Payton’s Red Scare Research
U.S Media and the Soviet Union
Background:
For American Journalists, the coverage of Russia and the Soviet Union became contentious long before the begining of the Cold War in 1946. U.S coverage started to have a disparaging outlook on Russia shortly after the 1917 Russia Revolution (ohiohistory.org). Yet American media coverage of the Soviet Union guided public opinion and maintained U.S patriotism throughout the Cold War, “space race”, and eventual fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Publications all over the U.S were running articles detailing the downfalls of communism, the “reds”, and often less than flattering representations of the Russian populus.
McCarthyism and the Press:
McCarthyism was a term used to describe activities associated with Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. Who served in the Senate from 1947 to 1957. McCarthy launched a strong anti-communist campaign and went as far as to accuse U.S officials of conspiring with Russia if they were anything but staunchly anti-Soviet Union.
Edward Alwood is a current professor at the Philip Merril College of Journalism, and worked as a CNN correspondent who reported on the White House, Congress, and various federal agencies. Alwood published a book entitled Dark Days in the Newsroom : McCarthyism Aimed at the Press. In this book, Alwood looked into the impact of HUAC, also known as The House Un-American Activities Committee. HUAC was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties. Out of this came the Hollywood Hearings, which resulted in the questioning of many prominent writers and actors on their ties to the communist party.
This article is out of the April 16, 1948 edition of the Evening Star, which was a publication based in Washington, D.C. This article covered the case against writer John Howard Lawson. Lawson was later blacklisted for his refusal to tell the House Committee on Un-American Activities about his political allegiances.
During this era American journalist I F Stone was put on a FBI watchlist and dubbed a communist for his critiques of McCarthy. Stone at the time was a columnist for the New York Compass (Alwood, 2007). At this time there were increasing rumors about the press being infiltrated by the KGB.
The Red Scare in the Media:
Since even before the begining of the Cold War, American fear concerning Russian interference was represented in newspapers across the country. The biggest talking points were the spread of communism in the east, “reds” invading the U.S, and generally any action taken by the Russian government that could be seen to impact American life.
This headline is once again out of the Evening Star. The article was an investigative piece by Leonard Paris looking into the likelihood of russian interference at U.S defense manufacturing plants. Paris stated that “soviet sabatoge” could only be combated by american patriotism and vigilance. Later in the article he said that if those ideas prevail then the “nightmare of soviet sabatoge will remain only a nightmare.”
Gear up for the space race!:
This article is from the August 27, 1960 edition of the Detroit Tribune. This excerpt captured the tensions between the U.S and Russia, specifically the competition to see who could make advancements in space before the other.
This paragraph is from the Lexington Advertiser’s May 3, 1962 edition. The article was updating the public on the achievements made by Russia and the U.S in their quest to each be the first to dominate the final frontier.
As two of the world’s strongest countries, Russia and the United States will more than likely always have distrust in eachother especially due to the contentious era of the Cold War. The American public too will have a sense of invasion by Russian ideals as a result of the time in U.S journalism when the largest coverage was the threat of “Reds” and “Commies” wanting to decimate the U.S and their free-market ideals. With nearly a century having passed since the begining of the “red scare”, it is fair to question how much of this distrust came from the government and how big of a role journalists had in spreading this distrust.
Sources:
ALWOOD, E. (2007). Dark Days in the Newsroom: McCarthyism Aimed at the Press. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Retrieved March 6, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14bt0fd
Berman, P. (2006, October 1). The Watchdog. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/books/review/Berman.t.html
Pufong,Marc-Georges. McCarthyism. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1061/mccarthyism .
(Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.), 16 April 1948. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1948-04-16/ed-1/seq-6/>
Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.), 22 March 1951. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1951-03-22/ed-1/seq-4/>
Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.), 27 May 1951. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1951-05-27/ed-1/seq-106/>
The Detroit tribune. (Detroit, Mich.), 27 Aug. 1960. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92063852/1960-08-27/ed-1/seq-10/>
The Lexington advertiser. [volume] (Lexington, Miss.), 03 May 1962. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024271/1962-05-03/ed-1/seq-2/>
First Red Scare. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/First_Red_Scare
