Evolution Of The Red Scare By Edward Alwood

As the title may suggest, the book explores the evolution of the Red Scare within the press, mainly newspaper publishings and the consequent guilds. The author’s, Edward Alwood’s purpose behind the book lies in his interest to expose the disregard and the neglect of the first amendment in the face of the anti-communist crusades. The book describes the hearings and demonstrates that while uncovering no real criminal activity they resulted in the firings of newsmen who refused to fully respond to congressional inquiries the purpose of which was often to learn the names of all those associated with the communist party, thus having an intimidating and long-lasting effect upon the press. Alwood’s interest in the matter lies in his life-long fascination

Never before has such a detailed account of the evolution of the red scare within the media been presented. He accounts for every aspect of its onset as well as the resolution, attempting to uncover how journalists became targets of the anti-Communist witch-hunt of the 1950s and how the newspaper industry responded. Through his meticulous analysis he demonstrates that the hearings and the trials, while uncovering nothing resembling sedition or massive conspiracies, resulted in the firings of about a dozen newsmen who simply refused to respond to congressional inquiries. In order to better convey his thesis, which revolves around the communist trials and events leading up to (and during) the full blown red scare in the press, Alwood places emphasis on the lives of those affected by the commotions, those publishes and Newspaper Guild members who lost their job due to the violations of the First Amendment on behalf of those terrified of the potential of the socialist and communist parties. Alwood’s seemingly unemotional

However, providing only the fact of the situation Alwood failed to give any analysis and left this task completely in the hands of the reader. He also neglected to provide any historical context for the events mentioned in the book, perhaps assuming that those who would be interested in reading his book would already have prior knowledge of the situation, such as those already studying journalism or the history of media in the United States. Of course, within his account of the “witch-hunt” in the press, he established a timeline in the form of listing events which pertained to the issue one by one as they occurred, but he failed to explain what caused this anti-communist epidemic. In the end, his book is nothing more than a meticulously researched historical study, which while summarizing and accounting for the history of events within the press during the red scare, would not suffice for a regular reader interested in the impact of McCarthyism on America (for a significant amount of the events listed in his book can be considered to be an excess of painstaking