May 23, 2006

Freedom of the Press

Our business - and our country - depends upon the press being free...able to cover stories thoroughly and accurately.

So it's concerning to hear that our government has been monitoring media telephone calls...not listening in on the calls, but tracking them. That obviously makes it very difficult for the media to protect sources, and that - in turn - may discourage some individuals from providing information to the media.

In many ways, despite our technological advances, it's increasingly difficult to find out what's going on in the world. Major news organizations are under budget pressure because of the competitive landscape...so they close bureaus or cease to cover important stories in out-of-the-way places. Our own government has put unprecedented restrictions on what can be covered in the Iraq war. And now we are faced with reporters' phone records being watched.

All of this makes last year's movie "Good Night, and Good Luck" more relevant than ever. And so is its subject matter...Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Tom Wicker has written a new book on McCarthy, tracing his career and trying to reckon with how his "phenomenon" occurred. McCarthy preached fear of Communism, and he frequently held up papers claiming they contained the names of known Communists in the State Department.

Sometimes he said there were 205 names on the list...sometimes, 57....sometimes, 81. In point of fact, he never unearthed a single Communist in the State Department.

But he scared the heck out of everyone. For example, the Voice of America dismissed 830 employees under McCarthy's threats.

McCarthy was a compulsive liar. His first opponent was 66 years old. McCarthy said the man was 73...then he said he was 89. He said that he had ten pounds of shrapnel in his leg, but the truth was that he had injured his leg falling off a ladder at a shipboard party.

How could the country get so intimidated by such a fellow as McCarthy? Wicker says that after World War II we were "bound inevitably to triumph" and that we felt that the only way we could fail was if there were subversives in high places. More importantly, he points out that in times of stress, we often turn to fear. And McCarthy "invoked the insecurity that could so easily afflict the American psyche - the dark unease."

Could that dynamic be playing out post 9/11, and could we be allowing it to cause us to look the other way at phone logs being monitored and other possible restrictions on the freedom of the press?