Time magazine, on October 22, 1951 , put Sen. McCarthy on the cover of the issue with the title “DEMAGOGUE McCARTHY: Does he deserve well of the republic?” under his picture. The article, “Weighed in the Balance,” critiques McCarthy’s actions up until that point in time. But they do not just summarize the events; they put their own spin on how they want the audience to understand. In describing his failure to produce evidence of the varying number of communists, Time said:

Logically that failure might have been expected to end the rocketing flight of Joe McCarthy. That it was a beginning, not an end, is partly explained by McCarthy’s personality. Another man, humiliated by failure to produce evidence he said he held, would have retreated and wiped his bloody nose. McCarthy, who was a boxer in college, says: “I learned in the ring that the moment you draw back and start defending yourself, you’re licked. You’ve got to keep boring in.” This is not necessarily true of boxing or politics – but Joe McCarthy thinks it is true. (21)

This paragraph sets up the rest of the article, and as the article continues the insults and accusations get blatantly more pointed. The biography that I briefly described above was fleshed out so that it pointed out the damning character traits, like a gambling habit, that McCarthy showed earlier in his life and carried over into his present tirade. Even the captions under the photos of McCarthy had snide remarks. For example, under a photograph of McCarthy sitting in the tail gunner’s cockpit, the caption reads: “He wanted to shoot at something – even coconut trees” (22).

Surprisingly, the author spells out Time’s fate in the article as well. “McCarthy never answers criticisms, just savagely attacks the critic” (23). Based on this behavior, the author goes on to describe how McCarthy treated those in the media who publicly came out against him. “He regularly tries to intimidate reporters by going over their heads to their bosses” (23). The paragraph continues on to tell of a case in which a man, Drew Pearson, was kicked off of the radio because McCarthy “had demanded that Pearson’s radio sponsor, Adam Hat Stores, Inc., drop him immediately, and urged the public to boycott Adam hats” (23). Here McCarthy took on radio, a medium that produced shows that, at the time, had only one sponsor. Boycott that one sponsor and kill the show. Time magazine had several sponsors for just one issue and that might give them a little protection against McCarthy the Demagogue.

Response to this article was mixed. Some sided with “Millions [who] regarded as “a splendid American” and others thought “McCarthy a worse menace than the Communist conspiracy” (21). Two weeks after the article ran, Time published some of the responses that were written to the editor in the November 5 issue. Responses ranged from “Splendid article…” (8) to “Cancel my subscription…” (6).

According to Edwin R. Bayley, Joe McCarthy, of course, had a response to the article though the press was not informed of it. He wrote a letter to Henry R. Luce, Time’s publisher, on October 31 in which he demanded that Time amend its false accusations. Luce wrote a letter back saying the files had not been published because there was not enough evidence to support the claim. But McCarthy had already sent a telegram threatening to release those files, and Luce wrote back that there was nothing he could do to stop him. So McCarthy released the files. There was not much of any reaction to the files (169-170).

Evidently this was not enough for McCarthy. He took the issue public by writing yet another letter to Luce and then releasing the same letter to the press in January of the next year. The letter warned Luce that McCarthy was going to send out letters of evidence against Time to their advertisers. But the press did not just run the letters as Sen. McCarthy probably intended. Both the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor ran the news of the letter in conjunction with other evidence that would further darken McCarthy’s reputation. The article in the New York Times also talks about the investigation of the Senate Rules Committee into whether McCarthy should have the “right to retain his Senate seat” (9). The Christian Science Monitor’s staff writer Richard L. Strout cites a survey that was conducted by Dr. Hornell Hart of Duke University . This survey was “‘an impartial, factual analysis’ of 50 specific charges by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy” (10) that proved some of McCarthy’s charges were, in fact, wrong.

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