STANDING TALL AGAINST JOSEPH MCCARTHY
SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY’S POLITICAL CAREER WAS LIKE A Roman candle. In early 1950, he was an obscure first-term senator. But by 1952, his star had risen to national prominence as his anticommunist witch hunt helped propel the Republican Party into the White House for the first time in twenty years. In late 1953, McCarthy’s career spiraled downward, careening toward the ultimate nadir that today makes the very mention of his name send a chill down the spine of any fair-minded American.
McCarthyism was a reckless political gamble to convince voters that the Democratic Party had presided over the country through two decades, not of accidents or errors—but of treason. Through a barrage of charges and countercharges, McCarthy insisted that the government was riddled with subversives working to destroy American values. Exploiting the country’s Cold War fears, he destroyed the lives of thousands of innocent men and women.
The hand behind his bluff was printer’s ink. Newspapers turned McCarthy’s unsubstantiated charges into sensational stories that shrieked from page one. When accusations came from a US senator who claimed to be leading a campaign to save his country from evil forces, the Fourth Estate accepted those allegations as newsworthy fact.
Journalism also played a key role in bringing McCarthy down. For the force that, more than any other, ended the shameful era of McCarthyism was TV news. As other reporters shuddered at McCarthy’s power, Edward R. Murrow stood tall against him. Murrow’s See It Now on CBS first aired the story of an exemplary Air Force lieutenant who’d fallen victim to McCarthy. Five months later came “A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy,” the legendary journalistic triumph that exposed the demagogue while earning praise as the most important program in television history.
Another TV network then moved into the spotlight, providing gavel-to-gavel coverage of the most explosive congressional hearings in American history. For more than a month, ABC held 80 million viewers riveted to their televisions as the camera revealed McCarthy to be a rude and sadistic bully. By the time the hearings ended, McCarthyism had been discredited.
The Nightmare Decade
McCarthyism didn’t develop in a vacuum. The American self-assurance won so dearly during World War II began to fade from the nation’s consciousness at the end of the 1940s, with fear and uncertainty taking its place. The Cold War mentality crept into the American mind as communism consolidated its grip on Eastern Europe, as well as the Middle and Far East, to create a mood that was grim and unsettling.
The Soviet Union came to be perceived as a sinister enemy that threatened to annihilate the United States. In 1949, the Soviets flexed their muscles by detonating an atomic bomb. Even more shocking was China’s fall to communism as the Nationalist Chinese forces of Chiang Kai-shek withdrew to the island of Taiwan, leaving the mainland to communist leader Mao Tse-tung. A few months later, an American public still weary from world war saw its men once again engaged in battle on foreign soil, this time in an effort to contain the spread of communism. The fighting in Korea continued for three years, claiming the lives of 54,000 US soldiers.
The pall of fear spreading across the country also caused many Americans to sense danger within their borders as a series of events shocked the nation. First, the State Department blamed internal sabotage for the failure, despite a huge infusion of financial aid, of its China policy. Next, the public learned that US diplomat Alger Hiss had passed secrets to a communist agent. Then the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated allegedly subversive activities by writers, actors, and directors in the entertainment industry. After scientists Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were convicted of wartime espionage for giving the Russians information about the atomic bomb, they were both executed. It became an era when to be accused was to be assumed guilty and when associating with the wrong people could destroy an individual’s life.
The Meteoric Rise of Joe McCarthy
Joe McCarthy began his campaign in February 1950 by waving a sheet of paper in front of the members of a women’s club in Wheeling, West Virginia, and bellowing, “While I cannot take the time to name all of the men in the State Department who have been members of the Communist Party and a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were known to the Secretary of State and, nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy in the State Department.” Neither the audience nor the nation that read the claim on the front page the next day knew that the sheet of paper didn’t contain a single name.1
When McCarthy repeated his charges in Salt Lake City, Denver, and Reno during the next week, the specific number of communists changed each time, going to 207 to 81 to 57. Despite the inconsistencies, by the time he took his accusations to the Senate floor in late February, McCarthy had emerged as chief spokesman for a communism-in-government crusade that many Republicans recognized as the issue that could put them in the White House.
In the sport of intimidation, Senator Joseph McCarthy was aided by his chief counsel, Roy Cohn.
© Yale Joel/Getty Images
McCarthy’s flair for drama forced the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate his charges. For five months, he accused various government officials of advancing the communist cause. The committee’s official action, voted by the Democratic majority, was to denounce McCarthy’s crusade as “a fraud and a hoax,” chastising the senator for perpetrating deliberate and willful falsehoods.
Proof of the popularity of McCarthy’s cause, however, came in the fall of 1950. By delivering thirty speeches, he propelled his anticommunist witch hunt into a campaign tour de force. And after the ballots were counted, political observers credited McCarthy with Republican victories in a dozen Senate races. Most notable was the stinging defeat of Millard E. Tydings, chairman of the committee that had denounced McCarthy.
The anticommunist pit bull next set his sights on the 1952 national elections. He publicly called President Harry S. Truman a “son of a bitch” and labeled Secretary of State Dean Acheson the “Red Dean”—thereby saying Acheson was a communist. The Wisconsin senator was highly sought after, stumping on behalf of candidates in sixteen states and earning a rousing ovation as a featured speaker at the Republican National Convention.
The results of the election reconfirmed McCarthy’s power. He was cited as a major factor in helping the Republican Party take control of the White House. Observers also estimated that at least eight Republican senators owed their victories to McCarthy’s support.
In the new Congress, McCarthy became chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, having wide authority to investigate government activities. What’s more, he controlled a subcommittee staff, hiring as chief counsel the abrasive Roy Cohn. As subcommittee chairman, McCarthy earned a reputation as a savage inquisitor. In 1953, he initiated preliminary inquiries of 445 people.
McCarthy Exploits the Press
Although the climate of the times and Republican strategy contributed to McCarthy’s rise, the single most important element was his ability to manipulate the press. Scholars have acknowledged his media savvy. In his book Joe McCarthy and the Press, Edwin R. Bayley concluded that McCarthy “was able to generate massive publicity because he understood the press, its practices and its values; he knew what made news.”2
In particular, McCarthy was a master at manipulating the wire services—the Associated Press, United Press, and International News Service. Because only a handful of papers had their own reporters in Washington, these operations had enormous influence.
One of McCarthy’s most successful media techniques involved the timing of accusations. He calculated the exact hour of the day he could make a claim and be sure the wire services wouldn’t have time to track down a response from the accused person before stories had to be filed to meet the deadline for the afternoon papers. So the journalists, driven by competition, distributed one-sided stories. Allen Alexander of the Associated Press recalled, “AP member newspapers also subscribing to competing UP and INS services would message frantically: ‘Opposition reports that McCarthy said XXX. Where’s ours?’ What do you tell your superiors when they see a message like that?”3
McCarthy’s tactics allowed him to manipulate papers into publishing dozens of lies. United Press reporter George Reedy recalled the morning McCarthy waited until 10:50 to announce he had a letter proving that Owen Lattimore, a Johns Hopkins University professor, was a spy. Reedy knew the competing news services would report the charge for the 11 a.m. deadline. “We all wanted to see the letter, but he wouldn’t give it up,” Reedy recalled. “So I had to go down and write the story. At 11:45 a.m., Joe let go of the letter. There wasn’t a thing in it to back up what he’d said.” The papers printed clarifications, but those items received far less prominence than the original accusations had.4
Another of McCarthy’s techniques exploited the concept of objectivity. News accounts in the 1950s barred all interpretation, as the journalistic convention of the day was that news stories should provide a bare-bones recitation of the facts—nothing more. So McCarthy knew that journalists would report, without comment, any charge a US senator made.
Reporters were so fearful of allowing subjectivity to slip into their work that they wouldn’t, for example, include in a story the fact that a particular accusation was the fifth or tenth or fiftieth unsubstantiated accusation McCarthy had made that week. William Theis of the International News Service lamented, “We let Joe get away with murder, reporting it as he said it, not doing the kind of critical analysis we’d do today. All three wire services were so God damned objective that McCarthy got away with everything, bamboozling the editors and the public. I’d go home literally sick, seeing what that guy was getting away with.”5
Many reporters came to regret how McCarthy had manipulated them into being mere conduits for his lies. Reedy later said, “We had to take what McCarthy said at face value. Joe couldn’t find a communist in Red Square, but he was a United States senator. So we reported whatever he said.”6
Edward R. Murrow Redefines TV News
At the same time that print journalism was committing acts that it would later feel guilty for having allowed, TV was developing the program that was fated to become an icon of electronic journalism.
CBS introduced See It Now in 1951. The narrator of the thirty-minute news program was the man who ultimately would wear the mantle “patron saint of the broadcasting profession.” Edward R. Murrow first won his place in journalism history while reporting for CBS radio during World War II. Speaking from the rooftops of London during bombing raids, from trenches all over Europe, and from the Buchenwald concentration camp on the day it was liberated, Murrow became the most trusted voice of the war. His masterful reporting was coupled with a superb delivery and a deep sense of humanity to create a prose style that sounded like poetry.7
Murrow’s behind-the-scenes collaborator was Fred Friendly, a young producer whose vision and technical wizardry enhanced Murrow’s on-air strengths. The Murrow-Friendly partnership began in 1950 with Hear It Now, a magazine program on CBS radio. When TV emerged as the electronic medium of choice, the two men transformed the program into a visual phenomenon.
See It Now offered audiences a conceit that was entirely new to the infant medium. For Murrow and Friendly created the first TV program to grapple with controversial issues, crafting segments about such provocative subjects as the quality of health care and the hazards of cigarette smoking. The explosive growth of television further aided See It Now’s rise to legendary status. In 1947, only 1 percent of American homes had a television; by 1953, that percentage had jumped to 80.8
Defending the Little Guy
In 1953, Murrow and Friendly decided the time had come for a program to show that the paranoia gripping the country had gone too far. Their search for an upstanding citizen whose rights had been violated by the government’s obsession with national security led them to Milo Radulovich. The twenty-six-year-old meteorologist had spent eight years in the air force and received a commendation for his work on a secret weather station, and he’d continued to serve as a reserve officer while attending the University of Michigan. Under McCarthyism, however, he’d been classified as a security risk because he associated with people believed to be subversives—his father and sister. A military board of inquiry recommended that Radulovich be ousted from the reserves because his two family members subscribed to Serbian-language newspapers.
“The Case of Milo Radulovich, A0589839,” aired in October. It began with Murrow’s simple introduction, “This is the story of Milo Radulovich—no special hero, no martyr.” Murrow then described the young man’s impeccable military record and the high regard his neighbors in Dexter, Michigan, had for him. Murrow was sketching the American Everyman, saying, “His wife works nights at the telephone company. They live at 7867 Ann Arbor Street.”9
Viewers next heard John Radulovich, Milo’s father, say why he subscribed to the Serbian-language newspaper. “I like their Christmas calendars,” he said. Margaret Radulovich then appeared, insisting that her choice of newspapers had nothing to do with her brother, stating, “My political beliefs are my own private affair.” Lieutenant Radulovich made the same point, speaking quietly but with conviction. “What my sister does, what political opinions or activities she engages in, are her own affair,” he said. “They certainly do not influence me.”10
One of the program’s most stunning revelations was that the newspaper Radulovich’s father and sister read wasn’t, in fact, pro-communist. Murrow reported that the paper consistently supported Marshal Tito, the Yugoslavian leader who five years earlier had broken with the Soviet Union and since that time had been receiving aid from the United States.
Murrow ended the broadcast with a dramatic statement delivered directly into the TV camera, “We believe that ‘the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,’ even though that iniquity be proved. And in this case, it was not.”11
Reaction was swift. Of 8,000 letters and telegrams CBS received, 7,200 supported Radulovich. Media reviews were overwhelmingly positive as well. Newsweek said the segment marked a “week of triumph” for See It Now, and the New York Times lauded the broadcast as “superb” and the first program in TV history to take “a vigorous editorial stand in a matter of national importance.”12
The most potent praise came five weeks after the broadcast when the secretary of the Air Force appeared on See It Now and announced that Milo Radulovich would be allowed to continue to serve as an officer in the Reserves. As Friendly later wrote, that statement “established for the first time the enormous impact of television reporting.”13
Attacking the Big Guy
The success of the Radulovich program encouraged Murrow and Friendly, in the colorful words of one observer, “to lunge for the heart of the beast.” They decided to deliver a body blow to McCarthy by showing viewers exactly what kind of unscrupulous methods he used.14
Most of the March 1954 See It Now segment consisted of filmed speeches by McCarthy. The audience heard the senator contradict himself by first denouncing criticism of either major political party, for fear that such attacks would cause the decline of democracy, and then breaking his own rule by condemning the opposing party, saying, “Those who wear the label ‘Democrat’ wear it with the stain of a historic betrayal—twenty years of treason.” The audience also was given a taste of McCarthy’s malice, seeing him badger witnesses and hearing his feigned slip of the tongue in referring to the 1952 Democratic presidential nominee not as Adlai Stevenson but as Alger—a mean-spirited allusion to convicted spy Alger Hiss.15
“A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy” contained incisive statements by Murrow as well. He accused McCarthy of terrorizing innocent people and lying to the American public. At one point, Murrow spoke directly to the viewers and said, “The line between investigation and persecution is a very fine one, and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly.” Murrow’s voice became stern as he continued, “This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent.”16
© Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Murrow’s eloquent prose, however, took a backseat to the compelling visual images that he and Friendly had chosen to depict McCarthy. Many observers who have viewed the program have attempted to transform those images into words. One said the clips portrayed the senator “as a villain and a bully” and revealed “his shoddy practices and demeanor.” Another said McCarthy came across as “a giggling psychopath,” and a third wrote of the senator, “Sneering, truculent and wholly evil, he rumbled his evasions and hesitations and lies. He was caught huffing and chuckling in a way that sounded as if he was just a little nutty.”17
As soon as the program ended, network switchboards lit up with the largest flood of responses in TV history. CBS received 12,000 phone calls and telegrams, with positive reactions outnumbering negative ones fifteen to one. Even after McCarthy took advantage of See It Now’s offer to broadcast a half-hour rebuttal—in which the senator accused Murrow of being a communist—the mail continued to run overwhelmingly in the newsman’s favor.18
The press response was equally enthusiastic. The New Yorker dubbed the program “an extraordinary feat of journalism,” Newsweek said that “no political show so damning [has] ever been done before,” and the New York Times called the segment “crusading journalism of high responsibility and genuine courage.”19
With the passage of time, See It Now’s program on McCarthy has assumed legendary status, with many scholars calling it the single most important broadcast in television history. In particular, historians have praised the program’s impact on McCarthy’s career. The assessments have been legion, including, “The program was the decisive moment at which opinion turned against McCarthy,” and, “Thereafter, McCarthy’s fortunes went steadily down.” The author of one history of the mass media wrote unequivocally, “The man mainly responsible for silencing McCarthy was Edward R. Murrow.”20
Televised Hearings Strike the Final Blow
The climactic moment in McCarthy’s downfall came two months later when the nation watched live as McCarthy reinforced what Murrow and Friendly had shown on tape: he was a sadistic bully. Thanks to television, the drama unfolded before one of the largest audiences ever to witness a major event in American history—an extraordinary 80 million viewers.
The Army-McCarthy hearings evolved out of the senator’s charges that subversives had infiltrated the US Army. Military officials countercharged that McCarthy and counsel Roy Cohn had sought preferential treatment for Private G. David Schine, a young man who’d worked for McCarthy’s committee before being drafted. The two warring sides then met during Senate hearings. In April 1954, NBC aired the opening salvos, and CBS offered a nightly film summary. ABC placed considerably more emphasis on the hearings, providing continuous live coverage for all thirty-six days of the hearings—a total of 180 hours.21
During the hearings, thirty witnesses marched to the microphone and described how Cohn, with McCarthy’s support, had tried to secure special treatment for Schine, the heir to a hotel fortune who’d developed an unusually close relationship with Cohn. According to testimony, Cohn repeatedly demanded that military officials appoint Schine to a post near Cohn in New York City, threatening to intensify the investigation of the army if the demand wasn’t met. After Schine was assigned to a base in Georgia, Cohn demanded that the soldier be excused from Saturday duty and be granted extra passes so he could travel to New York every weekend.
One vivid confrontation during the hearings became imbedded in the consciousness of the American public. It pitted McCarthy against Joseph Welch, the army’s special counsel. Welch was an avuncular Bostonian blessed not only with a keen legal mind and a gentle charm but also with a flair for courtroom drama. McCarthy grew to detest Welch because he had won, through the TV camera, the nation’s affection. Sensing that McCarthy was about to attack Welch, CBS and NBC decided to broadcast the day’s hearings live.
In the fateful encounter, Welch won point after point. Then McCarthy abruptly broke into the testimony and began a reckless accusation that history would never forget. Sneering at Welch, McCarthy accused him of “treason” because one of the associates in Welch’s Boston law firm had been a member of a communist-front organization.22
As McCarthy began, Welch lowered his head into his hands and stared at the table in front of him. After a few minutes of McCarthy’s raging, Welch slowly raised his leonine head and formed the muted word “Stop.” Leaning toward the microphone, he asked the committee chair for the right to speak. As Welch began, McCarthy turned away to talk to an aide. Welch asked for his attention. McCarthy responded, laughing, “I can listen with one ear.” Welch said sternly, “This time, I want you to listen with both.” Welch then unleashed the first of several dramatic statements he would utter that day, “Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.”23
The entire hearing room—and the nation—held its breath, silenced by the stone-cold emotion in Welch’s voice. He explained that Frederick Fisher had participated in the communist-front organization when he’d been a student at Harvard long before joining Welch’s law firm. Welch said he initially had wanted Fisher to assist him during the hearings in Washington but, upon learning of the young lawyer’s activities in college, had decided he should remain in Boston. Welch then turned to McCarthy. “Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do injury to that lad. He shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you.” In the tone of a compassionate minister being forced to chastise a wayward soul, Welch continued speaking to McCarthy, “If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.”24
In a horribly miscalculated effort to win the audience to his side, McCarthy then struck back at Welch by saying he had no right to speak of cruelty. Welch turned to McCarthy and said, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough.” Welch then released another of the verbal bullets that ultimately would prove fatal to McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”25
After a moment of silence, the entire hearing room exploded with spontaneous applause. Every man and woman who’d observed the heart-stopping verbal exchange knew that Welch had triumphed—and wanted to shower their approval on him.
When Welch stood to walk from the room, reporters raced to the telephones to tell the nation of McCarthy’s humiliating defeat. As the gentle lawyer—now the noble defender of fairness—approached the hearing-room door, a woman laid her hand softly on his arm and, overcome with emotion, burst into tears. The TV audience saw it all.
The New York Times reported that McCarthy’s televised performance “demonstrated with appalling clarity precisely what kind of man he is.” The story continued, “One cannot remain indifferent to Joe McCarthy in one’s living room. He is an abrasive man. And he is recklessly transparent. The country did not know him before, despite all the headlines. Now it has seen him. The things that have hurt him and cost him support are his manner and his manners. The Senator from Wisconsin is a bad-mannered man.”26
Scholars studying the iconic event have echoed the same thoughts, writing, “The close-up exposure left a feeling of distaste for McCarthy,” and, “Joe came across as boorish, disruptive, and anarchic.” Even Roy Cohn agreed, writing of the television coverage, “The blow was terribly damaging to Senator McCarthy. He was pictured before the nation as a cruel man who deliberately sought to wreck a fine young lawyer’s life.”27
The American people spoke as well. In January 1954, a Gallup Poll had reported that 50 percent of the people surveyed had a favorable response to McCarthy. After the Murrow program and the hearings, however, that figure plummeted to 34 percent.28
Media critics lavished praise on ABC for broadcasting the hearings, particularly because the action cost the network dearly. All the revenue that sponsors would have paid for the huge block of air time was lost, as sponsors weren’t willing to be associated with programming that could harm McCarthy. Airing the hearings cost ABC more than $500,000.29
The coverage led to action. Immediately after the hearings, senators began efforts, in earnest, to silence McCarthy. They ultimately censured him, marking only the fourth time in two centuries that the Senate had taken such severe action. In December 1954, the senators voted sixty-seven to twenty-two to strip McCarthy of his power, subjecting him to public disgrace. McCarthy’s life came to an abrupt end three years after the Senate action. A heavy drinker, he died of liver disease associated with alcoholism. He hadn’t yet reached his fiftieth birthday.
Trial by Television
Beginning in 1950 and continuing for three years, Senator Joseph McCarthy became a fierce presence in America. Stopping him required a power of great might. That valiant savior of the democratic way of life began to emerge when Edward R. Murrow committed See It Now to attacking the senator, first with the Radulovich segment and then with the program crafted to reveal McCarthy as a malicious and mean-spirited bully. ABC joined the campaign by airing live coverage of the Army-McCarthy hearings—including Joseph Welch’s gripping verbal assault. The entire drama, thanks to the TV cameras, unfolded in the living rooms of 80 million Americans.
It took a force of immense potential and proportion to tame a power as diabolical as the Roman candle known as Joe McCarthy. But in the early 1950s, the infant institution of TV news distinguished itself—in its finest hour—by demonstrating that it was fully equal to such a formidable task.
