Title : Diana West on The Animosity Between CBS News and Senator Joseph McCarthy
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Diana West on The Animosity Between CBS News and Senator Joseph McCarthy
Fascinating exposé (video clip which is pre-set to begin) with discussion by Diana West, author of “American Betrayal”, discussing with Peter Barry Chowka , the animosity between Edward R. Murrow of CBS and Senator Joseph McCarthyPeter Barry Chowka: “...what went on during the middle of the last century regarding McCarthyism and House on American Activities Committee, and, and, we still hear the word “McCarthyism” used to this day! It’s been in the news in recent days and weeks – including by people on the right . In fact, an opinion piece you wrote in the Epic Times recently was addressed to some of these conservatives who are still relying on the canard of McCarthyism, and buying into what basically is a psy-op that started in the 1950’s.
And, so, what struck me about all this is your uncovering an incredible period of history and cover-up which says a lot about where we wound up. But I wanted to focus on one person in particular – and his work. That is Edward R. Murrow.
I’ve long been interested in him. I’ve read biographies of him decades ago as I’ve always been interested in media. In March of 1954 – 64 and a half years ago now – Edward R. Murrow, who at that time was the leading television person in The United States. Walter Cronkite hadn’t yet come into his own. That would be the 60’s and beyond. So, Murrow was “it”. Dating from his career in WWII, broadcasting from London in war. He was hosting a half hour news program, prime time, on CBS network called “See It Now” which started in the very early days of television. And, uh, it was a prestigious show which was low rated most of the time, but, in 1954, after spending months of preparation, there’s Mr. Murrow on the screen now, and in the famous broadcast that I’m talking about which he devoted in March 1954, his weekly show, to an attack on Senator Joseph McCarthy. And, uh, in just refreshing my memory on what went on then. He worked with his producers, Fred Friendly and Joe Worshpa (sp?) for months to use the resources of CBS to assemble film clips, audio clips and documentation to do a full scale attack on Senator McCarthy before his alleged excesses and trying to root out Communists from The United States government. This really set off the beginning of the end of Senator McCarthy. Now, CBS gave McCarthy, so-called ‘equal time’ three weeks later. Although, I found out in my research this week , that Murrow didn’t agree with that. He didn’t want to give McCarthy ‘equal time’. It was Paley (sp?) the head of CBS who said, ‘no, we’ve got to, we got to be fair.’ Here’s this great icon of modern journalism, Edward R. Murrow who didn’t want to give the person he had raked through the poles – anything like equal time. McCarthy was at a great disadvantage, just sitting at a desk reading a script that he or his aids had written. He didn’t have any of the multi-media tactics at play there. I wonder – you could do a whole show just on deconstructing that broadcast and what it meant for the history not only of this “McCarthyism” meme that grew up but for how it set the stage for how television media/news media works in the future too. But, what do you think about that Murrow involvement with McCarthy and how he really, why he set out to take McCarthy down and what it really resulted in.
Diana West: “Well, that’s a fascinating story. I’ve studied it quite a bit – not in recent months, but earlier this year because there was this, another resurgent “McCarthyism” mania on the right earlier this year, related to the Russia collusion
story and I got very fascinated by the Murrow aspect because people were also, conservatives were also invoking Murrow incorrectly as they were invoking McCarthyism and McCarthy correctly.
You have to take Murrow back a little bit farther to really understand what was going on there. It had to do with Murrow’s work for a group called the Institute of International education in the early 1930’s that was run at the time by a man named Stephen Duggan whose son was later discovered to be a Soviet agent named Lawrence Duggan who I believe was a good friend of Murrows. I’m not entirely clear on the relationships, but I believe they were very good friends – friendly, anyway.
Murrow, at the time, was heavily involved with a refugee, German refugee project to bring Jewish and other academics out of Germany who were targeted by Hitler or fired by the Nazi regime to America. And, Murrow, I haven’t been able to run this down, I was just reading about it today, it’s funny you should ask. Murrow had a list of his own, of academics that they wanted to bring out. I don’t know if you know this story, but, essentially, among the several hundred, I believe, refugees that they were able to get out (academics) and essentially transplant onto the American college campus was the Frankfort School of essentially cultural Marxists who were coming out of Germany. This would include Herbert Marcuse, and Paul Tillich and Fromm, uh, and you know, the whole list of them who had come in and essentially transplant themselves into American academia and radicalize it. It’s just an interesting pre-story to the conflict between McCarthy and Murrow a few years later. Murrow also was involved with a summer school in the Soviet Union that McCarthy was interested in as well. I mean, there was just, there was a lot going on there that would make the two of them natural enemies especially if McCarthy is the investigator of communist subversion. These were the activities that Murrow was involved in before his tremendous career in journalism began, because he wasn’t a journalist in the early 1930’s. He was in education. And the story goes on. You may know quite a bit of from the biographies you’ve read. It’s a very interesting back story but it does explain a lot of the antagonism that Murrow had.
I don’t think it was, it is what finalized McCarthy’s tragic censure and fall from political power. I certainly think it was important but it was a piece of the story. There was a series of steps that led to this and not least of which, as you eluded to was the communist – straight up official communist - campaign against him . McCarthy, as the most successful, the most popular of the Congressional investigators. I think one thing that’s lost when we think back to the era which is very ‘lightly’ taught – to put it one way – ‘badly’ taught – could also - very scantily taught to students today. There were investigators, Republicans and Democrats, Congressmen and Senators, – this was a massive effort. I like to think of it as really the first time legislators had a chance to look at the swamp. This was the swamp. It had been created over the four terms that Franklin Roosevelt won and Truman finished and took on as his own. This whole period, this 16-20 year period is where we see the explosion of bureaucracy in Washington and the infiltration of subversives, communists, pro-communists, actual Soviet agents, and many, many dupes – some where uncovered, some, as a result of these investigators were fired or left or, um – many did not. Many were never found and they replicated themselves. I mean, this is what bureaucracies do. When we look at the scandal, the puzzle, the anti-Trump conspiracy – the whole collusion narrative that we’ve been looking at for a couple of years now, we have to start reconnecting it to it’s evolution, because this did not start in 2016. To understand it, you really do have to start digging into the actual story of how we get to this point.
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