Former editors | Max Ascoli |
---|---|
Categories | News magazine |
Frequency | Biweekly |
First issue | 1949 |
Final issue | 1968 |
Country | United States |
Based in | New York City |
Language | English |
ISSN | 1049-1600 |
The Reporter was an American biweekly news magazine published in New York City from 1949 through 1968.
The magazine was founded by Max Ascoli, who was born in 1898 in Ferrara, Italy to a Jewish family. [1] Ascoli grew up to become a professor in political philosophy and law, and began to draw the attention of authorities for his outspoken anti-fascist views. He was arrested in 1928, and immigrated to the United States three years later.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Ascoli became a prominent American anti-fascist, cultivating relationships with influential intellectuals and government officials. [2] With the beginning of the Cold War, Ascoli became convinced of the need to counter Soviet propaganda and convince Americans of the importance of their assuming a leadership role in the world. To accomplish those ends, he joined with journalist James Reston to found The Reporter in 1949. Ascoli described the liberalism of The Reporter as one that favored liberty not in the purely negative sense, but as "always identified with and related to specific and present situations." [3] Writing in 1955, he described the two main tasks of American liberalism as seeking to move the country beyond demagoguery and making the case for American democracy and capitalism to the rest of the world. [3] According to one scholar, "The Reporter was explicitly created to serve as a platform for those anticommunists who were neither former communists nor former fellow travelers." [2]
From the beginning, The Reporter acknowledged its activist agenda, taking a hawkish position on the Cold War. Denouncing historical isolationism, one unsigned 1949 article argued that the US was faced with "compulsion to play a leading role in the world—not to play it intermittently, by casual interventions and the enunciation of moral principles, but to play it consistently and for the greatest stakes…" [4] Always stressing the interconnection between domestic and international issues, the magazine denounced McCarthyism and racial segregation not only on the grounds that such illiberal policies were contrary to American ideals, but by arguing that they hurt the United States in the global war of ideas.
The Reporter had a huge influence in its day, both among policy makers and the educated public. One author, writing in Commentary in 1960, praised The Reporter as "represent[ing] the concerns of intelligent American liberalism." [5] In a 1962 survey of reporters asking what magazines they cited in their work, The Reporter came in fourth place after Time , U.S. News & World Report , and Newsweek , with no other publication coming close. [6] It would eventually achieve a circulation of 215,000 readers. [7] Despite its internationalist orientation and the promotion of the magazine by U.S. government agencies working abroad, however, The Reporter had relatively few European readers. [2] Contributors included some of the most prominent statesmen, journalists, and intellectuals of the day. The Reporter ceased publication in 1968 due to the widening gap between Ascoli’s hawkish stance on the Vietnam War on the one hand, and the opinions of readers and advertisers on the other. [8] Ascoli pointed to an "increasingly heavy editorial and financial burden" behind his decision to merge his publication with Harper’s Magazine . [9]
After the victory of the forces of Mao Tse-tung in the Chinese Civil War, Senator Joseph McCarthy and other conservatives accused the Truman Administration of previously not having done enough to make sure that China did not fall to Communism, and failing to sufficiently support the efforts to overturn the results of the war. In 1952, The Reporter devoted the bulk of two full issues to the influence of what it called the China Lobby on the American government. [10] [11] According to the exposé, a select group of Chinese elites centered around defeated Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek had since 1940 been working on convincing the American government to support its corrupt leadership, to the detriment of U.S. interests. The lobby was now allegedly preventing the United States from acknowledging that the Nationalist cause was lost and dealing with the situation in China in a realistic manner.
In order to promote its exposé, The Reporter purchased full-page ads in The New York Times . According to one author, the size of the report on the China Lobby and the investigative resources that it required indicate that some parts of the American government provided The Reporter with substantial financial assistance. [2] In fact, staff received information from, among other government agencies, the IRS, the Treasury Department, the CIA, and the FBI. [2] As the controversy over who lost China involved a rivalry between the pro-McCarthy FBI and the CIA, Elke van Cassel argues that "The Reporter got caught in the middle of this power struggle," siding with the latter. [2] Two years before the publication of the China Lobby exposé, Senator William Knowland had accused the magazine of being supportive of the Chinese Communists, a charge that Ascoli vigorously denied. [12]
The Reporter consistently used extremely harsh terms to denounce McCarthyism. History professor Peter Viereck called the phenomenon a form of "mob rule" and compared it to the excesses of the French Revolution. [13] In the words of Ascoli,
[t]he facts against McCarthyism were not difficult to dig out, the ideas against which they stood were the very ones on which America was founded. The protagonist himself was like an overdrawn caricature of the villain—a villain who doubly wounded the nation with his reckless, haphazard persecution of harmless human beings and with the immunity he granted to Communist agents by not catching a single one of them. [3]
Reflecting its liberal internationalist orientation, The Reporter supported the pacts, treaties, and agreements that would become the cornerstones of transatlantic cooperation and European unity. It warned against a weakening of the Atlantic alliance, which it saw as being important not only as a security organization, but as a force for the triumph of democratic ideals and political and economic cooperation. [14] In other articles it applauded the economic ideas underlying the Schuman Plan [15] and praised the expansion of the European Common Market. [16] A 1949 article criticized what the author perceived as isolationist tendencies in the British government of the time. [17]
Throughout the Cold War era, prominent foreign policy intellectuals would use the pages of The Reporter to attempt to shape public opinion. For example, in the decade before his joining the Nixon Administration, Henry Kissinger wrote several articles for the publication, among them one arguing for a more integrated Atlantic Alliance, [18] and another putting forth practical steps that could be taken towards German unification. [19]
The Reporter took a consistent position in favor of civil rights for African-Americans. A 1954 article, for example, argued that desegregation had been a success in the armed forces. Therefore, fears over the negative consequences of racially integrating the public schools were overblown. [20] The magazine did not simply focus on race relations in the American context; English writer Russel Warren Howe took to the magazine’s pages to denounce racism towards nonwhite immigrants in Great Britain. [21]
Despite its support for civil rights and other liberal causes, The Reporter also levied harsh criticisms at many aspects of the counter-culture and the New Left. In his farewell to the readers of the magazine, Ascoli took liberals to task for being hesitant in denouncing the lack of ethics among some younger activists and called participatory democracy "one of the best recipes of establishing tyranny that has ever been concocted…" [22] In the same issue, Edmond Taylor referred to the May 1968 protests in France as "the nihilist revolution." [23] Similarly, Professor William P. Gerberding wrote that in his opinion it was "wrong and destructive to embrace or even to adopt a tolerant attitude toward the radical politics of, for example, the New Left or the black racists." [24]
During the time that the United States began to become involved in Vietnam, The Reporter applauded and encouraged American efforts to help South Vietnam develop. [25] As American involvement deepened and the conflict developed, The Reporter sent journalists to Southeast Asia to cover the war. [26] Articles denounced the pessimism of some members of the American establishment and stressed what the magazine saw as the strategic importance of winning the war. In 1966, journalist Richard C. Hottlett mocked the idea that there was no military solution to the conflict and argued that American political goals could be achieved only after security had been established. [27]
According to Douglass Carter, who served on the staff of The Reporter for 15 years, Ascoli over time "became more hard-line than many hard-liners in government toward the American commitment in Viet Nam." [28] He claimed that it was because of this unwavering support for continuing the war effort that many former readers turned away from the magazine in the 1960s. [28]
Although Ascoli was primarily interested in spreading his political ideals, The Reporter also prided itself on being a literary journal. In addition to its regular book reviews, it was the first English language publication to present excerpts from Doctor Zhivago to its audience. [29] [30] Ascoli had a great deal of appreciation for the work, which he saw as proof that creativity could flourish even under the most oppressive conditions. [2]
Elke van Cassel [31] documents many connections that The Reporter had to the American intelligence establishment and believes that there is circumstantial evidence that the magazine was funded by the CIA. She notes that The Reporter was created at around the same time that the CIA began funding pro-American artists and journalists, including such similar magazines as Partisan Review and New Leader , and folded around the time that these kinds of clandestine activities were beginning to draw public scrutiny. [2] The magazine stressed the importance of ideas in the Cold War, and believed that the United States government needed to defend its political and economic system to the world. This indicates that its editors would not have been opposed to cooperating with and possibly even accepting funding from the American government. Ascoli and other members of his staff were personally and professionally acquainted with some of the major figures of the mid-century American intelligence establishment and worked for a handful of organizations that were connected to or funded by the CIA. [2] Cassel finds it notable that in the archives of the magazine its financial records, along with other important pieces of information, are missing. [2] In the end, she concludes that while there is no direct evidence of CIA funding, the circumstantial case is substantial. [2] At the very least, it can be established that The Reporter and its staff had close working relationships with several influential government officials and agencies, including the CIA and other services engaged in promoting American ideals and interests through the media. [2]
Henry Alfred Kissinger was an American diplomat, political scientist, geopolitical consultant, and politician who served as the United States secretary of state and national security advisor in the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1969 and 1977.
The domino theory is a geopolitical theory which posits that increases or decreases in democracy in one country tend to spread to neighboring countries in a domino effect. It was prominent in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s in the context of the Cold War, suggesting that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow. It was used by successive United States administrations during the Cold War as justification for American intervention around the world. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower described the theory during a news conference on April 7, 1954, when referring to communism in Indochina as follows:
Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.
Richard McGarrah Helms was an American government official and diplomat who served as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from 1966 to 1973. Helms began intelligence work with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Following the 1947 creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), he rose in its ranks during the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. Helms then was DCI under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, yielding to James R. Schlesinger in early 1973.
James William Fulbright was an American politician, academic, and statesman who represented Arkansas in the United States Senate from 1945 until his resignation in 1974. As of 2023, Fulbright is the longest serving chairman in the history of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He is best known for his strong multilateralist positions on international issues, opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War, and the creation of the international fellowship program bearing his name, the Fulbright Program.
The Sino-Soviet split was the gradual deterioration of relations between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the Cold War. This was primarily caused by doctrinal divergences that arose from their different interpretations and practical applications of Marxism–Leninism, as influenced by their respective geopolitics during the Cold War of 1947–1991. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sino-Soviet debates about the interpretation of orthodox Marxism became specific disputes about the Soviet Union's policies of national de-Stalinization and international peaceful coexistence with the Western Bloc, which Chinese founding father Mao Zedong decried as revisionism. Against that ideological background, China took a belligerent stance towards the Western world, and publicly rejected the Soviet Union's policy of peaceful coexistence between the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc. In addition, Beijing resented the Soviet Union's growing ties with India due to factors such as the Sino-Indian border dispute, and Moscow feared that Mao was too nonchalant about the horrors of nuclear warfare.
Edward Geary Lansdale was a United States Air Force officer until retiring in 1963 as a major general before continuing his work with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Lansdale was a pioneer in clandestine operations and psychological warfare. In the early 1950s, Lansdale played a significant role in suppressing the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines. In 1954, he moved to Saigon and started the Saigon Military Mission, a covert intelligence operation which was created to sow dissension in North Vietnam. Lansdale believed the United States could win guerrilla wars by studying the enemy's psychology, an approach that won the approval of the presidential administrations of both Kennedy and Johnson.
Vietnamization was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnamese forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops". Brought on by the Viet Cong's Tet Offensive, the policy referred to U.S. combat troops specifically in the ground combat role, but did not reject combat by the U.S. Air Force, as well as the support to South Vietnam, consistent with the policies of U.S. foreign military assistance organizations. U.S. citizens' mistrust of their government that had begun after the offensive worsened with the release of news about U.S. soldiers massacring civilians at My Lai (1968), the invasion of Cambodia (1970), and the leaking of the Pentagon Papers (1971).
Operation Linebacker II, sometimes referred to as the Christmas bombings, was a strategic bombing campaign conducted by the United States against targets in North Vietnam from December 18 to December 29, 1972, during the Vietnam War. More than 20,000 tons of ordnance was dropped on military and industrial areas in Hanoi and Haiphong and at least 1,624 civilians were killed. The operation was the final major military operation carried out by the U.S. during the conflict, and the largest bombing campaign involving heavy bombers since World War II.
The Paris Peace Accords, officially the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam, was a peace agreement signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. The agreement was signed by the governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam ; the Republic of Vietnam ; the United States; and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG), which represented South Vietnamese communists. US ground forces had begun to withdraw from Vietnam in 1969, and had suffered from deteriorating morale during the withdrawal. By the beginning of 1972 those that remained had very little involvement in combat. The last American infantry battalions withdrew in August 1972. Most air and naval forces, and most advisers, also were gone from South Vietnam by that time, though air and naval forces not based in South Vietnam were still playing a large role in the war. The Paris Agreement removed the remaining US forces. Direct U.S. military intervention was ended, and fighting between the three remaining powers temporarily stopped for less than a day. The agreement was not ratified by the U.S. Senate.
Ramparts was a glossy illustrated American political and literary magazine, published from 1962 to 1975 and closely associated with the New Left political movement. Unlike most of the radical magazines of the day, Ramparts was expensively produced and graphically sophisticated.
The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist cultural organization founded on June 26, 1950 in West Berlin, and was supported by the Central Intelligence Agency and its allies. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the CIA was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the group. The congress aimed to enlist intellectuals and opinion makers in a war of ideas against communism.
James Barrett Reston, nicknamed "Scotty", was an American journalist whose career spanned the mid-1930s to the early 1990s. He was associated for many years with The New York Times.
Peter Robert Edwin Viereck was an American writer, poet and professor of history at Mount Holyoke College. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1949 for the collection Terror and Decorum. In 1955 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Florence.
Joseph Buttinger was an Austrian politician and, after his immigration to the United States, an expert on East Asia. He co-founded the American Friends of Vietnam, a Cold War lobbying group.
L'Europeo was a prominent Italian weekly news magazine launched on 4 November 1945, by the founder-editors Gianni Mazzocchi and Arrigo Benedetti. Camilla Cederna was also among the founders. The magazine stopped publication in 1995. The title returned to the news-stands in 2001 and 2002 as a quarterly, then as a bi-monthly from 2003 to 2007 and a monthly from 2008, until closure in 2013.
Max Ascoli was a Jewish Italian-American professor of political philosophy and law at the New School for Social Research, United States of America.
The Vinh wiretap was an American espionage operation of the Vietnam War. From 7 December 1972 through early May 1973, CIA telephone intercepts of North Vietnamese military communications were supplied to American diplomat Henry Kissinger. As border phone lines were well watched, the decision was made to tap a military multiplex line in the Vietnamese heartland near Vinh. The CIA used a black helicopter to set a clandestine wiretap to eavesdrop on Paris Peace Talks discussions and other intelligence.
The US foreign policy during the presidency of Richard Nixon (1969–1974) focused on reducing the dangers of the Cold War among the Soviet Union and China. President Richard Nixon's policy sought on détente with both nations, which were hostile to the U.S. and to each other in the wake of the Sino-Soviet split. He moved away from the traditional American policy of containment of communism, hoping each side would seek American favor. Nixon's 1972 visit to China ushered in a new era of U.S.-China relations and effectively removed China as a Cold War foe. The Nixon administration signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union and organized a conference that led to the signing of the Helsinki Accords after Nixon left office.
Silas Douglass Cater Jr. was an American journalist, political aide, and college president. Cater started his career as a journalist for The Reporter and, in 1964, became an aide for Lyndon B. Johnson. After his time in the White House, Cater was a fellow at the Aspen Institute and the vice chairman of The Observer. In 1982, Cater became the 22nd president of Washington College. He retired to Montgomery, Alabama in 1991 and died in 1995.
Anna Maria Cochetti was an Italian-born, Italian-American poet and translator. In the United States, she published under the pseudonym "Anna Maria Armi".
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(help) in Gemelli, Giuliana (2000). The "unacceptables" : American foundations and refugee scholars between the two wars and after (1st ed.). Bruxelles [u.a.]: Lang. pp. 107–140. ISBN 905201924X.{{cite journal}}
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(help) in Laville, Helen; Wilford, Hugh (2005). The US government, citizen groups, and the Cold War: the state-private network . London: Routledge. pp. 116–140. ISBN 0-415-35608-3.