The Time a Newspaper Stared Down the Country's Largest Advertiser - ProPublica

Editor's Note: The news last week that Buzzfeed had deleted posts critical of advertisers got some of us at ProPublica wondering about any instances when news organizations stood up to advertiser pressure. As it turns out, ProPublica president Richard Tofel wrote a whole chapter of a book about one of those cases: In 1954, the Wall Street Journal and its publisher, Barney Kilgore, confronted General Motors. The little-remembered incident helped establish the notion that news organizations could and should preserve their independence from advertisers. Here is an adaptation from the book , "Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism. In 1954, General Motors was the largest company in the world. Its CEO was Harlow ("Red") Curtice. Curtice's world was a sheltered one. High-salaried assistants smooth his path, greet him wherever he arrives, order his drinks, fetch his newspapers. On May 3, 1954 Harlow Curtice can hardly have been pleased by what he found in one of the newspapers they fetched. Source: www.propublica.org