W. Joseph Campbell

Posts Tagged ‘Murrow’

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It took Murrow? Not in stopping McCarthy

In Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth on February 4, 2010 at 10:51 pm

Legendary broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow is a touchstone for courage in journalism, a model against which contemporary journalists almost always are found wanting.

Murrow in 1954 (Library of Congress)

Emblematic of Murrow’s courage was his standing up to Joseph R. McCarthy, the Red-baiting Republican senator from Wisconsin, at a time when, supposedly, no one else dared.

The occasion was Murrow’s 30-minute See It Now television program on CBS. The program aired March 9, 1954, and focused on McCarthy’s bullying tactics and taste for half-truth and reckless exaggeration.

That Murrow’s See It Now program brought down McCarthy is a great story. It’s also a delicious and tenacious  media-driven myth, one embraced and advanced by worshipful biographers, journalists, Murrow admirers, and even some media critics.

The myth was reiterated today in a commentary posted at the Cleveland Leader online alternative news outlet.

“It took a major media figure as Edward R. Murrow,” the commentary declared, “to strike the blow to reveal the truth of Sen. McCarthy.”

Well, not exactly.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, my forthcoming book about media-driven myths, Murrow “was very late in confronting McCarthy” and “did so only after other journalists had challenged the senator and his tactics for months, even years.”

I note that Eric Sevareid, Murrow’s friend and CBS colleague, chafed at the misleading interpretation, noting that Murrow’s program “came very late in the day.”

In an interview published in 1978, Sevareid added:

“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.”

Sevareid was correct. Interestingly, even Murrow acknowledged his role in taking down McCarthy was exaggerated. “It’s a sad state of affairs when people think I was courageous,” Murrow told Newsweek shortly after the See It Now show on McCarthy.

Well before that program aired,  a number prominent journalists—the Washington-based syndicated columnist Drew Pearson among them—had become “persistent and searching critics of McCarthy, his record, and his tactics,” I write in Getting It Wrong.

Pearson, I note, “first wrote about McCarthy’s wild allegations [about communists in government] on February 18, 1950, just days after McCarthy had begun raising them. Pearson called McCarthy the ‘harum-scarum’ senator and said that when he ‘finally was pinned down, he could produce … only four names of State Department officials whom he claimed were communists.'”

And none of the charges held water, Pearson wrote.

The legendary status associated with Murrow and his See It Now program has obscured and diminished the contributions of journalists such as Pearson who took on McCarthy long before March 1954, when doing so held no small risk.

It’s one of the hazards of media-driven myths: they can extend credit where credit is not entirely due.

WJC

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Murrow the brave? Not in McCarthy days

In Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth on January 29, 2010 at 7:22 pm

Legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow is given credit in a blog post today for having shown “great courage” during the days of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

In fact, Murrow was quite late to challenge Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, only doing so years after syndicated columnist Drew Pearson, among others, had taken on the demagogue.

Joe McCarthy, 1954

Even so, the notion that Murrow took down McCarthy in a television exposé in March 1954 lives on as an especially tenacious media-driven myth.

It’s a strange one, too, because the myth took hold despite the protestations of Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly.

As I note in my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong:

“Murrow said he recognized his accomplishments were modest, that at best he had reinforced what others had long said about McCarthy.”

But a posting today at the Rutherford Institute‘s “Speak Truth to Power” blog indulges the media myth, stating:

“Amid the Red Scare of the 1950s and the Joseph McCarthy era, people were often afraid to speak out against the paranoia being propagated through the media and the government. Fear and paranoia had come to grip much of the American population, and there was a horrible chill in the air.

“But with great courage, Murrow spoke up” on March 9, 1954, on his television documentary television program, show See It Now.

Murrow certainly showed courage during his career in broadcasting. He became a household name in the United States for his coverage from London during Nazi air raids in World War II.

But in early 1954, as I write in Getting It Wrong, “it wasn’t as if Americans … 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.

“By then, McCarthy and his tactics were well-known” and the senator had even “become a target of withering ridicule—a sign of diminished capacity to inspire dread.”

I further write in the book, which is due out in summer 2010:

“Long before the See It Now program, several prominent journalists—including the Washington-based syndicated columnist Drew Pearson—had become persistent and searching critics of McCarthy, his record, and his tactics.”

Pearson first challenged McCarthy in 1950, shortly after the senator began his communists-in-government campaign.

McCarthy's nemesis, Drew Pearson

As I say, Murrow and Friendly, his collaborator on See It Now, acknowledged the program on McCarthy was neither decisive nor necessarily brave.

Friendly wrote in his 1967 memoir, Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control:

“To say that the Murrow broadcast of March 9, 1954, was the decisive blow against Senator McCarthy’s power is as inaccurate as it is to say that Joseph R. McCarthy … single-handedly gave birth to McCarthyism.”

And Murrow told Newsweek a few weeks after the program:

“It’s a sad state of affairs when people think I was courageous.”

WJC

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Cinema and the tenacity of media myths

In Cinematic treatments, Debunking, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Watergate myth on January 17, 2010 at 12:41 pm

What explains the tenacity of many are media-driven myths? Why are many of them so resistant to debunking?

One important factor, and one that I explore in my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong, is high-quality cinematic treatment of popular media-centered stories.

The notion that Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and  Carl Bernstein brought down Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency was cemented by the 1976 motion picture, All the President’s Men. The movie was based on the reporters’ bestselling book by the same name, which appeared in June 1974, just as the Watergate scandal was nearing its dénouement with Nixon’s resignation.

The misguided, mediacentric view that Edward R. Murrow’s reporting in 1954 abruptly ended the communists-in-government witchhunt of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy is another myth that the cinema has solidified.

McCarthy in 1954 (Library of Congress)

Getting It Wrong describes how Murrow “was very late in confronting McCarthy” and how “he did so only after other journalists had challenged the senator and his tactics for months, even years.”

As I further write in Getting It Wrong, the Murrow-McCarthy myth “was sealed for another generation with the release in 2005 of Good Night, and Good Luck,” a movie that offered a dramatic version of the back story to Murrow’s See It Now program on McCarthy.

See It Now was Murrow’s weekly, news-oriented documentary program on CBS; the 30-minute show on McCarthy and his tactics aired March 9, 1954. Supposedly, it was so compelling that it stopped the demagogic senator in his tracks.

While Good Night, and Good Luck never explicitly said as much, it lent just that impression—that Murrow courageously and single-handedly ended McCarthy’s reign of terror. That’s how many critics interpreted Good Night, and Good Luck, and that view was reiterated recently in a post at the “Irish Central” online site.

The post described Good Night and Good Luck as telling “the story of ace reporter Edward Murrow who brought down the great witch hunter Joe McCarthy” and praised the movie’s director-star, George Clooney. (Clooney played the role of a slightly pudgy, ever-earnest Fred Friendly, Murrow’s producer.)

That post is an example of just how ingrained the Murrow-McCarthy myth has become — and how effectively high-quality cinematic treatments can be in hardening media myths against debunking.

The cinema is far from the only factor accounting for the tenacity of media myths.

But because movies can powerfully influence how historical events are collectively remembered, they lengthen the odds that some media-driven myths can ever be rolled back.

WJC

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Slaying the McCarthy dragon? It wasn’t Murrow

In Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth on January 10, 2010 at 2:46 pm

Few lessons in American journalism are as inspiring — but, in the end, as misplaced — as the notion of Edward R. Murrow’s slaying the dragon of McCarthyism in a single television program in 1954.

It’s a great story, how Murrow, the legendary figure of American broadcasting, stood up to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, when no one else would, or dared, and in so doing, brought an abrupt end to senator’s witchhunt for communists in the U.S. government.

Murrow in 1954 (Library of Congress)

It’s a tale that dates to the evening of March 9, 1954, and Murrow’s “Special Report on Joseph R. McCarthy,” which aired on the CBS television show, See It Now.

The epic confrontation of Murrow and McCarthy was recalled the other day in a commentary posted at the online edition of a Philipine newspaper, the News Today.

The commentary invoked the dragon metaphor, stating in part:

“Edward Murrow slew the dragon that was McCarthyism, ushering in the pure air of freedom enjoyed by his fellow Americans be they from the left, right, or center. Witch-hunting was thrashed to damnation, and Joseph McCarthy exited in ignominy.”

It is a great story; indeed, it’s one of the most treasured in American journalism.

But as I write in my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong, the notion that Murrow took down McCarthy and ended the senator’s witchhunting ways is a tenacious media-driven myth, one that obscures the more important contributions of journalists other than Murrow in McCarthy’s demise.

As I also write in Getting It Wrong:

“Long before the See It Now program” in March 1954, “several prominent journalists—including the Washington-based syndicated columnist Drew Pearson—had become persistent and searching critics of McCarthy, his record, and his tactics.”

Pearson’s contributions to unraveling the scourge of McCarthyism are, however, little recalled these days.

Interestingly, the media myth of Murrow v. McCarthy took hold despite the protestations of its central figures.

In the days and weeks following the See It Now program on McCarthy, Murrow said he recognized his accomplishments were modest, that at best he had reinforced what others had long said about McCarthy.

Jay Nelson Tuck, the television critic for the New York Post, wrote 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.”

Murrow told Newsweek magazine: “It’s a sad state of affairs when people think I was courageous.”

Murrow’s collaborator and co-producer, Fred W. Friendly, also rejected claims the program was pivotal or decisive, writing in his 1967 memoir:

“To say that the Murrow broadcast of March 9, 1954, was the decisive blow against Senator McCarthy’s power is as inaccurate as it is to say that Joseph R. McCarthy … single-handedly gave birth to McCarthyism.”

So why has the Murrow-McCarthy myth become so tenacious?

There are several reasons. A particularly persuasive explanation, in my view, is that mythologizing Murrow’s See It Now program on McCarthy serves, as I write in Getting It Wrong, “to affirm television’s sometimes-tenuous claim to seriousness of purpose.

“Enveloping the program in heroic terms is a way to identify and celebrate the potential of broadcast journalism, which often has been criticized for superficiality and a taste for the trivial. As it became an inescapable presence in American living rooms in the 1950s, television needed a hero and a heroic moment. Murrow and his ‘Report on Joseph R. McCarthy’ were both ….”

This is a point that communications scholar Gary Edgerton has addressed notably well, having written in 1992:

“In a deep and heartfelt sense, Murrow is the electronic media’s hero for self-justification. Commemorating a ‘patron saint of American broadcasting’ is also an act of testimony to the tenets of fairness, commitment, conscience courage, and social responsibility which compose the Murrow tradition for broadcast journalism.”

Besides, 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. It was quite well-known by then.

WJC