Media repeating McCarthy-era mistakes?

Media repeating McCarthy-era mistakes?
Media Matters 10/3/04

Salon.com's Eric Boehlert wrote this week about media coverage of conservative claims that a vote for John Kerry is a vote for terrorists. MMFA has long noted how common this line of attack is on the right and how it has seeped into media coverage of the 2004 campaign; Boehlert added some historical context:

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.

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.

In covering the current explosive Republican accusations without holding the accuser responsible, the press is in danger of repeating the same mistake [of the McCarthy era], 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.

Mainly the press has treated this Republican rhetoric as just another development on the campaign trail. A CNN report this week, noting that Kerry had criticized Bush for bungling the war on terror, concluded it was fair to say "both sides can now be described as trying to politically exploit the issue," as if Republicans charging that terrorists would prefer a Kerry victory were the same as Democrats critiquing Bush's foreign policy.

The Washington Post's Sept. 24 article also stretched when trying to show balance by pointing to "questionable rhetoric" on the Democratic side equivalent to Sen. Hatch's suggestion that terrorists are working hard to elect Kerry. The Post's example? The crude sexual pun comedian Whoopi Goldberg had made at Bush's expense at a celebrity fundraiser for Kerry this summer.

"That kind of equation is ridiculous," Marder says. "Someone will always provide an inadequate parallel to try to deal with [the subject]."

"It's a bit like reporters in dealing with McCarthy," says Lewis. He notes that most reporters then were overly anxious to dutifully report McCarthy's accusations as though they were objective news, and that today reporters are trying to present the contemporary versions with false balance. "They haven't figured it out yet."