Analysis Of Joseph Mccarthy’s Utilization Of Television

For politicians today, it is a necessity to be able to engage the public through their television, phone and computer screens but there was a time when this was not the case. After World War II, television was still novel. In 1949, only ten per cent of American homes had a television. By 1959, that number had risen to ninety. The first and most successful politician to utilize the new medium was Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin in the 1940s and 50s. He was known for being a risk taker, having no interest in the truth unless it served him, and being unable to admit his mistakes. Despite his shortcomings, he became a United States senator by mastering television. McCarthy relied so heavily on television, it can be argued it was indispensable to both his success and eventual failure.

Joseph Raymond McCarthy was born in Wisconsin in 1908. He was the fifth of nine children to a Catholic farmer and his wife. He was the first of his family to graduate high school. He was interested in technology and pursued engineering at Marquette University but struggled and decided to study law. His contemporaries described him as a “dissenter for dissent’s sake” and was not fond of authority. He was a circuit judge in Wisconsin until the beginning of the Second World War. At that time, he joined the Marine Corps. Despite being exempt as a judge, he received a commission and spent the majority of his two and half years of service at a desk job in the South Pacific. In the years following the war, McCarthy would embellish and exploit his time overseas for personal gain. He invented stories of heroism, the nickname “Tail Gunner Joe” and eventually received a Purple Heart for a leg injury he sustained falling down a flight of stairs. He became a senator for Wisconsin in 1947. His interest in technology would resurface during his tenure as a senator when he manipulated television for personal and political gains.

In the United States, television became commercially available in 1939 but was not popular until after the Second World War. This was due in large part to the strides made in technology during the war. During World War II, the necessity for new technologies drove the advancement. For example, in testing nuclear bombs, it became necessary to be able to see the reactions from a safe distance in order to protect scientists from as much radiation as possible. This requirement lead to the development of closed circuit television. Other developments in television technology made during World War II include but are not limited to new cameras, receivers, circuitry, and picture tubes. These new improvements set the stage for the boom in popularity television would enjoy in the next decade. Just as World War II brought the world out of the Great Depression, it also brought television into a new era. Senator Joseph McCarthy was quick to realize this and use it for his own advantage.

Joseph McCarthy’s rise to prominence coincided with that of television. His first appearance on television was in 1950 during hearings held to investigate Professor Owen Lattimore. McCarthy had accused the former official for the State Department of being a Communist. The Democratic Senate did not allow the Republican McCarthy to speak during the hearings, despite the accusation being his. However in 1952, the Republican Party won a Senate majority and McCarthy assumed the role of chairman of both the Senate Committee on Government Operations and its Subcommittee on Investigations. These two committees gave McCarthy the chance to appear regularly on television as portions of these committees’ hearings were televised. These hearings allowed McCarthy to eventually hone the medium into his personal propaganda machine.

McCarthy would use minor transgressions perpetrated by government employees to get the employees on the stand, and accuse them of being Communists, or at least sympathetic to the Communist cause. In February of 1953, McCarthy was investigating Voice of America, the American government’s international broadcasting agency. He suggested the government body had been infiltrated by Communists. Harris Reed, the acting director of the Information Administration, Voice of America’s parent organization, had cut Hebrew programming in Israel and was facing disciplinary action for it. McCarthy took this opportunity to interrogate him about a book Reed had written 21 years prior. In the book, Reed suggested educators should be able to teach controversial subjects such as atheism and communism. This was enough evidence for McCarthy to put him on trial. During the lead up to the hearings, McCarthy interrogated witnesses behind closed doors; then McCarthy was able to manipulate the timing of questioning so the parts he wanted televised would occur during the two hour window in which networks aired the hearings. This would not have been possible without television. McCarthy’s success relied heavily on his ability to make witnesses flustered and for his audience to see this. This required an audio-visual medium.

McCarthy’s modus operandi was simple, get the person on the stand and railroad the conversation so the person may be presumed guilty. It was of no consequence to McCarthy whether they were guilty.

Television was imperative to McCarthy’s success and he knew it. This was never clearer than when after being accused of promoting someone he knew was a Communist to a position of power, former President Harry S. Truman made a speech on November 14, 1953 on television denouncing the senator from Wisconsin. Truman said, “It is now evident that the present administration has fully embraced, for political advantage, McCarthyism… It is the abandonment of due process of law…it is the spread of fear and destruction of faith in every level of society.” In order to respond, McCarthy demanded free air time on the country’s major television networks. Any networks who refused his demands were threatened with investigations by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). McCarthy was using his position to frame President Truman’s words in a way that would portray him in a good light. He rebut Truman’s accusations and Truman would presumably not get the same opportunity. McCarthy would get the last word. This is yet another example of McCarthy using the medium of television to achieve his political objective.

After each major conflict involving the United States, people seemed to accept some form of oppression by their government in the name of national safety, for example, the imprisoning of Japanese Americans during World War II. Of course the group being subjected to the oppression did not appreciate this reasoning but the general public accepted it as necessary step to protect their way of life. Anti-communist sentiment had been growing between the First and Second World Wars. After World War II, Communist factions were growing in number and threatening to take over several European countries. Both Greece and Turkey were in danger of falling to Communism. On March 12, 1947, President Truman made a speech declaring Communism the enemy and asking Congress for support for Greece and Turkey. This growing fear is what McCarthy was able to capitalize on to catapult himself into popularity.

There was also an entertainment factor that made the American public interested in McCarthy’s hearings. Just as people would come to see whether an accused witch could survive being burnt at the stake or drowning during the Salem Witch Trials, people were interested to see the spectacle McCarthy had orchestrated each day. During his infamous Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, McCarthy interrogated General Ralph Zwicker about the promotion of a dentist in the Army who had refused to answer questions about his loyalty and political affiliations. McCarthy said the general did not “have the brains of a five-year-old” and “was not fit to wear the uniform.” The army had had enough and retaliated with an inquiry into the means McCarthy had used to acquire confidential information. This marked the turning point for McCarthy. His particular brand of witness abuse was well documented on the very medium he exploited to his own ends. Television had made McCarthy a hero and it was to going to be used to bring him down.

Journalist Edward R. Murrow used McCarthy’s own words to condemn him. Confined to one episode of his show See It Now, Murrow highlighted McCarthy’s bullying of witnesses, and discrepancies between McCarthy’s story and truth. He relayed that what McCarthy had succeeded in doing was confuse the public about real and imagined threats from Communism Murrow, a well-respected journalist presented a measured assessment of McCarthy’s actions and McCarthy was not able to rebound. McCarthy’s popularity lost four points in a Gallup poll the day after Murrow’s show aired. McCarthy lost support from his core supporters in the Midwest as a consequence as well. It seems appropriate that McCarthy be brought down by his own weapon. If Murrow did not plant the seed of doubt in the minds of Americans about McCarthy, he certainly nurtured it, all while using McCarthy’s chosen medium, television. In 1954, the Senate condemned McCarthy’s conduct but he continued as a senator until 1957, never giving up the fight against Communism.

Television, after World War II, was ripe for exploitation. Senator Joseph McCarthy was not particularly smart or clever, he was simply an opportunist that saw the potential in using television for political gain. He put on a show for his audience by being a bully. McCarthy did his best to prevent his opponents’ from receiving the same publicity he enjoyed with television. In the end, his adversaries were able to gain the upper hand by using McCarthy’s schemes against him. The significance of McCarthy’s rise and fall lies in how history is repeating itself today. It is said those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. Today’s politicians would do well to take note in order to avoid the same fate.