Commission on freedom of the press documents and reports (Ms.2009.013)

Historical note

Funded by grants from Time, Inc., and Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., the Commission on Freedom of the Press was established in 1943 to determine if freedom of the press was in danger in the United States. The commission was also referred to as the Hutchins Commission. Commission members included Robert Hutchins, chairman; Zechariah Chaffee, vice-chairman; John M. Clark; John Dickinson; William E. Hocking; Harold Lasswell; Archibald MacLeish; Charles Merriam; Reinhold Niebuhr; Robert Redfield; Beardsley Ruml; Arthur Schlesinger; and George N. Schuster. The general report of the Commission, A Free and Responsible Press, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1947.

This set of materials was collected by Zechariah Chafee, Jr.