‘If you fall silent, the country is doomed’: CBS News’ Scott Pelley stresses courage as network faces pressure campaign

CNN —

A climate of fear is perceptible in the United States today, and it must be resisted no matter what, CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley says.

“People are silencing themselves for fear that the government will retaliate against them, and that’s not the America that we all love,” Pelley told Anderson Cooper in an exclusive interview after CNN’s Saturday telecast of “ Good Night, and Good Luck .”

The Broadway play, which recounts CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow’s unflinching 1954 broadcasts about Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Cold War witch hunts, has stirred comparisons between McCarthyism and Trumpism, and between the CBS network then and now.

Fear and courage “are the two themes that run through both of these moments in American history,” Pelley told CNN’s Cooper.

“The most important