W. Joseph Campbell

Archive for the ‘Murrow-McCarthy myth’ Category

, , , , , , ,

‘Commentary’ reviews ‘Getting It Wrong’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Reviews, Washington Post, Watergate myth on June 4, 2010 at 11:27 am

The June 2010 number of Commentary magazine includes a fine, favorable, and thoughtful review of Getting It Wrong, my new book about media-driven myths.

The reviewer, Andrew Ferguson, who writes the “Press Man” column for Commentary, says of Getting It Wrong:

“It may be the best book about journalism in recent memory; it is certainly the most subversive.”

A wonderful, telling line, that.

He also writes:

“Campbell does what journalists, and most journalism professors, seldom think to do when they exchange the oft-repeated tales: he checks them out. And through a pitiless accretion of detail, he dissolves them one by one.

“As he reveals, Edward R. Murrow did not ‘bring down Joe McCarthy’ with his famous 1954 episode of See It Now; Campbell looked up the poll numbers and found that McCarthy’s favorability ratings were in free fall well before Murrow took to the air.

“No, Cronkite did not turn the public against the Vietnam War with an on-air editorial in February 1968: five months earlier, Gallup had registered that a plurality of Americans, 47 percent, agreed that the war was a mistake.

“And no, Woodward and Bernstein were not responsible for uncovering the entirety of the Watergate scandal; as reporters, they had pretty much run out of scoops by October 1972, when congressional investigators, criminal prosecutors, and other newspapers took over the story and drove it till President Nixon’s resignation in August 1974.

“And no, the bestselling author David Halberstam, who promoted each of these stories with unfailing pomposity, was not a reliable chronicler of even the most recent past.”

Ferguson wraps up his review by writing:

“Journalism’s myths about journalism, you’ll notice, are self-aggrandizing. They cast the journalist as hero. No wonder they’re so popular… among journalists. We warm ourselves by such tales, draw compensation and comfort from them, which is why they’re taught in our trade schools as elements of basic training.”

WJC

Related:

, , , , , , , ,

Media myths, the ‘junk food of journalism’

In Debunking, Furnish the war, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Spanish-American War, Washington Post, Watergate myth on May 26, 2010 at 9:14 pm

Media-driven myths, the subject of my soon-to-be-published book, Getting It Wrong, are prominent tales of doubtful authenticity—false, dubious, or improbable stories about the news media that masquerade as factual.

The  myths addressed and debunked in the book include the notion that two intrepid reporters for the Washington Post took down Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency, that Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now television program brought an end to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communists-in-government witch-hunt, and that newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst vowed to “furnish the war” with Spain at the end of the 19th century.

“In a way,” I write in Getting It Wrong, media myths “are the junk food of journalism—alluring and delicious, perhaps, but not especially wholesome or nourishing.”

But why bother: Why devote a book to debunking media-driven myths?

It’s a question that, somewhat to my surprise, arises not infrequently.

Several answers offer themselves.

For one, there is inherent value is seeking to set straight the historical record. As I write in Getting It Wrong, “the effort to dismantle [media myths] is certainly worthy, if only to insist on a demarcation between fact and fiction.” That effort is aligned with a core objective of newsgathering—that of getting it right.

Media-driven myths, moreover, are neither trivial nor innocuous. They can have adverse consequences. They tend, for example, to minimize the nuance and complexity of historical events and offer simplistic and misleading interpretations instead. It’s effortless and undemanding to say the Washington Post brought down Nixon, that Murrow ended McCarthyism, or that Hearst plunged the United States into war with Spain. The historical reality in each of those cases is, of course, significantly more complex.

So media-driven myths distort popular understanding about the roles and functions of journalism in American society. They tend to confer on the news media far more power and influence than they typically wield.

Media influence, I write in the book, usually “is trumped by other forces” and further undercut by the traditional self-view of American journalists as messengers first, rather than as makers and shapers of news.

What’s more, the news media these days are too splintered and diverse—print, broadcast, cable, satellite, online—to exert much in the way of collective and sustained influence on policymakers or media audiences.

Thus, debunking media-driven myths can help to locate media influence in a more coherent context. Getting It Wrong offers the case that such influence tends to modest, nuanced, and situational.

There are occasions, though, when the splintered news media coalesce and devote exceptionally intense attention to a single topic—such as Hurricane Katrina’s rampage along the Gulf Coast nearly five years ago. The news media gave themselves high marks for their coverage of the disaster’s aftermath, especially of the federal government’s fitful response.

But as I discuss in Getting It Wrong, the coverage also was characterized by highly exaggerated reports of nightmarish violence and wanton criminality in New Orleans in the hurricane’s wake. The misreporting of the disaster’s aftermath, I write, effectively “defamed a battered city and impugned its residents at a time of their deep despair.”

Thus, another reason why debunking matters—media-driven myths can and do feed prejudices and stereotypes.

Finally, confronting media myths discourages the tendency to regard prominent journalists in extreme terms—as heroes or villains. Piercing the myth surrounding Murrow renders him somewhat less Olympian. Similarly, debunking the myth about Hearst and his purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain makes him seem less manipulative, and less demonic.

Getting It Wrong is a work with a provocative edge. Given that it takes on some of the most treasured stories in American journalism, it could not be otherwise.

WJC

This post first appeared at the University of California Press blog.

, , , , , , , , , ,

‘A debunker’s work is never done’

In Bay of Pigs, Bra-burning, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, New York Times, Reviews, War of the Worlds, Washington Post, Watergate myth, Yellow Journalism on May 21, 2010 at 6:14 pm

So notes the inestimable media critic Jack Shafer in his review of my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong, posted today at slate.com.

And what a generous, engaging, and insightful review it is.

Under the headline “The Master of Debunk,” Shafer notes that “the only way to debunk an enshrined falsehood is with maximum reportorial firepower.

“Toting big guns and an itchy trigger-finger is American University professor W. Joseph Campbell, whose new book Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism flattens established myths that you were brought up to believe were true.”

Shafer’s review specifically discusses a variety of media-driven myths, including William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain; the so-called “Cronkite moment” that supposedly altered President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam policy; the Bay of Pigs suppression myth that erroneously says President John F. Kennedy persuaded the New York Times to spike a story about the pending U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba, and the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate.

Shafer rightly points out that “a debunker’s work is never done” and to that end notes my recent post at Media Myth Alert about Evan Thomas’ new book, The War Lovers. The book embraces myths of the yellow press period in American journalism, including the Hearst vow.

Shafer thoughtfully considers the tenacity of media-driven myths, writing:

“Some myths endure because the stories are so compelling, like the Hearst tale and the alleged mayhem caused by Orson Welles’ [War of the Worlds] broadcast. Others survive because our prejudices nourish them (“crack babies,” bra burners) or because pure repetition has drummed them into our heads, smothering the truth in the process.

“The best tonic for the brain fever caused by media myths is an open mind and a free inquiry,” he writes.

Shafer wraps up the review by invoking this observation, by Jonathan Rauch:

“It is the error we punish, not the errant.”

Shafers adds:

“Of course when you do such a good job punishing the error, as Campbell does, you don’t need to bother with the errant.”

WJC

Related:

, , , , ,

Remembering ‘journalism hero’ Murrow, 45 years on

In Anniversaries, Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth on April 27, 2010 at 9:46 am

The Poughkeepsie Journal notes the 45th anniversary today of the  death of legendary broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow.

Murrow died April 27, 1965, at his farm near Pawling, N.Y., about 20 miles from Poughkeepsie. Murrow, a chainsmoker, fell victim to lung cancer. He had just turned 57.

Chainsmoking Ed Murrow

Inevitably, the Poughkeepsie Journal tribute–which carried the headline, “Journalism hero Edward R. Murrow lives on”–recalled Murrow’s famous See It Now documentary program in March 1954. That was when he took on the red-baiting Republican senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R. McCarthy.

The newspaper’s article said Murrow’s program on McCarthy “is credited for exposing the senator’s tactics by using clips of his own words, and helped lead to the senator’s downfall.”

The program’s mythical dimensions are addressed in my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong, in which I note:

“See It Now that night was powerful television. More accurately, it was a hearty serving of advocacy journalism. … Murrow and his See It Now team assembled a series of film clips that was decidedly unflattering to McCarthy.”

I also write:

“McCarthy’s oddball appearance and mannerisms—his hulking, menacing presence, his nutty laugh, his five o’clock shadow, his careless grooming that allowed strands of thinning, greasy hair to creep down his forehead—were among the most revealing and most unforgettable moments of the program.”

But did the show expose McCarthy’s tactics?

Not at all.

McCarthy had burst upon the national scene four years earlier, claiming in a series of speeches that scores of communists, communist sympathizers, or persons of risk were embedded in the U.S. State Department.

His charges were almost immediately challenged by Drew Pearson, a nationally syndicated muckraking columnist based in Washington, D.C.

“The Senator from Wisconsin has been a healthy watchdog of some government activities, but the alleged communists which he claims are sheltered in the State Department just aren’t,” Pearson wrote in February 1950, more than four years before Murrow’s program on McCarthy.

So did the See It Now show “helped lead to the senator’s downfall,” as the Poughkeepsie Journal claims?

Not so much.

By the time Murrow took to the air to confront McCarthy, the senator’s favorability ratings had already hit the skids.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, “it wasn’t as if Americans in early 1954 were hoping for someone to step up and expose McCarthy, or waiting for a white knight like Murrow to tell them about the toxic threat the senator posed.”

Thanks to Pearson, and other journalists, they knew.

WJC

, , , , , , , , ,

One paragraph, three myths

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, New York Times, Washington Post, Watergate myth on April 21, 2010 at 11:45 am

A column posted today at a Canadian online news site achieved the feat of working three media-driven myths into a single paragraph.

Here’s what the columnist wrote, in a paean to the power and influence that traditional news media once wielded, supposedly:

“A Walter Cronkite could, however belatedly, expose the pointlessness of Vietnam. Famously, Edward R. Murrow deflated McCarthy. A pair of scruffy reporters could bring down a Nixon.”

Three sentences, three myths–a trifecta that is very rare.

All three media-driven myths are addressed, and debunked, in my book, Getting It Wrong, to be published in summer by the University of California Press.

The reference to Cronkite is to the CBS anchorman’s report of February 27, 1968, in which he said the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam. As I write in Getting It Wrong, such a characterization was scarcely original or exceptional at the time. It was no exposé.

Indeed, nearly seven months before Cronkite’s pronouncement, the New York Times had suggested in a front-page report that the war was stalemated.

Victory in Vietnam, the Times report said, “is not close at hand. It may be beyond reach.”

That Murrow “deflated” Senator Joseph R. McCarthy is another media myth, stemming from Murrow’s See It Now television program of March 9, 1954.

Murrow in fact was quite belated in confronting McCarthy and the senator’s communists-in-government witch hunt.

The half-hour See It Now program on McCarthy came many months–even years–after other journalists had pointedly challenged the senator and his bullying tactics. Eric Sevareid, a friend and CBS colleague of Murrow, pointedly noted that Murrow’s program “came very late in the day.”

In an interview in 1978, Sevareid said: “The youngsters read back and they think only one person in broadcasting and the press stood up to McCarthy and this has made a lot of people feel very upset, including me, because that program came awfully late.”

And by the time Murrow’s report aired, McCarthy’s favorable ratings had been in decline for three months, as also I note in Getting It Wrong.

The Canadian columnist’s reference to “a pair of scruffy reporters” who supposedly brought down Richard Nixon is, of course, to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who covered the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post.

As I’ve noted in previous posts at MediaMythAlert, the notion that the reporters brought down Nixon and his corrupt presidency is a myth that even the Post has tried to dismiss.

Howard Kurtz, the newspaper’s media reporter, wrote in 2005, for example:

“Despite the mythology, The Post didn’t force Richard Nixon from office—there were also two special prosecutors, a determined judge, bipartisan House and Senate committees, the belated honesty of [former White House lawyer] John Dean and those infamous White House tapes.”

Kurtz’s observations parallel those of Stanley I. Kutler, a leading historian of the  Watergate scandal, who has written:

“The fact is, an incredible array of powerful actors all converged on Nixon at once—the FBI, prosecutors, congressional investigators, the judicial system.”

The three myths are stories well-known and even cherished in American journalism. They almost always are cited as examples of media power and influence, of journalists at their courageous best.

But as I write in Getting It Wrong:

“To identify these tales as media myths is to confront the reality that the news media are not the powerful agents they, and many others, assume them to be.”

WJC

, , , , , , , , ,

In today’s ‘Outlook’ section

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Newspapers, Washington Post, Watergate myth on April 11, 2010 at 12:13 pm

An abbreviated version of my recent guestpost at the “Political Bookworm” blog appeared today in the “Outlook” section of the Washington Post.

Here’s the text of the “Outlook” piece, with links that I’ve added:

W. Joseph Campbell, a professor of communication at American University, busts some media myths in his book, “Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism,” coming in July from the University of California Press. Here are three of Campbell’s biggies:

1. William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow, telegraphed to the artist Frederic Remington in Cuba, to “furnish the war” with Spain. Hearst denied making such a statement. The telegram containing his purported pledge has never turned up. The “furnish the war” anecdote can be traced to 1901 and a memoir by another journalist, James Creelman, who did not say when or how he learned the story about Hearst’s vow.

2. Edward R. Murrow brought an end to Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy’s communists-in-government witch hunt. This myth stems from Murrow’s CBS program “See It Now” on March 9, 1954, when the newsman dissected McCarthy’s crude investigative techniques and taste for the half-truth — none of which was unknown to American audiences at the time. The myth took hold even though years before the program aired, several prominent journalists — including Washington-based syndicated columnist Drew Pearson — had become searching critics of McCarthy and his tactics.

Nixon resigns, 1974

3. The Washington Post’s investigative reporting brought down Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency. Katharine Graham, The Post’s publisher during the Watergate period, said in 1997: “Sometimes people accuse us of bringing down a president, which of course we didn’t do. The processes that caused [Nixon’s] resignation were constitutional.” She was right, but the complexities of Watergate are not readily recalled these days. What does stand out is a media-centric interpretation that the dogged reporting of Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought Nixon down.

WJC

, , , ,

Murrow had McCarthy ‘on his show’? Not quite

In Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth on April 10, 2010 at 3:11 pm

The myth and misunderstanding associated with Edward R. Murrow’s famous broadcast on CBS about Senator Joseph R. McCarthy are many, and tenacious.

Murrow in 1954

Murrow in 1954

Notable among them is that Murrow’s documentary-style See It Now program of March 9, 1954, exposed McCarthy’s red-baiting ways and abruptly halted the senator’s communists-in-government witch-hunt.

Neither is true, for reasons I discuss in my forthcoming book about media-driven myths, Getting It Wrong.

Another misconception about the Murrow-McCarthy confrontation was raised yesterday, in an item titled “Yellow-bellied journalism” and posted at the Daily Caller online site.  The “yellow-bellied journalism” item stated:

“The problem with the mainstream media is not that they are liberals. It’s that they are cowards. They simply will not engage with any thought that threatens their worldview.

“It’s important to remember that it wasn’t always this way. There once was a time when liberal journalists had the guts to engage, and engage deeply, with the ideas of those who disagreed with them. Edward R. Murrow had Joseph McCarthy on his show.”

That’s an interesting comment about contemporary journalists lacking guts. But as for the point that Murrow had McCarthy “on his show”?

Well, not exactly.

Murrow’s See It Now program of March 9, 1954, was an unrelenting laceration of McCarthy. Murrow made devastatingly effective use of film footage of the senator in action in what was a bravado performance in advocacy journalism.

As I write in Getting It Wrong: “Through clever editing of film of McCarthy in action, Murrow and his See It Now team prepared a powerful indictment” of the senator and his crude investigative tactics.

I also note that  “McCarthy’s oddball appearance and mannerisms—his hulking, menacing presence, his nutty laugh, his five o’clock shadow, his careless grooming that allowed strands of thinning, greasy hair to creep down his forehead—were among the most revealing and most unforgettable moments of the program.”

And as the show neared its end that night, Murrow declared:

“The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies.”

But McCarthy wasn’t “on the show” to offer counter-arguments. There were no question-answer exchange between the protagonists. Murrow didn’t really “engage” McCarthy, not in person anyway.

Instead, Murrow gave McCarthy a chance to respond at another time, stating at the outset of the program:

“If the Senator feels that we have done violence to his words or pictures and so desires to speak, to answer himself, an opportunity will be afforded him on this program.”

McCarthy took up the offer, and the See It Now program of April 6, 1954, was devoted to his response, in which McCarthy claimed Murrow was “a symbol, a leader and the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual Communists and traitors.”

McCarthy’s rebuttal was rambling, awkward, and unpersuasive.  It was a tedious embarrassment that did McCarthy no good.

And it came nearly a month after Murrow’s memorable, indeed mythical, television program.

WJC

, , , , , ,

15 movies about journalists: At least 3 boosted myths

In Cinematic treatments, Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Washington Post, Watergate myth on April 8, 2010 at 7:47 pm

It was the day of the journalist (“Dia do Jornalista”) in Brazil yesterday and to help mark the occasion, the RevistaMonet blog posted a lineup, with brief descriptions, of 15 movies about the work of journalists.

They included classics such as The Front Page and His Girl Friday, as well as surprises such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Superman Returns.

All 15 were English-language films. At least three of them have contributed to, or helped solidify, media-driven myths.

The three myth-builders: All the President’s Men; Good Night, and Good Luck, and my favorite, Citizen Kane.

Cinema’s role in solidifying media-driven myths is discussed in Getting It Wrong, my next book, which will be out in the summer.

“Cinematic treatments,” I write, “influence how historical events are collectively remembered and can harden media-driven myths against debunking.”

That certainly was so with All the President’s Men, the 1976 screen adaptation of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s book by the same title.

The film characterized Bernstein and Woodward, both of the Washington Post, as central and essential to unraveling the Watergate scandal that toppled President Richard Nixon.

The upshot, I write in  Getting It Wrong, has been “to solidify and elevate the heroic-journalist myth” of Watergate and sustain it in the collective memory.

Indeed, it’s hard to think of Watergate without thinking of All the President’s Men.

Similarly, the 2005 motion picture Good Night, and Good Luck served to popularize and extend the media myth that broadcasting legend Edward R. Murrow exposed and abruptly ended the communists-in-government witch-hunt of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

Good Night, and Good Luck was a dramatic retelling of Murrow’s See It Now program on McCarthy, which aired on CBS on March 9, 1954, and often is credited with exposing McCarthy’s crude investigative tactics and bullying ways.

McCarthy in 1954

But as I point out in Getting It Wrong, Murrow’s program on McCarthy came very late–years after other journalists had confronted and challenged the red-baiting senator. By 1954, it wasn’t as if American audiences were waiting for a white knight like Murrow to tell them of the toxic threat McCarthy posed.

They already knew. And in the months immediately before Murrow’s program, the senator’s favorability ratings had begun to fall.

While it never explicitly said as much, Good Night, and Good Luck left the inescapable but erroneous impression that Murrow had courageously and single-handedly challenged and stopped McCarthy.

Citizen Kane, which was released in 1941, arguably is the finest motion picture ever made about journalism: It may have been the best movie, ever.

It certainly was Orson Welles’ towering and most memorable cinematic achievement. Kane was vaguely based on the life and times of media mogul William Randolph Hearst.

Kane‘s contribution to media mythmaking came in a scene that paraphrased Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain at the end of the 19th century.

As I note in Getting It Wrong,  the Hearstian vow lives on despite a nearly complete absence of supporting documentation. It lives on even though the telegram that supposedly contained Hearst’s message has never turned up. It lives on even though Hearst denied ever making such a statement.

Like many media-driven myths, the story of Hearst’s purported vow is almost too good not to be true.

And given cinematic treatment, it may be impossible ever to inter.

WJC

, , , ,

Did he say it? A curious Murrow quote

In Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth on March 30, 2010 at 2:38 pm

Edward R. Murrow’s bravery in taking on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in a televised report in 1954 is the stuff of legend–and of media-driven myth.

The notion that Murrow’s half-hour CBS program halted McCarthy’s communists-in-government witch hunt is one of 10 media-driven myths addressed, and debunked, in my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong.

Murrow: Did he say it?

The courage Murrow supposedly showed back then was invoked yesterday in a commentary at the Huffington Post blog. The commentary deplored the decline of civility in American political life and declared:

“One of the most courageous heroes steering Americans back to sanity during the McCarthy period, Edward R. Murrow, commented: ‘We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.'”

Besides the reference to Murrow as hero, I was struck by the quotation’s second sentence:

“When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”

I wondered: Did Murrow really say that?

The first portion of the quote–“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty”–is quite familiar. Murrow intoned the passage during his 1954 program on McCarthy, in a closing editorial comment.

But the rest of quotation– “When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it”–was not uttered during Murrow’s program on McCarthy.

I ran that passage through the “historical newspapers” database, which includes the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. No articles quoting the passage were returned.

A search of the LexisNexis database produced a few returns, but none dated before 2001. And none stated when and where Murrow made the comment.

Among the LexisNexis returns was a book review published in 2003 in the Washington Post. The review invoked the “loyal opposition” passage and said Murrow made the remark “half a century ago, at the height of the McCarthy era.” But exactly when and where was left unsaid.

Harry Reid, now the U.S. Senate majority leader, invoked the passage, and cited Murrow as its author, in a speech in 2006 about Iraq. But Reid didn’t say when and where Murrow supposedly made the comment.

Otherwise, the articles, statements, and letters to the editor retrieved from LexisNexis offered no details about the quotation’s derivation.

A Google search produced links to nearly 9,000 online sites that cite the passage. A check of several of those sites turned up nothing about the quote’s derivation.

Google Books identifies seven books that contain the verbatim passage, none of which was published before 2003. None of the seven books is a biography about Murrow.

I could be wrong, but the passage strikes me as dubious, as a flexible, handy, all-purpose comment useful in scoring points by the political left as well as the right.

If it were genuine, if Murrow really said it, its derivation wouldn’t be difficult to track down.

Moreover, the quotation seems almost too neat and tidy to be authentic.

In that sense, it’s evocative of William Randolph Hearst’s often-quoted vow to “furnish the war” with Spain.

And that is a hardy and enduring media-driven myth.

WJC

, , , ,

That heroic Ed Murrow: The myth endures

In Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth on March 29, 2010 at 10:30 am

Few media-driven myths are as tenacious as the notion that Edward R. Murrow abruptly ended the communists-in-government witch-hunt of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

The myth dates to March 9, 1954, when Murrow’s 30-minute See It Now program on CBS television examined the campaign of innuendo, exaggeration, and half-truth that McCarthy had been waging for more than four years.

And the myth was invoked today at Minnesota Public Radio’s online site, in a commentary that declared:

“In the spring of 1954, McCarthy’s crusade of insinuation, innuendo and guilt by association was brought to an end by journalist Edward R. Murrow and Joseph Welsh, attorney for the U.S. Army.”

(The commentary mentioned Welsh because he dramatically confronted McCarthy at a congressional hearing in June 1954, pointedly asking the senator: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”)

As for Murrow, though, his See It Now program on McCarthy was quite belated.

He took on McCarthy only after several other journalists had challenged the senator and his tactics for months, even years.

The Murrow-McCarthy myth is one of 10 that I address, and debunk, in my book, Getting It Wrong. (Note: A second edition of Getting It Wrong came out in 2017.)

I point out in the book that even Murrow’s friend and CBS colleague, Eric Sevareid, “chafed at the misleading interpretation attached to the See It Now program which, he noted, ‘came very late in the day.’

“Sevareid said: ‘The youngsters read back and they think only one person in broadcasting and the press stood up to McCarthy and this has made a lot of people feel very upset, including me, because that program came awfully late.’”

Murrow, himself, acknowledged that his accomplishments in confronting McCarthy were modest, that he had at best reinforced what others had long said about the Republican senator.

I note in Getting It Wrong that Jay Nelson Tuck, then the television critic for the New York Post, wrote in April 1954 that Murrow felt “almost a little shame faced at being saluted for his courage in the McCarthy matter.

“He said he had said nothing that … anyone might not have said without a raised eyebrow only a few years ago,” Tuck wrote.

In no way, then, can Murrow’s See It Now program be said to have “brought to an end” the McCarthy menace.

By the time Murrow took to the air in March 1954, McCarthy’s popularity was already in decline. By then, other journalists–notably Washington’s leading muckraker, Drew Pearson–had called attention to the senator’s crude investigative techniques. And the Army-McCarthy hearings, at which Welch gained lasting fame, proved pivotal to the senator’s downfall.

The hearings led to the Senate’s censuring McCarthy, and to his retreat into political oblivion.

WJC