On 9 June 1930, Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle was shot dead in a crowded pedestrian tunnel beneath Michigan Avenue. The Tribune launched a crusade, declaring him a journalistic martyr murdered for asking too many questions. Within weeks, the truth emerged: Lingle had been living far beyond his reporter’s salary, maintaining close ties to Al Capone, and allegedly owed the gangster’s organisation $100,000 in gambling debts. Twenty-four years later, on 9 June 1954, another kind of reckoning arrived. In a televised Senate hearing watched by millions, Boston lawyer Joseph Welch confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy with a question that became famous: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?’ The moment is widely credited as the turning point that broke McCarthy’s power. Clara Vale explores two very different stories about accountability, the difference between access and independence, and the moments when someone finally asks the question everyone else has been thinking.

• Jake Lingle: The Reporter Who Wasn’t On 9 June 1930, Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle was murdered in a pedestrian tunnel during rush hour. The Tribune declared him a martyred journalist, but investigations soon revealed he had been living well beyond his salary, maintaining close ties to Al Capone, and allegedly owed $100,000 in gambling debts. The case forced American journalism to confront uncomfortable questions about the line between access and complicity.
• Have You No Sense of Decency? On 9 June 1954, during the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, Boston lawyer Joseph Welch confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy after the senator publicly attacked a young associate at Welch’s firm. Welch’s calm question, ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?’ became a turning point. The room applauded, McCarthy’s power began to deflate, and he was censured by the Senate later that year. The moment demonstrated how a quiet refusal to be intimidated could shift national sentiment.

• https://www.chicagotribune.com/
• https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings.htm
• https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1951-2000/Joseph-Welch-and-Joseph-McCarthy/
• https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-lists
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-McCarthy
• https://www.britannica.com/event/Prohibition-United-States-history-1920-1933