# Say!... Who's running this war, anyway? J. Public reads the Korea headlines, November 1951

Jim Berryman's Washington Evening Star cartoon of 29 November 1951 seats J. Public on a bench below the Capitol dome, surrounded by four headlines in which the President and the Pentagon each deny, or are surprised by, news from Korea.

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      Say!... Who's running this war, anyway?

      Say!... Who's running this war, anyway? J. Public reads the Korea headlines, November 1951
      Jim Berryman's November 1951 cartoon: J. Public under the Capitol dome with four Korea headlines in which Truman and the Pentagon disown the news. Senate

## Techniques named on the archive record

Card stacking
      DateNovember 29, 1951Made byWashington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman)MediumCartoonCountryUnited StatesRegimeTruman AdministrationNARANAID 5730852; NAID 5743153SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives (NARA), Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (NAID 5730852) , retrieved October 3, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate, 5743153 (NAID 5743153).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  Jim Berryman's Washington Evening Star cartoon of 29 November 1951 seats J. Public on a bench below the Capitol dome, surrounded by four headlines in which the President and the Pentagon each deny, or are surprised by, news from Korea.

## What the cartoon shows

A worried man sits on a park bench with the Capitol dome behind him, surrounded by newspaper sheets. He is labelled J. PUBLIC, the everyman who turns up again and again in Berryman's cartoons. Each paper carries one headline, and they come in pairs.

SAY!....WHO'S RUNNING THIS WAR, ANYWAY?

TRUMAN DENIES HAVING ORDERED CEASE-FIRE IN KOREA

PENTAGON CONFUSED BY CEASE-FIRE REPORT

TRUMAN SURPRISED BY ATROCITY REPORTS

PENTAGON BEWILDERED BY ATROCITY REPORTS

J. PUBLIC

Text as transcribed by FRAME, signed "Jim Berryman." Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 5743153, in the series Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (NAID 5730852).

## The pairs

The headlines are built to rhyme. On the cease-fire, the President denies and the Pentagon is confused. On the atrocity reports, the President is surprised and the Pentagon bewildered. Nobody in either pair claims to know what happened, and the man on the bench is left to ask the question in the caption.

The cartoon is the cartoonist's arrangement. The FRAME record does not say whether these were four real headlines from that week or Berryman's summary of them, and it does not describe the cease-fire or the atrocity reports themselves, so neither does this page.

## What the public is owed

FRAME tags card stacking and calls it a weak fit, since the headlines are chosen and set side by side to make one point. The point is a fair one for a citizen to press. In wartime the executive asks the public to accept a great deal on trust: the draft, the casualty lists, the spending. In return the public is owed a government that can say who gave an order and what its soldiers are facing. If a president and a defense department were both learning the news from the newspaper, that bargain was not being kept. Whether the cartoon's picture was accurate is a question the record leaves open.

The drawing also shows why a free press matters during a war, which is when governments most want it quiet. Berryman's paper printed a cartoon mocking the commander in chief in the second year of the Korean fighting, under its own name, and nothing in the record suggests it paid any price for doing so. The original is now in the Senate's records. Other Korea cartoons from the same pen include the 1950 holiday toll against the casualty count and J.Q. Public at the blood donor center in 1953; the full run is on the Berryman cartoons hub, and the government's own Korea leaflets are in the Korean War messaging hub.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Say!... Who's running this war, anyway?, 29 November 1951. Washington Evening Star, cartoonist Jim Berryman.

- U.S. National Archives, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (series NAID 5730852), item NAID 5743153, catalog.archives.gov, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/berryman-whos-running-this-war-anyway-1951/