"The World's Greatest Hypocrites": White Men and Diplomatic Reporting in the Early Cold War. Issue 2 (July 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: McGarr, Kathryn J.
• Is Part Of: Modern American history. Volume 5:Issue 2(2022)
• Page Start: 143
• Page End: 161
• Publication Date: 2022-07
• Subjects: Cold War -- Political Culture -- Foreign Relations -- Journalism and Mass Media; United States -- History -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- History -- 20th century -- Periodicals; United States -- History -- 21st century -- Periodicals; 973.9005
• DOI: 10.1017/mah.2022.6
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2515-0456

Abstract

Abstract : When incorporating the press into historical narratives, scholars have often relied on published newspaper and magazine articles without interrogating how those pieces were produced. This article relies on the under-used archival papers of journalists in the early Cold War period to argue that they actively created a Washington consensus on foreign policy that kept economic determinism out of the U.S. public's understanding of policies like the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. In private, however, the more anticommunist public narrative was contradicted by a discourse that emphasized the importance of access to colonial raw materials. This private discourse was enabled by the Washington press corps' social spaces, which were segregated by race and gender and helped create a worldview that acknowledged the hypocrisy of the U.S. government but not their own.