"All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning."
Edward R. Murrow:
For the DefensePosted 2:09 p.m., Oct. 7, 2005
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Kevblog Note: What follows is an edited version of a letter I sent by e-mail on Thursday to Jack Shafer, the talented editor at large for the online Slate magazine. It is in response to a two-part story Shafer published on Slate, blasting George Clooney's Edward R. Murrow biopic, "Good Night, and Good Luck" as "bad history." Certainly no movie is likely to be good history, but I take Shafer to task for the reasons he condemns both the film, and by extension, Murrow's behavior at the climax of the McCarthy era.Shafer dismisses Murrow's role as too little, too late, accusuing him of going on the air with the famous anti-McCarthy episode of "See It Now" only after it was clear that McCarthy was already losing the support of the likes of then U.S. Rep. Richard Nixon and Chicago Tribune publisher Robert McCormick, largely because of the work of print journalists who had done the digging on McCarthy's sins well before Murrow went forward.
Shafer's facts are almost totally correct, though I take issue with his characterization of the "See It Now" broadcast, which I saw in its entirety on a February 2001 visit to the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. (I can assure you that McCarthy is never shown picking his nose....) The letter that follows explains why I think Shafer, despite having the raw facts mostly on his side, is wrong to brush aside the monumental and courageous contribution that Edward R. Murrow made at a critical time in the nation's history.
... Dear Jack:
In large part I don't disagree with your analysis, but I think you under-emphasize a point that is very important, and that helps explain the lingering impression, even the mythologiy, that has grown up around Edwqard R. Murrow, especially with his March 9, 1954, "See It Now" broadcast.
You point to ABC's landmark decision to broadcast gavel-to-gavel the Army-McCarthy hearings as evidence that other broadcasters engaged in more upfront and davastating coverage than Murrow. (The DuMont radio network also covered those hearings in full.) Fair enough, though those daytime broadcasts would have been missed by most working viewers. And the other networks, including CBS, did broadcast nightly roundups of the hearings.
Your main point, though, seems to be that print media reportage proved more essential in bringing down McCarthy while the work of the "knock-kneed" Murrow was all but an afterthought. Again, perhaps, a fair point.
You forget, however, that print is a "cool" medium, not one likely to stoke any kind of anti-McCarthy insurrection, at least not in the age of broadcast. TV--even in that early phase of the medium's existence primetime TV especially--is a hot, emotional medium. This is a very important point in this context.
Certainly what you are suggesting is true, that McCarthy was being torn down, brick by brick, by the print voices before that March 9 "See It Now" broadcast aired. But Murrow, it is also fair to say, came at McCarthy with a wrecking ball, by which I mean video, the most compelling of all media.
What you say is hardly irrelevant to the case--again, I do largely agree with you--but I also think you are too dismissive. Print may have been turning the tide with the Nixons and McCormicks of the world, but I think the tide of public opinion--and after all, that is ultimately what really matters--began to turn violently with the "See It Now" broadcast.
Murrow, you must remember, was by that time already something of an angelic figure, having brought the crisis in the Sudatenland to the doorsteps of Americans in real-time in 1938, later bringing the bombing of London directly to American ears, at no small risk to his own safety, in 1940. Before Murrow ever turned his face askance at a camera, he was already venerated.
So, much like Walter Cronkite would a decade and a half later, because of Murrow's vast credibility with the American public, coupled with his access to the most compelling media in existence, his decision to go forward with the "See It Now" episode was indeed of mighty importance.
You ignore another very basic factor that would have made any broadcaster cringe at going public with a McCarthy probe, a factor newspapers and magazines were not bothered by. Any radio or television station during that red-baiting era would have had every reason to fear the federal government might pull their broadcast licenses on the basis of propogating Communist propaganda. (Yes, Paley was chums with Eisenhower, but Eisenhower was under pressure from the anti-red hoards, too.) Newspapers, being unlicensed, had no such fears--though individual print journalists and editors certainly had very real worries of their own at the time.
There is an analogue to all this. It happened in 1973.
That year the print media--in this case the Washington Post, riding mostly alone--was exposing dirty doings in the Nixon White House in the Watergate scandal. Again, CBS News, under Cronkite--coming very much late to the game--made the decision to finally air an analysis of the story in detail. (If you'll recall, the second of what were supposed to be two 10-minute segments on consecutive Evening News broadcasts was pulled under pressure from the president.)
In both the 1954 and 1973 cases, even though much of the groundwork had already been laid and the framework each story disclosed by other, perhaps better newspaper journalists, it was television's decision to finally jump into the story that began to bring the public along. That is what Cronkite accomplished in '73, and I think that is what Murrow did in 1954.
Again, I don't disagree with most of your factual points, or most of your conclusions, but I think you are a touch too iconoclastic about the contribution that Murrow played in laying McCarthy down.
Certainly the same thing would have been done sooner or later, with or without Murrow, but how soon? How late? How many more people would have been victimized? How many more lives and careers destroyed? Maybe not many, maybe a whole lot.
Whatever is the case, Murrow helped to halt whatever momentum McCarthy still had, killed it right in its tracks. No one else who had the tools to do that--meaning the power of television--had the courage to use it quite as quickly as Murrow. Perhaps you could argue that he should have done it sooner. But you really can't say that the fact he ultimately did choose to do so was a meaningless decision. That's simply wrong.
Certainly, McCarthy, who later used "See It Now" as a platform to discredit Morrow as "the leader and cleverest of the jackal pack," did not share that view.
Having not seen the movie, I am not arguing its merits or Clooney's choices one way or the other. But I certainly intend to see the movie.
Writing to you even as the poster of Murrow on my wall gazes down on me with grave concern, I am ...
-- Kevin Featherly
