Haynes Johnson Interview (2005): Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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In the end, he is brought down by his own actions and by his colleagues, and he turns against the army, which leads to the Army-McCarthy hearings. But it took a long time for the institutions to turn. Very important here is the role of television. These hearings were televised. Talk about how journalism came to play such an important role.
Well, at that point, looking back on it now, this was [one of] television's finest hours because you were able to see Joe McCarthy in the living rooms. The Army-McCarthy hearings were the most widely watched event in the history of television to that point. And you saw, day after day, Joe McCarthy snarling, "You're not fit to wear the uniform," attacking people, whispering, giggling and brutally assaulting people. People were shocked. He had valorous soldiers before him with medals who had bled in three wars, accusing them of communism and subversion. And the American people saw that, and that's what brought down Joe McCarthy. He imploded.
You talk about theater! The protagonist, Joseph Welsh, this mild-mannered, bow-tied lawyer, gentleman, decent, civil, from Boston, but with a quiet little remark -- McCarthy finally attacked Joseph Welsh. One of his partners accused him of being a communist and trying to foist on the committee, "it's not true," and Welsh said, at this point, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?" And that quiet remark from an older Joe Welsh, holding his hands in great sorrow, was engraved in the American memory. At that point, whatever Joe McCarthy had represented, he never recovered from that. And the censure hearings came right after those hearings.
It was in the latter part of McCarthy's reign of terror, I guess we can call it, that Edward R. Murrow did this special, which is now the subject of an excellent movie by George Clooney.
Yes. As a matter of fact, the Murrow [program] was an eloquent, wonderful statement one month before the Army-McCarthy hearings, in which he actually challenged and said that "the fault, dear Brutus," for McCarthy, "is not in the stars, but in us," the American people, for allowing falsehood and shame and defamation to smear people and divert us from real questions before the country. I'm paraphrasing, but it was a wonderful half-hour documentary to the largest response in television history for CBS, which at that time was a premier broadcaster. Ed Murrow was the most famous and respected broadcast journalist. It was a great moment.
In the Clooney movie, it's wonderful because you see actually the picture of Joe McCarthy. They don't hire an actor. You see that sneering, blustering, bombastic, brutal person in action. But I told Clooney -- I was happily with Clooney when the movie was premiered and we shared a podium together, talking about my book and his movie, and I said what a wonderful movie it was, but it creates a myth that it was Ed Murrow that brought him down. By then, four years had passed. Four years had passed, and he was already then in the process of self-destruction. He would have self-destructed in any event. The movie is more important today because it's a reminder of what the press did not do today: stand up, be accountable, demand that our officials be accountable, shine bright lights in dark places, speak truth [to power]. And that's what we did, we allowed ourselves to be manipulated on the war in Iraq. We again found ourselves used by the techniques of McCarthyism.
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