60 Years Ago tonight: Edward R Murrow called out Joe McCarthy

[Cooley Hurd]

"No one familiar with the history of his country can deny that Congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating. But the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly."

Good night, and good luck.

[hobbit709]

1. and the exploiters of fear are out in even greater numbers today.

[Thespian2]

2. Corporate Media

In today's world, Edward R. Murrow would not be hired by any of the six corporations that control the media.

[loudsue]

3. That was back in a day when people still had shame over behaving in a ridiculous

manner. Now, 1/3 of our population are PROUD to be bat-shit crazy.

[tridim]

7. Yep, that's the difference. Cruz is called out loudly and often.

Nobody who votes for him, cares.

[Scuba]

4. Ah, the free press. I remember it fondly.

[Cooley Hurd]

6. Because they DARED to question Conservatism, they were the "Liberal Media"!

Of course, any good journalists job is to REPORT the TRUTH. But Conservatives can't handle TRUTH when it calls their philosophy into question (which has been, traditionally, on the wrong side of History).

[Soylent Brice]

27. spot on. n/t

[merrily]

5. Time to watch, or watch again, Good Night, And Good Luck.

A worthwhile and enjoyable movie, directed by George Clooney. (He has a relatively small part in the movie. He said he did it because he thought it would help box office.

[longship]

14. David Straitharn channels Murrow.

It's a very good flick. All the more effective because it uses actual footage and was filmed in black and white. But Straitharn is amazing.

R&K

[Cooley Hurd]

15. A GREAT movie that sealed George Clooney's fate as a dangerous radical!

What is stunning to me that History has given its verdict regarding McCarthy - pretty unanimously - yet the hard-core right still thinks he did good things. Talk about DIVORCED from REALITY!

[merrily]

43. Supposedly, Hoover gave the names to McCarthy.

Even if you went to one meeting, it seems that loon (Hoover or McCarthy pick one) had your name.

I don't think gooing to a meeting was even against the law then, though. The Communist Party was preaching fairness to workers and racial equality. (Whether they meant it or not is a different issue.) So, of course liberals would look into it.

[merrily]

16. Many of the performances were very good, but his

was the best. I've read that he is "an actor's actor." Also that he lives way far from Hollywood and doesn't seem to care how much money he makes. (That movie was, of course, made on a small budget.) Casting director's dream.

[awoke_in_2003]

34. I haven't seen it...

I really need to.

[merrily]

46. I'm confident in saying you will enjoy it.

Very well done.

[Octafish]

8. ''No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.'' -- Edward R. Murrow

Thus, Corporate McPravda today would never allow an Edward R. Murrow anywhere near a live microphone.

Thank you, Cooley Hurd. You grok the situation, my Friend.

[Cooley Hurd]

12. We have accomplices to this very day...

[hatrack]

9. And tonight, 60 Minutes will interview the survivor of a crocodile attack

I'm not making this up, by the way.

EDIT

http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2014/03/60-minutes-mar-9.html

[Cooley Hurd]

13. Given 60 Minutes recent track record...

...the crocodile voted Dem in the last cycle.

[merrily]

17. Great one!

[Ratty]

26. Even back then CBS were spineless dicks

From Wikipedia:

On March 9, 1954, Murrow, Friendly, and their news team produced a half-hour See It Now special entitled "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy".[13] Murrow used excerpts from McCarthy's own speeches and proclamations to criticize the senator and point out episodes where he had contradicted himself. Murrow and Friendly paid for their own newspaper advertisement for the program; they were not allowed to use CBS's money for the publicity campaign or even use the CBS logo.

Nevertheless, the broadcast contributed to a nationwide backlash against McCarthy and is seen as a turning point in the history of television. It provoked tens of thousands of letters, telegrams, and phone calls to CBS headquarters, running 15 to 1 in favor.[14] In a retrospective produced for Biography, Friendly noted how truck drivers pulled up to Murrow on the street in subsequent days and shouted "Good show, Ed. Good show, Ed."

[left is right]

10. I was only three but I remember this

I remember McCarthy as a scary, angry man. I have always said that scary man was one of the incidents that propelled me into being a life-long Democrat. (Growing up—both my parents were Republicans and remained that way until the 2nd administration of Nixon)

[merrily]

18. That's impressive. I don't remember anything from when I was three, with

the single exception of having swallowed a big ole safety pin and my parents making me sit on my potty. even though they had just toilet trained me. I remember being afraid because it was confusing. I guess I would have been two or three? No clue. (TMI?)

But politics? Not even close.

[ScreamingMeemie]

33. I think it depends upon one's parents, and how much importance

they placed upon events maybe.

I was 3 when Nixon's "I am not a crook" Q&A with the press happened. I remember sitting on the (ugly) brown patterned linoleum floor of our living room when my father (a Nixon supporter) said,"You are seeing history happen."

I was 4 when Hank Aaron trotted into the outfield for the Brewers at County Stadium, and my father said,"Someday you'll be able to tell your kids and grandkids that you saw one of the greatest ballplayers ever to play the game play the game..."

[merrily]

35. You're exactly right, because my parents placed a lot of importance

on my swallowing a huge safety pin. In hindsight, maybe they weren't sure if it was closed? I remember my father squatting in front of me and pretending to be straining for a bowel movement, to show me what he wanted. I can feel the confusion again. (I assume that they praised me a lot for getting trained, and here I was again, back to square 1, at their insistence!)

Sorry, but I am too tired to open another window and check: Did you say in your prior post that you were three for the calling out of McCarthy by Murrow? Or was it some other event?

I always wanted to have seen Ruth. Read a biography of him when I was in elementary school because my teacher said I was reading too much fiction.

Thing is, biographers back then pretty much wrote fiction, too. They saw their jobs as making the subject a hero, no warts showing. (How times change.) Read Sandburg's two volume biography of Lincoln at the same time for the same reason. An impressionable kid reading the glowing stories fell in love with both of them and am still in love with both of them, even though I've since learned about some of the warts. First love never goes away entirely.

[ScreamingMeemie]

39. No, I was not alive then. I was 3 when Nixon declared his noncrookedness.

I was almost 5 when Saigon fell. I was 4 (almost 5) when Hank Aaron returned to Milwaukee to finish his career.

My father was only 9 when McCarthy ran rampant and Murrow called him out on it.

[merrily]

42. Okay, it was another poster. (Reply 10)

Otherwise, it would have been a hell of a third year. They say time goes by much more slowly when you're a kid (true), but that would have been ridiculous.

[MarianJack]

11. It took a moment to recognize him.

It's been so long since I'd seen an actual journalist.

PEACE!

[awoke_in_2003]

36. Sad, isn't it? nt

[MarianJack]

45. Yep!

It's scary to think of how many people today remember freaking Tim Russert so fondly after he was admittedly OK with sea!thy media owners having him push their be and his obsessions with President Clinton's penis!

PEACE!

[Martin Eden]

19. We need Edward R. Murrow just as much (perhaps even more) today!

A respected voice is listened to; do we have any television journalist of his stature today, with so wide an audience?

[TNNurse]

20. Who can be the Edward R Murrow we need today?

Rachel Maddow? Jon Stewart? Charlie Rose? Melissa Harris-Perry?

Any suggestions??

[MrMickeysMom]

22. Well, Keith Olbermann was my original choice, now returned to ESPN's genre...

And, it's too bad, because if anyone were capable of emulating Edward R Morrow, it was Olbermann.

Here's an excerpt from one of his "Special Comments":

"Here, as promised, a Special Comment about free speech, failed Speakers, and the delusion of grandeur.

'This is a serious long-term war', the man at the podium cried, 'and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country.'

Some in the audience must have thought they were hearing an arsonist give the keynote address at a convention of firefighters.

This was the annual Loeb First Amendment Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire - a public cherishing of freedom of speech - in the state with the two-fisted motto 'Live Free or Die.' And the arsonist at the microphone,m the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, was insisting that we must attach an 'on-off button' to free speech…"

[Cooley Hurd]

23. KO was a beacon when the rest of the Media failed us...

He kicked the establishment in the balls. He is one of my heroes because of it. Whatever he will do, moving forward, he will be legendary, much in the same way as Ed Murrow is today.

[MrMickeysMom]

25. INdeed...

(I still hope KO reads the occasional DU tip of the hat)

[awoke_in_2003]

38. Same here...

his ego just seems to get the best of him, sadly.

[Dustlawyer]

21. This is why one of the 1st things we should do once we get CCFR, COMPLETE CAMPAIGN

FINANCE REFORM and PUBLICLY FUNDED ELECTIONS is to bust up the media conglomerates and the big Wall Street banks! We cannot unwashed all of those corrupted brains without a free, independent press. Only then will Networks hire the next Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite!

[Cooley Hurd]

24. +1million

The Corporatocracy is not concerned with freedom or Democracy. It's concerned with PROFIT. As long as this is the case, our country is doomed to the dustbin of history.

[merrily]

40. Campaign finance reform now will require a Constitutional Amendment.

No constitutional amendment that is even a little controversial has been ratified since the Eisenhower Administration. Even something as simple as equal rights for women did not make it past the RW in the 1970s for ratification.

This is a hell of a lot more controversial than the ERA was and the right wing is nuttier than ever. And never mind ratification, this won't make it out of Congress.

So, while I would very much like reform, I don't know how it will happen.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

28. "..the line between investigating and persecuting.." Now, we have the NSA.

[quinnox]

29. There are those who are fans of McCarthy tactics

even today. Usually authoritarian types, lock steppers.

[TNNurse]

30. Are you speaking of

Ryan, Paul, Cruz, Palin, Bachmann and of course Limbaugh??

[quinnox]

31. Yes, them and others

These kind of mind sets are not just confined to the GOP, unfortunately.

[woo me with science]

32. I think a link to this post goes nicely here:

The transformation of Putin to enemy number one
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024634489

[Rex]

37. That was before corporate media completely destroyed

investigative journalism for the TVEE. Now they are all corporate sponsors that answer to their producers.

[merrily]

41. I am starting to feel besieged from every direction.

The cure for the feeling is usually to get off the message board for a while and do something unrelated to current issues. I don't know the cure for the besieging, though.

[AverageJoe90]

44. Ed Murrow, today, would be calling out the Republicans.....

For fawning over Putin just so they could bash Obama.