Complete Story
07/21/2016
For journalists covering Trump, a Murrow moment
From the Columbia Journalism Review
As Edward R. Murrow wrapped up his now-famous special report condemning Joseph McCarthy in 1954, he looked into the camera and said words that could apply today. “He didn’t create this situation of fear—he merely exploited it, and rather successfully,” Murrow said of McCarthy. Most of Murrow’s argument relied on McCarthy’s own words, but in the end Murrow shed his journalistic detachment to offer a prescription: “This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent—or for those who approve,” he said. “We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
After months of holding back, modern-day journalists are acting a lot like Murrow, pushing explicitly against Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. To be sure, these modern-day Murrow moments carry less impact: Long gone are the days in which a vast majority of eyeballs were tuned to the big-three television news programs. But we nonetheless are witnessing a change from existing practice of steadfast detachment, and the context in which journalists are reacting is not unlike that of Murrow: The candidate’s comments fall outside acceptable societal norms, and critical journalists are not alone in speaking up.
It’s difficult to find a single launch moment for the change in coverage, but perhaps it started with a question from Fox News’s Megyn Kelly during the August 2015 GOP presidential debate. Kelly simply listed some of the awful things Trump has said about women; the power of her question was her use of the candidate’s own words. As effective as Kelly’s question was—provoking Trump’s ire and countless tweets—journalists began to become more adversarial. The new tone began to ramp up in March when CNN’s Anderson Cooper took Trump to task. Trump, in defending himself after a squabble with fellow candidate Ted Cruz involving photos of each of their wives, explained to Cooper that Cruz had started it. “With all due respect, sir, that is the argument of a 5-year-old,” Cooper replied.
