Drew Pearson

Drew Pearson born in Evanston, Illinois on December 13, 1897. He attended Swarthmore College, where he was the editor of the student newspaper, The Phoenix. In 1929 he became the diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Sun when he secretly published Washington Merry-Go-Round, a much talked about gossip-filled book that went on to be a national best seller. Pearson did not work alone, Robert S. Allen, another reporter, also worked with him on this anonymously released exposé on the behavior and misdoings of Washington officials. While the book would cost both reporters their job, it got them a widely syndicated column named after their best seller. While Allen left with the army during World War II, the muckraking column continued as Pearson wrote about the missteps of the Washington elite until his death. He reported on the abuse at the hands of General George Patton of the Seventh United States Army, threatening to shoot a solider suffering from combat fatigue. Pearson took up the case of American Communist Party member John Gates and stirred up controversy on the topic of his ban from participating in the D-Day landings and exposed Senator Thomas Dodd for financial misconduct. He even assisted Ethel L. Payne, an African-American Journalist and the “First Lady of the Black Press”, by reporting on her unfair treatment at the hands of Presidential press secretary James C. Haggerty and getting the complaint against Payne dropped. He became one of America’s most popular radio broadcasters, with his show on NBC Radio entitled Drew Pearson Comments. Pearson received the help of Jake Anderson later on with Washington Merry-Go-Round, who shared the columns byline by 1966 and took over the column in 1969. Pearson will go down in history as a crusader for the truth and an opponent of the corrupt and dishonest. He was never reluctant to take on a powerful Washington official and did not shy away from a subject, however controversial.

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