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Wire to "Arthur Lawson." Wechsler charged that the closed hearing was "a flagrant attack on free newspapers." The books, he said, "were just a flimsy pretext for a full-fledged investigation of the Post" and members of its staff, and he demanded that the testimony be made public. But McCarthy refused to do so unless Wechsler "completed his testimony," i.e., made a list of the others who were active in the Young Communist League with him. Wechsler agreed to list them, because "I do not propose to let you distort or obscure the clear-cut issue of freedom of the press involved in this proceeding." McCarthy answered him in a mocking wire, addressed to "Arthur Lawson, Editor, New York Post," since "that was Wechsler's Young Communist League name." McCarthy also remarked that he does not regard newspapermen as a "privileged" group, immune from investigation. With that, most newsmen probably agreed. No journalist of standing, not even Wechsler, was arguing that he was a member of a privileged profession. The press has not objected to congressional investigation in the past (TIME, Feb. 4, 1952). especially since journalism has had its share of Communist infiltration. The Post's editorials, under Editor Ted Thackrey, later editor of the now-defunct pinko Manhattan Compass, had followed the party line intermittently, and the paper still has its share of ex-Communists and onetime fel low travelers on its staff. But it was under Editor Wechsler that the Post became consistently antiCommunist.
In view of this, what alarmed newsmen were McCarthy's methods: he seemed even less interested in systematically investigating subversives on U.S. newspapers than in carrying on a personal vendetta against a persistent critic.
Said the Louisville Courier-Journal in an editorial: A "clear attempt to silence press criticism [was] launched this week . . . The hearing was, of course, a flagrant and cynical attempt to frighten more timid newspapers ... It did not intimidate Mr. Wechsler . . . But it will undoubtedly warn off other papers who might shrink from a brawl with low-blow Joe . . . We heartily endorse Mr. Wechsler's own demand that the American Society of Newspaper Editors study the transcript of this bullying private hearing . . ."