"White Knight of the Airwaves"

Doherty maintains a fresh prose that serves to make some of the most dramatic moments in history seem even more theatrical. His eighth chapter's ode to broadcasting hero Ed Murrow does this with a twinge of irony: Murrow, the fabled hero, slays the dragon McCarthy on live television. Sensationalist for sure, tongue-in-cheek a bit, but Doherty is serious. Murrow is the "patron saint of broadcast journalism" (161), the bearer of truth in a sea of spin. Andrea supplied this quote below from Doherty's argument (which she rightly says is overarching) that, "through television, America became a more open and tolerant place" (2). While I can't agree that Doherty consistently supports this hard-to-prove point throughout the text, I do think that the particular case study of Murrow vs. McCarthy amicably backs up Doherty's assessment (minus one pretty crucial thing; but I'm advocating, so I'll save it for the afterthought).

I'm inclined to agree with Andrea's post below in that See It Now is praised as a unifier, somewhat out of context with Doherty's point about tolerant America; in fact, it is intolerance that spurned Murrow to unravel his opponents. But what I can agree with is that See It Now does in fact offer a level playing field that did not previously exist to such a degree in American media. Albeit through an unmistakable bias likely encouraged by crystal-clear hindsight, Doherty is presenting Murrow and the show as a moral compass that quite literally allowed its viewers to navigate their own opinion. The difference with See It Now, and what appears to have made it so special, is that it offered two sides to the same story and was unafraid to tell them, leading to social change in some cases. There's a good visual anecdote of this when Doherty is describing the dual coastal monitors: San Francisco on the left, Brooklyn on the right, Murrow in the middle. I think, and I can't say that he is 100% successful, Doherty is accurately locating Murrow's crusade as one of the first instances of media, particularly moving media images, as being aware of itself as a very powerful political tool. It's unmistakable how much this is true today (just one thought back to this past election and I'm sure we'd all have mouthfuls to say about media representation and its relationship to political agenda).

I am, however, left feeling somewhat confused by this last chapter, as I can't say I know where Doherty's laid his cards as far as the book's argument goes. On the one hand, he praises Murrow at times so gratuitously, one can't help but see how Doherty's own personal bias has structured his use or non-use of evidence. Don't get me wrong: I think Ed Murrow was a brilliant figure (incidentally, I just finished watching 2005's Good Night, and Good Luck, which was a little underwhelming compared to the real-life stuff) and I agree that he, along with the CBS writers and crew etc., pioneered the kind of talk-back, take-back liberal pundit journalism that circulates so widely today. On the other hand, though, there are moments where Doherty can't properly filter this admiration in an objective way, which signals alarms for myself as an analytical reader regardless of the subject matter. My issue is with Doherty's odd deconstruction of what reads as Murrow's "free verse" (174) poetry (his transcripts from the broadcasts); his interjections seem a little peculiar. But, as I'm advocating, I digress.

Advocating or dissenting, though, I think there's an important question that rises from the Murrow/McCarthy exchange, and that is regarding the issue of representation. I'm not entirely convinced that Doherty offers a fair balance between Murrow and McCarthy, but is that even possible considering the nostalgic historical perspective from which we look? Even during its time, did something so subversive as See It Now, even with its political inclusivity, really ever allow for a fair and unbiased perspective - that tolerant, even playing field that Doherty's been touching on - to exist between Murrow and McCarthy? On the most superficial level, and Doherty chimes in on this multiple times, Murrow was a fantastic orator; "showstopping" (176), even - but of course he was; he's a TV man, that's his job. Compared with McCarthy's response, which was "poor in quality with spotty cutting and monotonous one-camera shots of McCarthy sitting at a desk directly facing the lens" (186). The editing could be brutal and the audience would be none the wiser. In that regard, I don't agree that America was becoming more tolerant through television media; it seems to me like America was becoming more bifurcated. I do, however, agree that See It Now provided a forum that, for the first time, mediated between the right and left with a subtle subversive swing that makes its success that much sweeter.