKenskiKRainsSA (2014) Online and uncivil? patterns and determinants of incivility in newspaper website comments. Journal of Communication64(4): 658–679.
16.
CooperCKnottsHGHaspelM (2009) The Content of political participation: Letters to the editor and the people who write them. PS: Political Science and Politics42 (1): 131–137.
17.
CraigS (2004) How America adopted radio: demographic differences in set ownership Reported in the 1930-1950 US censuses. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media48(2): 179–195.
18.
CramerKJ (2016) The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
DavisE (1953) But We Were Born Free. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
22.
De MaeyerJ (2019) Taking conspiracy culture seriously: Journalism needs to face its epistemological trouble. Journalism20(1): 21–23.
23.
DionneEJJr (2016) Spiro Agnew’s ghost lives on in the 2016 campaign. The Washington Post, September 18.
24.
DouglasS (1999; 2004) Listening in: Radio and the American Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
25.
Dowlin MrsWM (1951) Letter to Sevareid, 3 May. ES, Box 1:B4: Fan Mail May1951.
26.
ErjavecKPoler KovacicM (2012) ‘You Don’t Understand, this is a new war!’ Analysis of hate speech in news web sites’ comments. Mass Communication and Society15: 899–920.
27.
FreelandR (1971) The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946-1948. New York: Knopf.
28.
FriedR (1990) Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
29.
GarrettF (1951) Letter to Sevareid, 18 February. ES, Box I:B3: Fan Mail – General, FE 1951.
30.
GillisW (2017) The Anti-Semitic roots of the ‘liberal news media’ critique. American Journalism34(3): 262–288.
31.
GreenbergD (2008) The idea of ‘the liberal media’ and its roots in the civil rights movement. The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture1(2): 167–186.
32.
GroganE (1951) Letter to Davis, 20 April. ED, Box 3: Corr. 1951.
33.
HallinD (1989; 1986) The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press.
34.
HartRP (2018) Civic Hope: How Ordinary Americans Keep Democracy Alive. New York: Cambridge University Press.
35.
HemmerN (2016) Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
36.
HofstadterR (1955) The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt. In: BellD (ed). The Radical Right: The New American Right, Expanded and Updated. 1964 edition. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
37.
IgoSE (2007) The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
38.
IhlebækKAHolterCR (2021) Hostile emotions: an exploratory study of far-right online commenters and their emotional connection to traditional and alternative news media. Journalism22 (5): 1207–1222.
39.
JacobsonMF (1998) Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
40.
JohnsonDK (2004) The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
41.
JonesASTifftSE (1999) The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family behind the New York Times. New York: Little, Brown.
42.
KanowC (1953) Letter to Sevareid, 5 February. ES, Box I:B5: Fan Mail – General, FE 1953.
43.
LaddJ (2011) Why Americans Hate the Media and How it Matters. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
44.
LebovicS (2017) When the “mainstream media” was conservative. In ZelizerJSchulmanB (eds) Media Nation: The Political History of News in Modern America.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 63–76.
45.
LechelerS (2020) The emotional turn in journalism needs to be about audience perceptions. Digital Journalism8(2): 287–291.
46.
LeffL (2005) Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper. New York: Cambridge University Press.
47.
LenthalB (2007) Radio’s America: The Great Depression and the Rise of Modern Mass CultureChicago: University of Chicago Press.
48.
LichtenthalJ (1951) Letter to Davis, 18 April. ED, Box 3: Corr. 1951.
49.
LipsetSM (1955) The Sources of the ‘Radical Right’ in the New American Right. In: BellD (ed) New York: Criterion Books.
50.
MacKenzieA (1951) Letter to Davis, 1 May. ED, Box 3: Corr. 1951.
51.
MacklinG (2014) ‘Teaching the truth to the hardcore’: The public and private presentation of BNP ideology. In FeldmanM.JacksonP. (eds) Doublespeak: The Rhetoric of the Far Right since 1945.Stuttgart: ibidem Press, 123–146.
52.
MajorM (2015) Conservative consciousness and the press: the institutional contribution to the idea of the ‘liberal media’ in right-wing discourse. Critical Sociology41(3): 483–491.
53.
McGirrL (2001) Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
54.
MillerR (1951) Letter to Davis, 19 April. ED, Box 3: Corr. 1951.
55.
MoserJE (1999) Twisting the Lion’s Tail: American Anglophobia between the World Wars. New York: New York University Press.
56.
MucklestoneM (1951) Letter to Sevareid, 10 April. ES, Box I:B4: Fan Mail AP 1951.
57.
MutzDC (2018) Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 Presidential vote. PNAS115(19): E4330–E4339.
58.
NeroneJ (1994) Violence against the Press: Policing the Public Sphere in US History. New York: Oxford University Press.
59.
NielsenRK (2010) Participation through letters to the editor: circulation, considerations, and genres in the letters institution. Journalism11(1): 21–35.
60.
NordDP (1995) Reading the Newspaper: strategies and politics of reader response, Chicago, 1912-1917. Journal of Communication45(3): 66–93.
61.
NordDP (2001) Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
62.
PalmerR (2019) A ‘Deep Story’ about American journalism: Using ‘episodes’ to explore folk theories of journalism. Journalism Studies20(3): 327–344.
63.
PalmerRToffBNielsenRK (2020) ‘The Media Covers Up a Lot of Things’: Watchdog ideals meet folk theories of journalism. Journalism Studies21(14): 1973–1989.
64.
Phillips-FeinK (2009) Invisible Hands: The Businessman’s Crusade against the New Deal. New York: Norton.
65.
PickardV (2015) America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform.New York: Cambridge University Press.
66.
PooleRR (1951) Letter to Davis, 24 April. ED, Box 3: Corr. 1951.
67.
PriorM (2007) Post-broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections. New York: Cambridge University Press.
68.
PulitzerJJr (1950) Memo to B.H. Reese, 21 December. Marquis Childs Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society (Madison, Wisc.), Box 25: St. Louis Post-Dispatch Files, 1950, Nov. 21-1951, June 1.
69.
RestonJ (1954) Letter to Sulzberger, 9 January. Arthur Hays Sulzberger Papers, New York Times Co. Collection, New York Public Library (New York, NY), Box 53: 28.
70.
SevareidE (1952) In one ear: 107 snapshots of men and events which make a far-reaching panorama of the American situation at midcentury (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).
71.
TaylorC (2011) Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union. New York: Columbia University Press.
72.
ToepflFPiwoniE (2015) Public spheres in interaction: Comment sections of news websites as counterpublic spaces. Journal of Communication65: 465–488.
“Veritas” (1951) Letter to Sevareid, undated [February]. ES, Box I:B3: Fan Mail – General, FE 1951.
76.
WeismanJ (2018) (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.New York: St. Martin’s Press.
77.
WickerT (1979; 1975) On Press. New York: Berkley Book.
78.
Wahl-JorgensenK (2001) Letters to the editor as a forum for public deliberation: Modes of publicity and democratic debate. Critical Studies in Media Communication18(3): 303–320.
79.
Wahl-JorgensenK (2018) Public displays of disaffection: the emotional politics of Donald Trump. In: BoczkowskiPJPapacharissiZ (eds) Trump and the Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
80.
Wahl-JorgensenK (2020) An emotional turn in journalism studies?Digital Journalism8(2): 175–194.
81.
Wahl-JorgensenKPanttiM (2021) Introduction: the emotional turn in journalism. Journalism22(5): 1147–1154.
82.
WoesteV (2017) When Trump Denounces the ‘Fake Media,’ Anti-Semites Hear ‘Jew Media’. History News Network. Available at: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/166801 (accessed 18 May 2021).
83.
ZelizerJ (2017) How Washington helped create the contemporary media. In JZelizerBSchulman (eds) Media Nation: The Political History of News in Modern America.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 176–198.
