Matthew Pressman
THE WASHINGTON POST – Ask people what’s wrong with political journalism in America, and you’re likely to get a long list: a focus on personalities instead of policy, an obsession with scandal, too much reliance on anonymous sources, liberal bias.
Drew Pearson, arguably the most influential political columnist in United States (US) history, could be faulted for all those shortcomings and more.
And yet, it’s hard not to admire Pearson after reading Donald A Ritchie’s engaging new biography, The Columnist: Leaks, Lies, and Libel in Drew Pearson’s Washington.
As a radio commentator and co-creator of the daily column Washington Merry-Go-Round – which appeared under Pearson’s name from 1932 to 1969 and at its height ran in more than 600 newspapers – Pearson was zealously devoted to the principle that Americans had a right to know what their leaders were doing, planning and, above all, hiding.
He carried the torch of muckraking journalism during an era when most reporters simply published what politicians said, without questioning or challenging them.
As one newspaper wrote of Pearson in 1961, “Regardless of party he went after the crooks at the public trough.
He has been, in his day, responsible for sending more dishonest Congressmen to jail, for exposing more shady practices in our nation’s capital than perhaps any other single individual.”
Ironically, this tribute to Pearson came as part of an editorial explaining that the newspaper was dropping his column.
The conservative editors considered him too left-wing, and the sympathetic hearing he gave Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during a series of interviews was the last straw.
Pearson knew that his reputation as a liberal would cost him, but he consistently put principles over profit.
His relentless criticism of Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s caused the sponsors of his radio show to desert him and many papers to stop publishing the Merry-Go-Round (it also caused McCarthy to physically assault Pearson in the cloakroom of a Washington club; then-senator Richard Nixon broke them up).
And throughout his career, Pearson refused to carry libel insurance or to have his syndicate agree to pay any libel judgements against him, as did other scandalmongering columnists such as Walter Winchell and Westbrook Pegler.
If the syndicate knew that it would be on the hook for lawsuits, Pearson reasoned, it would force him to cut controversial accusations and to issue retractions in response to legal threats.
This earned Pearson editorial freedom, and he used it. He was sued at least 120 times but paid out only one settlement.
In all of the other cases, he won or had the complaint withdrawn – an impressive record considering that most of these cases came before the landmark New York Times v Sullivan Supreme Court decision (1964), which made it harder for public figures to win libel claims against journalists.
Although Pearson was denounced as a liar by numerous politicians – including Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, whose policies he generally supported – The Columnist showed his uncanny knack for getting stories right. “If something smells wrong, I go to work,” he said, and his nose rarely led him astray.
There were times, however, when Pearson showed questionable judgement, especially in blurring – or rather, obliterating – the line between journalism and advocacy.
In 1938, for example, he wanted to oust Democratic Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland, who in addition to obstructing New Deal legislation had helped get Pearson’s father removed from his post as governor of the US Virgin Islands.
Pearson turned the full firepower of his column and radio programme against Tydings, launching flimsy accusations of incompetency and corruption.
Pearson even raised money and wrote speeches for Tydings’ primary opponent.
In 1956, when Pearson discovered that Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had been doing favours for the contractor Brown and Root, one of his biggest campaign funders, the columnist agreed to drop the story in exchange for Johnson’s promise to support Pearson’s preferred candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Estes Kefauver.
In both instances, Pearson compromised his principles for nothing; Tydings won reelection and LBJ didn’t even try to advance Kefauver’s candidacy against that of the eventual nominee, Adlai Stevenson.
The tension between Pearson’s mostly admirable ends and his sometimes unsavoury means is fertile ground for a biographer. Raised in a Quaker household, Pearson believed deeply in honesty and morality, values he paired with a strong internationalist bent.
His initial career goal was to be a diplomat rather than a journalist, but he realised that path was mostly reserved for independently wealthy men, not a college teacher’s son like him.
Humility, however, is one Quaker attribute that Pearson never exhibited – in his career or his personal life. At age 26, as a freelance journalist hustling for assignments, he began courting the 18-year-old countess Felicia Gizycka, daughter of the powerful Washington society figure Eleanor ‘Cissy’ Patterson, who became publisher of the Washington Times-Herald.
Pearson got the young countess – who was desperate to escape her domineering mother – to accept his marriage proposal by promising that he’d agree to a divorce with no conditions after two years if she wanted it. He felt sure he could win her over (he was wrong; they divorced right on schedule).
Such details about Pearson’s personal affairs are peppered throughout the book, but Ritchie does not delve deeply into the columnist’s private or inner life.
Pearson’s professional travails provide plenty of drama. Ritchie, formerly the official historian of the US Senate and the author of several books on political reporting, weaves the columnist’s decades of political, legal and journalistic battles into a brisk and compelling narrative.
Especially poignant is the account of Pearson’s later years, when he ran into financial troubles, had an extramarital affair with his secretary exposed and was eclipsed by his younger partner, Jack Anderson, who inherited the column from him.
“All the best stories are Jack Anderson’s,” Pearson admitted not long before his death.
Muckraking journalism certainly didn’t die with Pearson, but never again in the US has a single figure wielded influence like his – publishing investigative scoops nearly every day, with a vast audience from across the ideological spectrum.
These days, most investigative reporting takes longer to produce, gets vetted more carefully and is, frankly, better.
Still, for sheer ability to strike fear into the hearts of corrupt public officials, it’s unlikely that any journalist will ever match Drew Pearson.
