McCarthy got his start in the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). McCarthy accused everyone from official in the State Department to the United States Army of being Communist sympathizers. These claims, without validation, earned him press coverage, often biased in his favor. He knew how the press worked and announced his charges to reporters, who in many cases did not have enough time to get a response from the accused. As McCarthy's accusations became more ridiculous, Murrow and his show "See It Now" decided to expose McCarthy. The show and the televised Army hearings, in which the senator was pitted against attorney Joseph Welch, led to the unraveling of his career and McCarthyism.

The Cold War took off in 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea at the 38th Parallel. President Harry Truman acted quickly and gave command to General Douglas MacArthur who was stationed in Japan. U.S. troops were able to push back the Communist North Koreans, but Truman feared Chinese involvement in the war if the U.S. went to far. The Chinese eventually joined the war and pushed the U.S. troops back to the 38th Parallel. MacArthur's more aggressive tactics fired controversy between himself and Truman, eventually leading to MacArthur's dismissal. MacArthur received a heroic welcome in the U.S. Truman saw his popularity drop and decided not to run for re-election. (Click here to listen Bill Kurtis explain the clash between the general and the President, plus a news bulletin about the firing.) When Republican Gen. Dwight Eisenhower won the 1952 election, he pushed for an armistice in Korea. At the end of the decade, the U.S. saw the rise of Communist Leader Fidel Castro in Cuba on January 1, 1959, ushering in a new era of Cold War-related problems.

Defeating Democrat Adlai Stevenson, Eisenhower became the first Republican in the White House after five terms of Democrats. His campaign was proof that a candidate needed to be able to work with the broadcast media to get elected. Eisenhower's controversial Vice Presidential Candidate Richard Nixon saved himself with the famous Checkers speech on national television and Eisenhower took the advertising advice that fellow Republican Tom Dewey ignored. Eisenhower did commercials on television. Eisenhower also experimented with the use of public relations during his presidency, especially during the Guatemala incident. Eisenhower and Nixon won another term in 1956.

The Beat Generation signified everything the 1950s did not. Beatniks looked on the materialism of the 1950s and turned against it. Beat cultures centered around Greenwich Village and San Francisco did drugs, advocated sexual freedom and wrote about their generation. Major figures of the counterculture group include Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg's "Howl," published in 1956, and Kerouac's "On the Road," published in 1957, characterized the movement. The media reacted negatively toward the Beat generation and society feared its continuation by college students.

The majority of Americans accepted 1950s uniformity and prosperity and this acceptance was no more obvious than in sex roles in the 1950s. Media portrayed women as the perfect housewives in television shows and teen magazines. Marriage was a woman's main goal in life. There was no birth control marketed. Sex outside of marriage was illegal in many states. Women went to college to find a husband and only "bad" women were interested in sex. (Click here to see a few classic early commericals.)

Alfred C. Kinsey was collecting data for his Report on Sexual Behavior in the Human Female at this time and found information contrary to what the media depicted. Although his 1948 report on males was accepted, when the female component came out in 1953, the public reacted harshly and negatively. Kinsey had to defend himself against his critics who said he used a biased sample of women. Meanwhile, society allowed men to push the boundaries on sex with Heffner's first Playboy.

Conservative Americans' fears about sex culminated in the rock 'n' roll craze. American teens took their portable radios and record players out of their parent-controlled living rooms and began choosing a new kind of music. Radio changed to accommodate a television-dominated entertainment world by playing music. Rock 'n' roll – originally called race music – took off when white teenagers began buying black musicians' records. Elvis Presely became one of the first white males to popularize race music. He soon epitomized rock 'n' roll for teenagers and sex 'n' danger for their parents.

Whites were not only confronted with an African-American presence in music, but also with the grim reality of racism in schools and society. In 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas set off a series of battles between determined blacks and stubborn whites. The murder of Emmett Till showed the nation the brutality of racism, which was not easy to ignore with pictures and television coverage. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to prominence with his peaceful tactics. The media's role in the 1950s Civil Rights movement spawned a hatred for the northern press in the South, especially during coverage of the forced integration of Little Rock Central High School in 1957.