Edward Alwood

Journalism historian Edward Alwood's latest book studies how journalists became targets of Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his anticommunist "witch hunts" of the 1950s.

“Dark Days in the Newsroom: McCarthyism Aimed at the Press" (Temple University Press) details how Congress questioned journalists suspected of being members of the Communist Party.

“No one accused them of overthrowing the government or slanting a story,” said Alwood, an associate professor of journalism. “Congress asked two things: Were you a member of the Communist Party ever, and, if you were, we want you to name names. Naming people would destroy their careers.”

New York Times copy editor Melvin Barnet did not name names; he also did not work in journalism again after he refused to answer questions about his political affiliation. The Times fired Barnet in 1955 for being a member of the Communist Party even though he told the Times he left the party in the 1940s.

“The New York Times was not satisfied with the answer,” Alwood said. He interviewed Barnet three times for the book at his home in Brooklyn before he died at age 83. “He was more bitter at colleagues who failed to recognize the First Amendment issues involved than he was at The New York Times,” Alwood said. “He believed the First Amendment prohibits asking journalists about thoughts, beliefs and political lives.”

Open expression of political views taints a journalist’s reputation for fair reporting and invites excessive scrutiny from readers and public officials, Alwood said. “Asking people about their thoughts and beliefs sends a chill through the newsroom.”

During this era Congress never made membership in the Communist Party illegal. Instead, people were labeled "enemies of the state." Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover feared the party would go underground if membership became illegal, thus making investigations of members more difficult, according to Alwood.

“Dark Days in the Newsroom” shows how many conflicts journalists faced during the McCarthy era parallel today's conflicts over the right of journalists to protect sources, such as New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, who refused to reveal sources before a federal grand jury investigating a leak naming Valerie Plame as a covert CIA agent.

“We’re seeing repetition of things that happened during the communist drive,” Alwood said. “Judith Miller refused to testify and was sent to jail, and the Supreme Court refused to review the cases in the '50s and now.”

Alwood’s study of journalism history, particularly the McCarthy era, began with his dissertation, “The Hunt for Red Writers: Communists in the Press," which received the prestigious Nafzige-White Dissertation Award from the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication.

“I knew I had only touched the tip of the iceberg with the dissertation,” Alwood said.

While doing research for his previous book, “Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media" (Columbia University Press), Alwood interviewed Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times.

Sulzberger later gave Alwood access to the Times' private archives for “Dark Days in the Newsroom.” Through Freedom of Information Act requests Alwood also obtained undisclosed documents from the FBI, the National Archives and Records Administration, the State Department and congressional investigative committees.

During Alwood’s 14 years as a television reporter, he was a Washington correspondent for CNN and was chosen to cover President Reagan’s trip to the World Economic Summit in Tokyo.

“Straight News,” Alwood’s first book, evaluated how mainstream American news media have depicted gays and lesbians over the past 50 years. The book received favorable reviews by the American Journalism Review, The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Times selected it as a "Notable Book of the Year."