What Effect Did McCarthyism Have On 1950's Media In The United States?

What Effect Did McCarthyism Have On 1950’s Media?

Fred Hintz

A.Plan of Investigation

This investigation assesses the effects of the “red-hunter” policies in the 1950’s on the media of the time. The specific media that were affected during this period that are examined in this investigation are film, television, and the radio. The methodology of the HUAC in limiting the various media is investigated, as is the response of the leaders in the media at the time. The two sources used in the investigation that are further analyzed are Nightmare In Red: The McCarthy Era In Perspective by Richard M. Fried and Banned In The Media: A Reference Guide to Censorship in the Press by Herbert N. Foerstel. They are evaluated for their origins, purposes, values, and limitations.

This investigation does not assess the ideology of McCarthyism, or any of the other practices and policies put in place because of McCarthyism. This investigation also does not assess the effect of McCarthyism on present-day media.

B. Summary Of Evidence.

The largest organizations that targeted “subversiveness” in American society in the 1950’s were the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee), and, specifically geared towards communist influences in the media, AWARE, Inc. a private anti-communist venture. These organizations exercised their control over the media primarily through the practice of blacklisting. The HUAC published documents that contained lists of known communist sympathizers or supporters. Two of the most significant documents of this sort were Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in America and Counterattack: The Newsletter of Facts on Communism. Both of these documents had a great effect in the television, radio, and film industries. The television and radio media, by radical conservatives, was believed to be the chief transmission “belts” to bring Pro-Sovietism to the American people [1 Rosteck 16].

In the business proceedings of all three forms of media, the blacklists heavily influenced the employment practices of the various networks. All of the major television networks held some sort of anti-communist screening for its employees. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) was the first to institute a “loyalty oath” of for its employees in 1950 [2. Rosteck 16]. The other networks soon followed suit. In the radio industry, the Vice President of the AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and popular radio host John Henry Faulk was accused of being involved with Communist Activities, and then had to go to court to defend his position against the radical right-wing AWARE organization. In the film industry, the HUAC specifically targeted the particularly large amount of active communists and communist sympathizers in Hollywood. The infamous Hollywood Ten that the HUAC took to court for communist tendencies served as an example to any in the film industry that would promote anything besides American patriotism.

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However, not all of the personalities in the media took this oppression lightly. There is more than one example of television or radio show hosts, screenwriters, and actors standing and taking the issue of blacklisting to court. In the Television industry, the documentary news program See It Now specifically took on the issue of not only blacklisting, but also the entire ideology behind McCarthyism. Edward R. Murrow would say things like “On what meat does this our Caesar feed” (3Fried 139), in reference to McCarthy and his hunger for power in the Senate. The show continued to attack McCarthyism despite warnings and threats from the HUAC and other anti-communist groups. In the Radio industry, John Henry Faulk spoke out against the practice of blacklisting. After being accused of being a communist sympathizer by the AWARE organization, he sued AWARE for smearing his good reputation as a radio host. Because of his political standings now, he could not find sponsors for his radio show or be hired for television appearances [Foerstel 78]. At first, he decided that his career was too important to risk for political improvement, and he took a little break from smearing the anti-communist establishment. However, the AWARE organization managed to blacklist Faulk, and he was fired from his position at his radio station. After 6 years of unemployment, he managed to get the organization into court and won 3,500,000 in punitive and compensatory damages (Foerstel 81). The court case was a milestone against the McCarthyist establishment, but still managed to smear the reputation and career of John Henry Faulk. In the film industry, ten screenwriters and directors found to be communists or communist sympathizers were put on trial before the HUAC and refused to cooperate with the unjust inquisition. The Hollywood Ten, as they were called, consisted of Lester Cole, Alvah Bessie, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Malts, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalotn Trumbo, Herbert Biberman, and Edward Dmytryk. The Ten, rather than let themselves be put on trial, attempted to turn the tables on their plaintiffs, and questioned the righteousness of the court. In example, John Howard Lawson, in response to the “$64 Question”: “Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the communist party?”, said “It is shameful that I have to teach this committee the basic principles of American[ism]” [Fried 16].

C. Evaluation of Sources.

Nightmare In Red: The McCarthy Era In Perspective written by Richard M. Fried in 1990 is an examination of the entire McCarthy Era with respect to the American cultural norms and political staples in that time period. The purpose of Nightmare In Red was to put McCarthyism in context with his successors and predecessors in the issue of anti-communism, and to examine a variety of other issues around the central topic of anti-communism that McCarthyism is based on [Fried vii]. The values of the book are that it examines the actions that were taken to limit the media in the heydays of McCarthyism with careful attention to the repercussions and motives of the lawmakers and enforcers of those actions. The limitations of the book are that it only examines the limitation of the media from a political standpoint.

Banned In The Media: A Reference Guide To Censorship In The Press by Herbert N. Foerstel is a history and compilation of legal censorship acts, Supreme Court cases, and censorship in student press in the 1990’s. The purpose of this book is to give examples of censorship in the press throughout American history, and to portray it in a negative light. The value of this book is that, since the period of McCarthyism was a major period in which censorship was used, it contains plenty of examples of censorship in the 1950’s due to McCarthyism and analyzes them from the perspective of the media. The limitation of this book is that it doesn’t so much analyze the political aspect of media censorship in the media during the period of McCarthyism, but only analyzes the repercussions that the censorship had on the media activity.

D.Analysis

The politics of McCarthyism condoned a backstabbing practice like media industry blacklisting in order to have its way in the modern media. The HUAC had seemingly free reign to set in place whatever power-mad policy it felt like enacting. That is obviously how they managed to control the media with simple documents like Red Channels and Counterattack. The fact that the respectable news media could be controlled by a governmental organization not by direct order, but by threats delivered in the form of two pamphlets is despicable.

In the case of the loyalty oaths that CBS and NBC required their employees be subject to, that is an obvious representation of the effect that the McCarthyist projection of anti-communist fear had on the media. The television networks were not ordered by the government to put in place a practice like the loyalty oath, but, through the work of the anti-communist radical establishment, the networks were afraid to hire anyone who had their name on one of the blacklists that the HUAC had published. If the public was to find out that one of the networks had a communist working to put out what they were watching, the network ratings would go down, because of the high anti-communist mood that McCarthyism had created in the time period.

The cases of John Henry Faulk and The Hollywood Ten proved the HUAC and AWARE to be entirely unjust and radical. John Henry Faulk’s legal defeat over AWARE proved that AWARE was not only targeting communists, seeing as Faulk was not a communist himself, but was instead targeting anyone who tried to stand in their way. The various hearings in which the Hollywood Ten were tried were not important in a legal sense, since the Ten were still imprisoned for infringement of the law, but ,since they managed to shed light on the injustice that the HUAC was perpetrating, they still were a milestone for the American public to see the problems with McCarthyism.

E. Conclusion

In all forms of the media, the censorship inflicted during the 1950s due to McCarthyism was major. The blacklists that caused mass purging of employees in media corporations were a direct effect of McCarthyism. The loyalty oaths set in place by major television networks were then a direct effect of the publishing of blacklists by the HUAC. The cases of the Hollywood Ten and John Henry Faulk were a response to the unjust behavior set forth by the McCarthyist establishment.

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Works Cited

Foerstel, Herbert N. Banned in the Media: A Reference Guide to Censorship in the Press, Motion Pictures, Broadcasting, and the Internet. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Questia. 17 June 2007

Fried, Richard M. Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era In Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Questia. 17 June 2007

<http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=79027083>.

Rosteck, Thomas. See It Now Confronts McCarthyism: Television Documentary and the Politics of Representation. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1994. Questia. 17 June 2007

<http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=59354312>.