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Signal group chat is a reminder of journalism's role and responsibility in a democracy... [1]
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Date: 2025-03-29
Good night and good luck, indeed
As The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported the scandalous Signal App group chat, the importance of free and unflinching journalism is once again brought to our attention. In the face of this administration’s lie-filled and typically cruel response to his honest reporting, Goldberg has been transparent and fearless. In these times being called a ‘sleazebag’ by slimeballs amounts to a badge of honor any honest reporter would gladly share. The intrepid journalists who smell a story and go about the business of telling it regardless of who is involved are on the frontlines of this generation’s fight against autocracy. With the Clooney play “Good Night and Good Luck” opening on Broadway, Edward R. Murrow’s battle against Joe McCarthy, a despicable fear-monger who exploited a nation’s fears of subversion in the wake of an anti-communist “red scare,” is timely. Authoritarian overreach is often the catalyst for its own demise. As often as not, empires and movements fall from within.
Recent American history attests the need for a free and unfettered press that exposes unbridled power and corrupting influence. That role is embedded in our constitutional democracy via the First Amendment. It calls for journalists unafraid of governmental pushback-- who are unbowed in the face of corporate media’s tendency to cozy up to power. We are not that far removed from examples of dauntless journalists like Murrow and Woodward and Bernstein, who at times risked physical harm and professional fallout to get the story straight.
In Murrow’s time, McCarthy’s “red scare” tactics threatened American citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights in an attempt to gain political power. While Congressional Republicans finally relented and censured McCarthy, ending his terror campaign, it was public opinion ginned up by journalists like Murrow that softened the political support that buoyed the Wisconsin scourge. Many of McCarthy’s accusations were found to be false or misleading, and his popularity fell precipitously in 1954 after a Wisconsin newspaper wrote a front-page editorial calling for his recall. In a failed attempt to redeem his popularity, McCarthy agreed to appear on Murrow’s program “See It Now” in response to Murrow’s 9, 1954 program that exposed the senator’s perfidy:
It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. — “See It Now”, March 9, 1954
McCarthy’s subsequent appearance on the program did not go well. The rest is history. Murrow’s quote describing the era-- “a nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves”-- still resonates today amidst the baaing MAGA crowd.
Journalism vs “the news”
We can no longer simply trust that news organizations will be willing to hold this administration to task for its autocratic policies and incompetence. FOX News has long sold out its journalistic principles for political favor and commercial success. Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post— the paper that exposed Richard Nixon’s crimes— has sold-off its editorial policy for the favor of an administration that would target the Amazon billionaire’s other business interests.
Murrow saw it coming and warned us:
“I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation. Heywood Broun once said, "No body politic is healthy until it begins to itch." I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers. It can be done. Maybe it won't be, but it could. But let us not shoot the wrong piano player. Do not be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their networks. They all have better taste. All are responsible to stockholders, and in my experience all are honorable men. But they must schedule what they can sell in the public market.” -— RTDNA Foundation, “Murrow's Famous "Wires and Lights in a Box."
Even the so-called mainstream press appears timid as it tries to balance news that is essentially unbalanced due to institutional lying and media cronyism. Journalism filtered through a marketplace disregards newsworthiness for entertainment. FOX epitomizes news media’s sellout, but at times so do MSNBC, CNN, NYTimes, and many of our local TV stations when they bow to pressures exerted by their stockholders protective of their bottom lines:
“Each time they yield to a voice from Washington or any political pressure, each time they eliminate something that might offend some section of the community, they are creating their own body of precedent and tradition, and it will continue to pursue them. They are, in fact, not content to be half safe.” -— RTDNA Foundation, “Murrow's Famous "Wires and Lights in a Box."
a concept essential to democracy
We are in danger of losing the one guardrail that Madison envisioned when he
envisioned a citizen’s Bill of Rights with its first right of freedom of speech. In an era in which truth has become negotiable, we must trust that journalists, who are the foundation of the fourth estate, will not subvert their responsibility to disclose the truth. Journalists Woodward and Bernstein unplugged Nixon’s plumbers. Daniel Ellsberg and the New York Times editors took responsibility for the release of the Pentagon Papers. These are examples of journalists’ role as protectors of democracy. Their work was done despite public pressure to stop and private threats to relent, or else. They understood their role to shape, not follow, popular opinion.
Edward R. Murrow not only spoke truth to political power brokers, he dared speak it to his bosses at CBS. In times like this, it is folly to trust corporate entities like networks and news outlets whose bottom lines run interference for oligarchs and autocrats.
Dauntless reporting by fearless reporters is the bane of tyrants and bullies. Jeffrey Goldberg’s exposé is what could serve as the beginning of the unraveling of public support for the MAGA movement. On a recent morning news program, a reporter commenting on the impact of the Trump foreign policies on our European allies spoke a different truth— another foundational attack on the Trump administration's house of lies. She observed that Trump’s antagonism toward Europe had morphed the MAGA acronym, awakening the allies and making Europe great again. The consequences of their misreading of history and their ham-handed approach to foreign affairs drip with irony.
Murrow ended his speech to his colleagues at the 1958 Radio Television News Directors Association with a warning and a hope:
This instrument (television) can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it's nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.
Over at FOX, the news programs are merely wires and lights in a box — or worse. News is packaged and wrapped, and truth is for sale. On many Sinclair Network local news programs, scripts are prepared for an audience that would prefer to be entertained and have their partisanship affirmed rather than be informed.
The power of the press rests in its reporters like Jeffrey Goldberg who report the truth and damn the consequences.
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