Thomas Lipscomb reported on the CBS News document controversy for the Chicago Sun-Times. E-mail: tom@lipscomb.net
Lets see, a book about a liberal icon written by another liberal (demi)icon...
" . . . unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then . . . those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it may see a totally different picture too late."Although he was liberal and cut from the same cloth...this quote nails to a tee what happened with Rather and what has happened to the MSM.
They see their own truth and present it as such, when it is nothing more than fabrication and spin, far removed from fact, integrity, or truth.
I'd say it only took 20 years, but that people are only catching on now.
In 1939 Hitler signed a nonaggression pact with Stalin. American "progressives" opposed going to war against Hitler. In August of 1941 Hitler attacked Stalin. American "progressives" demanded we declare war on Hitler. W.W.II was the last time American "progressives" supported the United States in war.
On March 9, 1954 Edward R. Murrow signaled that it was time to kill what the CP/USA had labeled McCarthyism. Five years later Joseph McCarthy was dead. Forty years after that Joseph McCarthy was proved right (on the main issues).
Yet Murrow said: "If none of us ever read a book that was 'dangerous,' nor had a friend who was 'different,' or never joined an organization that advocated 'change,' we would all be just the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants."
I ask, Is it terror to ask American "progressives" to explain why they support our enemies? Why they join / support organizations that demand the kinds of changes our enemies want?
Murrow said: "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty."
Me: We must not confuse the Constitution with a suicide pact.
This article should be edited to read "for CBS to wreck the illusion foisted on the public by Murrow". Murrow was as much of a communist as Rather.
It occured to me this morning that one of the Toffler Books had a segment about an information based society in which the will of the people, on a local and regional basis, would be immediately known because of our ability to communicate via the global network.
The Tofflers did not get as much right as they would have wished, however, it is the case that the end of the one voice big brother alphabet soup news can now be acknowledged as fading into history.
It is liberating.
Whether Murrow or Cronkheit, Rather or Moyers, CBS has always longed for clear good vs. evil battles in a world that doesn't always provide them. They hungered to lay down an agenda for the country and the world. That Murrow ended up heading a government agency indicates just how high their expectations were.
There's nothing wrong with passion in journalism or with wanting to change the world, but CBS was never really honest about its partisanship, and played at objectivity while being anything but. A better organization would have made a choice, and either tried to moderate its ideological enthusiasms or else taken the opposite route and renounced the pretence of objectivity.
If one wants to find a difference between Murrow and Rather, it would be this: Murrow was resourceful, imaginative, and instinctive, and instinctive, creating a news environment as he went along. Rather came along later when TV news was established and institutionalized. He was given high status and privileges without having done much to earn them. For all Rather's faux folksiness he works and lives in a Manhattan bubble and rarely sees or experiences anything outside of it.
More accurately, McCarthy put Murrow on the defensive because Murrow had some questionable associates:
Murrow, like many other liberal journalists, became increasingly concerned about the impact that Joe McCarthy anti-communist campaign was having on America. He was particularly upset by the attacks on George Marshall, a man Murrow regarded as "the greatest living American". A friend of Murrow's, Larry Duggan, Director of the Institute of International Education (IIC), was also accused of being a member of the Communist Party and ordered to appear before the House of Un-American Activities Committee. Unwilling to name radicals he had associated with in his youth, Duggan committed suicide by jumping from his sixteenth-floor office.
Murrow now decided to speak out and complained about McCarthy's treatment of Henry [actually s/b "Harry"--Fedora] Dexter White, who Joe McCarthy had recently accused of being a communist spy. Murrow was now accused of being part of the "Moscow conspiracy" and it was suggested that as "an anti-anti-Communist was as dangerous as a Communist".
Recent disclosures have confirmed that both Duggan and White were Soviet agents.
HUAC
Like "McCarthyism" HUAC (House of Un-American Activities Committee) was a term of derision. I am not sure if CP/USA first used HUAC but for sure the anit-anti-communists loved it.
The House Committee on Un-American Activities I believe is the correct title.