"Our Murrow Moment"

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
> Date: December 31, 2016 at 2:05:16 PM EST
> To: nnsquad () nnsquad org
> Subject: [ NNSquad ] MUST READ and SHARE, PLEASE: "Our Murrow Moment"
>
>
> MUST READ and SHARE, PLEASE: "Our Murrow Moment"
>
> [Complete Text]
>
> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/31/our-murrow-moment.html
>
>      "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty...We will not be
>    driven by fear into an age of unreason." - Edward R.  Murrow
>
>    If you think 2016 has been a wild and rough ride, just wait
>    'til you get a load of 2017.  
>
>    Given everything we know about Donald Trump from his divisive,
>    demagogic presidential campaign, the next four years will be a
>    stress test for the American system.
>
>      The Trump Years promise to be full of Oval Office insults,
>    Twitter attacks and disregard for facts. But rather than
>    viewing the prospect of covering a Trump administration with
>    exhaustion, we should feel invigorated. Because when this time
>    is done, we will look back on it as the best and most
>    important time to be a journalist - not because it was easy,
>    but because it was hard and our sense of mission was clear: to
>    respect the office of the President while holding the person
>    in power accountable against a standard of enduring American
>    values.  
>
>    For journalists, Edward R. Murrow offers durable inspiration.
>    The man who brought the Battle of Britain home to Americans
>    via radio and pioneered TV News at CBS, is probably best known
>    today from "Good Night and Good Luck," directed by George
>    Clooney. Murrow famously risked his career to confront a
>    popular and powerful conservative populist demagogue, Senator
>    Joe McCarthy. He secured his legacy through a commitment to
>    independence and integrity.  
>
>    McCarthy used lies and innuendo to intimidate critics,
>    famously parading a fake list of communists in the State
>    Department, accusing a Democratic administration of
>    participating in a vast conspiracy to subvert our sovereignty
>    and falsely declaring that the ACLU a communist front group.
>    In an ironic bit of symmetry, among his aides was a young true
>    believer named Roy Cohn, who would later become attorney for
>    both mob bosses and Donald Trump. It was from Cohn that Trump
>    learned to never apologize, always attack.  
>
>    Pushing back against the dark tides of his times, Murrow
>    preached fearlessness rooted in fairness.  In my office at
>    Beast HQ, I have a Murrow quote on a brass plaque: "To be
>    persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be
>    credible; to be credible we must be truthful."  
>
>    Trump's political success was based on declining trust in all
>    civic institutions - especially the media. Not coincidentally,
>    this decades-long decline directly parallels the rise of
>    partisan media, which has allowed people to self-segregate
>    into separate political realities. As conservative radio host
>    Charlie Sykes recently reflected, "We've basically eliminated
>    any of the referees...we have spent 20 years demonizing the
>    liberal mainstream media...But, at a certain point you wake up
>    and you realize you have destroyed the credibility of any
>    credible outlet out there."  
>
>    This election's sinister innovation of "fake news" came when
>    this diet of confirmation bias collided with click bait,
>    polluting our political waters with propaganda.
>
>      Journalists determined to hold Trump accountable must
>    understand that offering nothing but reflexive criticism will
>    reduce their credibility. We'll need to give credit for the
>    policies the administration gets right so that our criticisms
>    carry weight. We'll need to offer a roster of reporters and
>    columnists with credibility on both sides of the aisle instead
>    of predictable partisanship.
>
>      But it does not mean surrendering our principles or indulging
>    in the idiotic "on-the-one-hand, on the other" drift toward
>    moral relativism that blurs the line between fact and fiction.
>    Separating truth from lies is journalism's core
>    responsibility. When a McCarthy defender accused Murrow of
>    "bias and hypocrisy," Murrow coolly replied, "If the weight of
>    public testimony has tended to show that so far, Senator
>    McCarthy's charges are unproven, that is not my
>    responsibility."
>
>      Of course, aiming for the truth doesn't make you immune from
>    criticism.  Some conservatives will call anyone who isn't
>    conservative a leftist and unleash howling Twitter mobs on
>    them. Liberals have their own identity politics litmus tests
>    that the more militant among them trot out to condemn any one
>    who dares disagree with them.
>
>      Here, too, the example of Ed Murrow offers some perspective.
>    Before taking on McCarthy, he was considered a fairly
>    conventional anti-communist, backing the execution of the
>    Rosenbergs for spying on behalf of Russia. He'd also been
>    called a warmonger by isolationists for his belief that
>    American should stand up to Hitler. Contrary to his critics'
>    caricatures, Murrow was not a Democrat or a Republican but a
>    registered independent. As his colleague Charles Collingwood
>    said, "His politics were based on old-fashioned notions of
>    morality and honor, not ideology." His influence stemmed from
>    his independence.
>
>      But after taking on McCarthy, Murrow was called a communist
>    "fellow traveler" and worse. The Wisconsin Senator denounced
>    him as "the cleverest of the jackal pack, which is always
>    found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual
>    communists and traitors."
>
>      Conservative columnists constantly attacked Murrow and his
>    crew, driving the broadcaster Dan Hollenbeck to commit
>    suicide. J. Edgar Hoover ordered an expansion of his FBI file.
>    Murrow's eight-year old son was subjected to slurs and their
>    home was inundated with letters and postcards of hate, the
>    doxxing of his day. When asked how they were holding up, his
>    wife Janet calmly explained "we were under worse in London."
>
>      That is the sound of perspective. Journalists who've stood up
>    to Trump, particularly those on the center-right, were trolled
>    and doxxed throughout the campaign. The Daily Beast's
>    reporters were threatened by Trump's senior staff, our site
>    was denounced by the candidate and we were among the first
>    news organizations to be placed on his campaign's blacklist.
>    Reporters from the Washington Post to the Arizona Republic
>    received death threats for daring to criticize - or not
>    endorse--The Donald.  Trump allies have doubled down on the
>    campaign's blacklist by floating the notion of an "enemies
>    list," echoing Trump's favorite ex-president, Richard Nixon.
>    Trump and his geo-political paramour Vladimir Putin have a
>    common aim to intimidate critics while creating the false
>    sense of security that comes from rallying around a strong man
>    draped in the flag.  
>
>    But Murrow would not back down, famously confronting McCarthy
>    on his show "See It Now" in the spring of 1954, subjecting his
>    opponent's statements to the cool scrutiny of facts combined
>    with unusual eloquence for a television anchorman.  
>
>    His words echo with new urgency today.  "We must not confuse
>    dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that
>    accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon
>    evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one
>    of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of
>    unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine and
>    remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from
>    men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend
>    causes which were for the moment unpopular."  
>
>    Murrow's stand drew accolades - he was praised by the New York
>    Times for "crusading journalism of high responsibility and
>    courage, " reflecting "enlightened citizenship" while offering
>    an "indictment of those who wish the problems posed by the
>    senator's tactics and theatrics would just go away and leave
>    them alone."  
>
>    But he did not turn the tide in one night. His cause was, at
>    the time, unpopular.  In fact, days after the broadcast, the
>    president of CBS showed Murrow a poll that showed "more people
>    trusted McCarthy than Murrow, and that one-third of the
>    respondents considered Murrow to be 'Communist or Communist
>    sympathizer.'"  
>
>    Truth often loses battles on the way to winning the larger war
>    of history's judgment. Murrow's advertisers came under fire
>    and his show was disgracefully moved to the comparative
>    Siberia of a Sunday afternoon time slot, when corrupt quiz
>    shows were deemed less problematic and more profitable.
>    Murrow mocked the idea that "we must at all costs shield the
>    sensitive citizens from anything that is unpleasant...[or]
>    eliminate something that might offend some section of the
>    community."  
>
>    Even now, we are seeing success among news organizations that
>    have maintained the courage of their convictions rather than
>    simply playing to the lowest common denominator. The New York
>    Times is seeing a surge in subscriptions since Trump's
>    unexpected win while the Washington Post has achieved
>    profitability. At The Daily Beast, we have seen another record
>    year in terms of traffic and revenue, reaching more than 1
>    million readers a day with high loyalty and engagement - more
>    than doubling our traffic from four years before. The lesson
>    is clear: quality journalism attracts a quality audience.  
>
>    In time, Murrow's example inspired courage in other citizens
>    that ultimately reached the halls of Congress. When the lawyer
>    Joseph Welch confronted McCarthy by asking "have you no sense
>    of decency," that courage became contagious, inspiring
>    Republican colleagues like Margaret Chase Smith to stand up to
>    the demagogue, spurring a Senate investigation into McCarthy
>    and his tactics.  Republicans who denounced candidate Trump as
>    dangerously irresponsible, ignorant and unqualified are now
>    lining up to get on board - some motivated by a sense of
>    service, others by rank opportunism. Reform Republicans will
>    be a critical principled balance of power in our era as well.
>
>    Trump is, of course, not McCarthy. For one thing, he is far
>    friendlier to Russia. But the point of studying history isn't
>    the search for perfect parallels but finding the courage to
>    confront our own challenges, armed with a sense of
>    perspective.  Mark Twain reportedly said, "history doesn't
>    repeat, but it often rhymes." Maybe Donald Trump will be the
>    first person in human history to campaign as a demagogue and
>    not govern as one.  We'll hope for the best but prepare for
>    the worst on that front. But we already know that how we
>    handle the next four years as a nation will echo across this
>    century.  
>
>    Trump's rise coincides with a broader ethno-nationalist
>    pushback against liberal democratic values occurring across
>    the western world. Already, studies are showing that only 30%
>    of millennials feel it's essential to live in a democracy,
>    compared to 75% of their grandparents' generation, who
>    actually had to fight for freedom against fascism and
>    communism. Situational ethics is rampant, with Republican
>    approval of Russia's Vladimir Putin skyrocketing after it was
>    revealed that his government tried to influence the election
>    on Trump's behalf. Willful ignorance is on the rise as well,
>    with nearly 50% of Trump voters believing the unhinged fake
>    news story that Hillary Clinton was involved in a sinister,
>    non-existent, pedophile ring. These trends represent a crisis
>    of our capacity for self-government.  
>
>    This is our generation's responsibility to fix. We sometimes
>    simplify the risk when we look back at moral battles in
>    history.  But the actors then were surrounded by doubt. They
>    didn't know how it would all turn out.  The best we can do is
>    imagine how the choices we make today will look in twenty
>    years time and act accordingly.  That also means resisting
>    cynical arguments for inaction that often provide a
>    fashionable mask for fear.  
>
>    The character of our country didn't change on Election Day.
>    Trump's mandate may be thin - after all, he lost the popular
>    vote by an unprecedented 2.9 million and won the Electoral
>    College by a margin of roughly 100,000 in three states - but
>    he will be our next president.  We should all want his
>    administration to succeed so that our country succeeds. And so
>    we must find a way to unite as a nation without falling into
>    the trap of normalization, shrugging off Oval Office Twitter
>    attacks on dissenting citizens or private businesses,
>    reframing lies as simply exaggerations and undermining the
>    integrity of facts by labeling all news "fake news." We cannot
>    turn our backs on our best, most inclusive traditions.  
>
>    "We can deny our heritage and our history," Ed Murrow warned,
>    "but we cannot escape responsibility for the result." This is
>    on us, not just journalists but all citizens who are committed
>    to putting patriotism ahead of partisanship. This is our
>    Murrow moment.
>
> - - -
>
> --Lauren--



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