Ulysses Bradford (Guy Kibbee) is a small-town newspaper publisher who is called in to protect a big-city paper that has come under control of an isolationist, played by Otto Kruger. Tracy plays the managing editor, who has been going along with the regime but suffers a crisis of conscience when Kruger has the paper's publisher murdered and frames an ex-employee (an unbilled Larry Parks), making up and printing lurid details of the crime to boost circulation.
