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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
The Bush campaign's attacks on Democrats as "soft on terrorism" recall the dark arts of the demagogic senator. And once again, the press is playing along.
Sep 30, 2004 | By adopting divisive rhetoric suggesting terrorists are working to elect John Kerry, Republican leaders are posing a challenge not only for the Democratic presidential candidate but also for the press. For the first time in decades journalists find themselves reporting on a kind of public character assassination that's reminiscent of McCarthyism, according to several distinguished journalists and historians.
The former Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wis., gave his name to an "ism" by accusing people in the federal government of being communists -- without any evidence. CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow helped expose his methods in an hour-long documentary. McCarthy's inquisition collapsed when he attacked the U.S. Army and President Eisenhower.
Half a century ago, most of the press was slow to unravel McCarthy's vicious and reckless charges of treason, as reporters instead simply amplified them. "The press served as transmission belt for McCarthy's charges, making it more difficult for the truth to catch up," says Edwin Yoder, former editorial page editor of the Washington Star, once the major daily newspaper in the capital.
Former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reports on McCarthyism in the 1950s, says, "The press had a difficult time covering McCarthy because it had ethical guidelines that reduced it to being stenographers: We report what people say, regardless of the fact that the 17 previous statement may have been lies."
In covering the current explosive Republican accusations without holding the accuser responsible, the press is in danger of repeating the same mistake, some observers say. "The press can't simply report flat-footed a smearing accusation against somebody's loyalty; it's the most insidious charge you can make, particularly in Washington," says Murrey Marder, who covered McCarthy for the Washington Post. "I think the press certainly can recognize quicker than anyone else when a loaded accusation, questioning somebody's loyalty, is coming out. The press should ask the accuser, 'What do you mean? What justification do you have?' That's real work, and it's called journalism."
The accusations that the Kerry campaign is aiding terrorists and that terrorists would prefer that he be elected president hark back to the ugliest period of the early Cold War. "It's reminiscent of red-baiting," Yoder says. He notes one significant difference, however: "McCarthy specialized in wild accusations and character assassinations, but he didn't get involved with electoral politics. [What's happening] today is something of a novelty."
Historian Alan Brinkley, the provost of Columbia University, agrees that even during the height of the Cold War, scathing rhetoric that called into question the loyalty or patriotism of a presidential candidate was deemed too extreme. "This kind of rhetoric never would have come into a presidential campaign during the '50s or '60s. It would come from people widely dismissed as extremists -- people on the margin of the party who were tolerated or perhaps quietly encouraged -- but never from anyone identified as the party. Now it has migrated to the very center of the campaign."
In a Sept. 24 article, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank catalogued the spate of loaded Republican statements suggesting alliances -- direct or indirect -- between Democrats and terrorists, revealing that many are coming from senior party and administration officials:
The Post also noted, "Earlier this month, Cheney provoked an uproar when he said that on Election Day, 'if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating,' adding that the United States would not respond vigorously. Cheney later said that he was not suggesting the country would be attacked if Kerry were elected. But a few days later, he said: 'We've gone on the offense in the war on terror -- and the president's opponent, Senator Kerry, doesn't seem to approve.'"
