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The Cold War was a time of fear. The worlds two greatest superpowers fought for dominance and the advent of nuclear weapons meant that open war between them could devastate the earth. Despite the severity of the situation there were those who took advantage of this paranoia for their own personal agendas. The 1950's gave rise to Joseph McCarthy a senator who rose to power by accusing his enemies of being communists. Normally such baseless claims would be rebuked but the media failed to actually check these claims. That is except for one man.
Edward R. Murrow was a successful radio journalist who used his television series See It Now to show people that McCarthy was not some heroic crusader but a tyrant using the threat of communism to get his way. Murrow took full advantage of televisions visual nature to show the audience the people who were being unfairly harmed by these witch hunts and pettiness of their inciter. The public was able to see McCarthyism for the ridiculous thuggery it was and McCarthy himself was stripped of his power by the senate.
I believe that this chapter is more relevant than ever in this day and age where lies have become so commonplace due to the medias failure to actually check if what their reporting is true and letting political bullies get away with scaring people into submission with stories of "socialism". If the media cannot remember the mistake it made once before then they are doomed to repeat them.
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