The Reporter ceased publication in 1968 due to the widening gap between Ascoli’s hawkish stance on the Vietnam War on the one hand, and the opinions of readers and advertisers on the other.
[2] As the controversy over who lost China involved a rivalry between the pro-McCarthy FBI and the CIA, Elke van Cassel argues that "The Reporter got caught in the middle of this power struggle," siding with the latter.
[2] Two years before the publication of the China Lobby exposé, Senator William Knowland had accused the magazine of being supportive of the Chinese Communists, a charge that Ascoli vigorously denied.
The protagonist himself was like an overdrawn caricature of the villain—a villain who doubly wounded the nation with his reckless, haphazard persecution of harmless human beings and with the immunity he granted to Communist agents by not catching a single one of them.
It warned against a weakening of the Atlantic alliance, which it saw as being important not only as a security organization, but as a force for the triumph of democratic ideals and political and economic cooperation.
For example, in the decade before his joining the Nixon Administration, Henry Kissinger wrote several articles for the publication, among them one arguing for a more integrated Atlantic Alliance,[18] and another putting forth practical steps that could be taken towards German unification.
In his farewell to the readers of the magazine, Ascoli took liberals to task for being hesitant in denouncing the lack of ethics among some younger activists and called participatory democracy "one of the best recipes of establishing tyranny that has ever been concocted…"[22] In the same issue, Edmond Taylor referred to the May 1968 protests in France as "the nihilist revolution.
"[23] Similarly, Professor William P. Gerberding wrote that in his opinion it was "wrong and destructive to embrace or even to adopt a tolerant attitude toward the radical politics of, for example, the New Left or the black racists.
In 1966, journalist Richard C. Hottlett mocked the idea that there was no military solution to the conflict and argued that American political goals could be achieved only after security had been established.
[2] The magazine stressed the importance of ideas in the Cold War, and believed that the United States government needed to defend its political and economic system to the world.
Ascoli and other members of his staff were personally and professionally acquainted with some of the major figures of the mid-century American intelligence establishment and worked for a handful of organizations that were connected to or funded by the CIA.
[2] At the very least, it can be established that The Reporter and its staff had close working relationships with several influential government officials and agencies, including the CIA and other services engaged in promoting American ideals and interests through the media.