Random Liberals

We are random liberals (who knew?). Collectively, we make up the greatest blog in the history of ourselves. We will blog about anything that suits us; mostly politics, with a little bit of religion and randomness to make the blog exciting.

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Rob
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Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Learn something new every day

Today is an important anniversary in the history of journalism. Specifically, TV journalism. 50 years ago today, Edward Murrow, on his show See It Now, called Senator Joe McCarthy on his bullcrap. Up until then, McCarthy had run almost unchecked with allegations of Communism in the United States. He ruined countless lives with his unbased accusations. Murrow spent months researching for the show, and came up with an incomparable catalog of McCarthy's abuses. He finally showed the country what McCarthy really was: a ruthless man who didn't give a damn who he hurt.

One month after Murrow's show, McCarthy claimed that Murrow himself had been involved in pushing Communist propaganda as far back as 20 years before. The accusation was of course unfounded, and two weeks later, the U.S. army hearings took place. These hearings broke McCarthy.

This got me to thinking: why can't our media today be so bold? Murrow risked a lot in airing this piece, but the reward was the doom of McCarthy's witch hunts. If we had a media that was so bold today, maybe the people of the United States would know exactly how dishonest our current administration is.

There is a wonderful piece by the matchless Walter Cronkite on today's All Things Considered. This is where I learned about the anniversary. The audio can be found here. I'll try to remember to link to the archived version when that comes out.

UPDATE: Here is the archived link.

Robert

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