Edward R. Murrow Quotes
No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.
Edward R. Murrow, 1908-1965, Journalist, Director, United States Information Agency, CBS See It Now, March 7, 1954
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
After this, no other member of the Executive branch went before McCarthy again
In early America, the political parties had their own newspapers where “truth” was not an important journalistic virtue. Red scares and other fears of foreign conspiracies are as old as our nation. In 1798 the Federalists accused Vice President Thomas Jefferson, among others, of being in contact with the foreign conspirators and printed details of a "manufactured" plot to massacre the citizens of Philadelphia in one of their controlled newspapers. The nation was so alarmed that the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by Congress a few months later. These were probably the greatest infringements on American civil liberties in our history.
Many in Congress were afraid of McCarthy as he would charge that anyone who criticized him was a Communist or Communist Sympathizer. Young John F. Kennedy was one of those who was intimidated into silence. Fulbright was one of the few who had the courage to take McCarthy on. Later, McCarthy was censured by the Senate and it afterwards it was revealed that he was a paranoid alcoholic but he did a tremendous amount of damage.
Edward Roscoe Murrow, born Egbert Roscoe Murrow, was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He first gained prominence during World War II with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe for the news division of CBS. During the war he recruited and worked closely with a team of war correspondents who came to be known as the Murrow Boys.
