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2฀ Investigating฀the฀Cold฀War As noted in the introduction, the dramatic growth of network documentary in the early 1960s was identified with gaining public consent for the Kennedy administration’s activist foreign policy. The New Frontiersmen and network journalists made the global competition between communism and capitalism a central documentary topic. These reports, officials hoped, would cure Americans of their isolationism and teach them of the need for world leadership. However, foreign affairs documentaries, at first broadly championed by government, corporate, and media elites, became an increasing source of friction between them. Some documentaries provoked official concern not because they challenged policy but because television journalists began to intervene in Cold War stories more directly in search of exclusive coverage of unfolding events. In doing so, journalists encroached on the ability of the foreign policy apparatus to conduct its affairs in secrecy and manage public opinion at home and abroad. Other reports ran afoul of Cold War hawks as reports began to echo the foreign policy community’s own growing criticisms of the war in Southeast Asia and the burgeoning power of the military in the United States. Elite support for television documentaries broke down not because of journalistic adversarialism but because of journalistic adventurism and the splits that beset U.S. foreign policy at the time. American policy differences sparked skirmishes over many Cold War investigative reports. Pennsylvania representative Daniel J. Flood attacked Panama:฀ Danger฀Zone (NBC, 1961), which included demands on the United States to relinquish its control of the Panama Canal Zone, for treating “a theme hostile to the United States.” For Flood, the report showed that the networks were “subversive forces” and the Kennedy administration was losing control of the Caribbean.1 Florida senator George A. Smathers criticized Trujillo:฀Portrait฀ of฀a฀Dictator (CBS, 1961), on Dominican Republic ruler Rafael Trujillo, as an irresponsible attack on a Caribbean ally.2 The report featured American 02.62-105.Raph.indd฀฀฀62 6/23/05฀฀฀8:45:01฀AM investigating฀the฀cold฀war 63 business interests and Smathers himself crediting Trujillo with economic development and anticommunism but also dissidents who detailed corruption and human rights abuses and Representative Charles O. Porter (D-Ore.), who said “the bloody, black era of Trujillo is nearly ended,” and that the United States would not send Marines to protect him from revolution. The documentary reflected competing American views of the dictator, from whom the Kennedy administration distanced itself before Trujillo’s domestic opponents assassinated him in 1961 with CIA approval.3 As part of Senator John McLellan’s investigation of alleged favoritism in awarding contracts for the TFX aircraft, the senator subpoenaed unused film from McNamara฀and฀the฀ Pentagon (CBS, 1963). McLellan demanded to review comments on the issue to CBS made by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, with whom the senator was dueling at the time. CBS successfully refused to give up the outtakes.4 News reports on the Vietnam War generated official resistance throughout the conflict. The most famous of these brouhahas was Morley Safer’s CBS฀ Evening฀News story about Americans sacking the village of Cam Ne, which included shots of troops using their cigarette lighters to burn terrified civilians’ huts. President Johnson immediately called CBS president Frank Stanton to excoriate Safer as a “communist” who “just shat on the flag,” and had the reporter’s background investigated for evidence of communist leanings.5 The Defense Department pressured CBS to recall Safer from Vietnam, but the network resisted. However, three other Cold War reports generated more intense government probes, intervention, and threats of further regulation of news than any other documentaries of the time. Journalistic Trespassing: The฀Tunnel In the summer of 1961, the Soviet Union and East Germany precipitated a major Cold War crisis when they raised the Berlin Wall to stanch a growing flow of refugees to the West. The flight of the mainly young, educated, and professional refugees threatened the viability of the East German state, which had stagnated politically and economically. West Berliners protested, fearing that the Soviet Union would make good on its long-term demand for the eviction of Western troops—British, French, and American—that had administered separate sectors of Berlin since the end of World War II. The Kennedy administration accepted the wall as the price of preserving West Berlin’s independence from the Soviet sphere of influence and avoiding war with the USSR. West Berliners began to dig secret tunnels beneath the...

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