On Edward R. Murrow's 100th Birthday

Broadcasting began as entertainment. Radio was not a respected source of original daily journalism until 70 years ago last month, and the fellow principally responsible for making that happen was born a hundred years ago today in Polecat Creek, North Carolina. Edward R. Murrow joined the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1935, but he was not originally hired to be a reporter. CBS sent him to Europe to line up entertainers and public figures for broadcasts that would be sent back to America. Nazi Germany was building an immense war capability at the time, but few people in isolationist America seemed to care. So when Germany annexed Austria in March of 1938, CBS had only Murrow and his assistant William L. Shirer as the network's only employees in Europe. It was the story that made Edward R. Murrow a journalist and turned radio into a source for news.

Before World War II, public affairs programming on radio consisted of commentators -- mainly veteran newspaper reporters bloviating about world affairs. Radio covered speeches, some important courtroom trials and other special events -- but it did so with announcers -- the same guys who emceed beauty contests and read the commercials. There was no overseas staff of trained journalism professionals and there were no regularly scheduled summaries of the news throughout the day. The war changed all that. Murrow would have to build a reporting staff, hiring newspaper and wire service reporters and teaching them about radio. The CBS war reporting team would ultimately include Eric Sevareid, Bill Downs, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, Larry LaSueur, Winston Burdett, Cecil Brown and Richard C. Hottelet -- bright and talented young men who became known as Murrow's Boys. But the real radio star in the bunch was Murrow himself, who risked his life reporting on the London Blitz from the rooftop of the BBC. At that time, very few Americans had ever heard a live report of a war in progress. This kind of reporting -- in real time -- revolutionized journalism. People still read their newspapers, but some of the stories repeated what they had learned from Murrow the night before -- on the radio. Murrow continued to defy the odds and, against orders from his bosses in New York, flew aboard Royal Air Force planes in bombing raids over Germany. He couldn't report live from the bomber, but he could tell his listeners about it when he got back to London.

Near the end of the war, Murrow was traveling across Germany with General George Patton's Third Army. Victory was near, morale was high, and Murrow was a big winner at a nighttime poker game. But their mood changed the next day, when they liberated the Nazi concentration camp called Buchenwald.

When Murrow returned home from the war, his stock could not have been higher at CBS. Company chairman William Paley made him a vice president, a board member and put him in charge of the news division. But Murrow didn't care for the executive life and returned to daily radio news reporting. And here's where Murrow's career took a sharp turn. Everyone loved him when Hitler was the enemy, but now there was a new enemy, Communism.

In 1951, Ed Murrow and producer Fred Friendly brought serious news reporting to the new medium of television, launching a weekly half-hour series called See It Now. It was instantly controversial because it deliberately tackled the most controversial topics. By the time it took on the fear of Communists, the period had a name, the McCarthy Era, after the Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin. McCarthy was building a career declaring Communists had made their way into positions of influence in the U.S. government. His popularity poll numbers were above 50% at the beginning of 1954. Murrow believed people would be less enamored of McCarthy if they saw him in action -- and television offered that very opportunity. On See It Now film clips of McCarthy's Senate hearings showed him badgering and bullying witnesses -- and this was Murrow major objection to McCarthy -- the lack of due process afforded committee witnesses. Murrow ended his program with a bold, blistering commentary the likes of which had never been heard on network news.

The program was an eye-opener for most Americans. They opposed Communism, but they also opposed McCarthy's tactics. Later that year, McCarthy would seal his own fate by accusing the Army of coddling Communists, holding a hearing that completely backfired on him and resulted in censure by the U.S. Senate. McCarthy was done and Murrow was a hero again -- but not to CBS chairman William Paley. What should have been TV journalism's finest hour was the beginning of the end for Murrow. Paley told Murrow that the controversial shows by See It Now gave him stomach aches. Murrow replied that stomach aches went with the job. Paley disagreed, and so did sponsors, local station managers and the government. Sponsors dropped See It Now in 1956 and CBS cancelled the show two years later. By the late fifties, Murrow was marginalized by CBS and seldom seen on the air. But he would not be silent. Perhaps figuring he had nothing to lose, he gave a speech in Chicago at the 1959 annual convention of the Radio-Television News Directors Association -- a speech that was somewhere between a thoughtful commentary on the shortcomings of television -- to a bridge-burning screed. He faulted the industry for its low-brow lame programming, for its over-commercialization -- even for its portrayal of American Indians, and especially for its failure to adequately cover news and public affairs.

He said in his speech:

Unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work in it, may see a totally different picture too late......This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.

Edward R. Murrow left CBS in January, 1961 and joined the Kennedy administration as director of the United States Information Agency. By the time of the Kennedy assassination, Murrow was gravely ill with cancer. He died in April of 1965, two days after his 57th birthday.

Today there are new ways to deliver the news. New instruments as Murrow might call them. Tiny computer chips have replaced the wires and lights in even smaller boxes. He would surely marvel at the new technology and embrace it -- as he did with each new technology of his time. But he would want it to be used in part to make us better informed citizens. And he would caution us not to be so enamored of our new toys. In that speech in Chicago, he said: "It is not necessary to remind you that the fact that your voice is amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other does not confer upon you greater wisdom or understanding than you possessed when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other."

Whatever new medium comes along, here's hoping it finds an Edward R. Murrow -- who was born a hundred years ago today.

Comments

[tante]

Thanks for the wonderful essay. As I child I heard Murrow's broadcasts from London. It was my first understanding that there was a whole wide world out there with important things going on that I needed to care about. And so I eventually made my career in international relations.
I was in college during the awful Joe McCarthy years, so brilliantly recaptured in George Clooney's film about Murrow, "Good Night and Good Luck."
Murrow has always been a hero to me. Glad he didn't live to see how low CBS News has fallen, even to the point where they are apparently thinking of contracting out the news division to CNN.
For examples of now brilliantly television can tell a news story in depth, one could look at any number of "See It Now" shows, particularly "Harvest of Shame."

[hwebb54]

I bet Mr Murrow is rolling in his grave over people like Olbermann and Matthews being considered "news men" I wish Mr. Murrow's would haunt these people from the grave and make them see the error of their ways.

[Prism]

A great idea to right a terrible wrong:
In honor of Murrow's birthday, let's demand that MSNBC's excrutiatingly narcissitic,
trash-talking buffoon Olbermann stop appropriating the great man's sign-off. Hubris taken to the nth power to be sure. How could we have tolerated this shameful theft even this long? Given the "quality" of Olbermann's "journalism", Murrow must be spinning as we speak!

[fignozzle]

have you ever watched olbermann??

[DaveDonelson]

An excellent essay. I wonder what Murrow would say about the journalistic standards of new media--oxymoron though that might be. Fact-checking? Sourcing? Objectivity? Come to think of it, do we even have those things in the "old" media?

[elderly]

No need to wonder.

The 'journalists' today can consider themselves lucky Murrow is not around today to tell them exactly what he thinks of them.

Only we the people are not lucky.

[Novista]

A marvelous essay. Thank you.

[pmorlan]

Today, not only is TV news in the entertainment business, but sadly so are a lot of our newpapers. The progressive community really needs to have a TV station where "real" news is broadcasted. I don't mean that we need a progressive version of Fox but an honest to goodness station that actually reports on substantive news. It also needs to be free from corporate interference which means either a non-profit or funded by citizens. There could also be segements where the best and brightest from all political persuasions could have real honest to goodness discussions on real issues not cross fire hype. Because it would be the only channel offering such programming I believe that it would gain an enormous following. They could even have segments where citizen journalists from around the world could report on what's happening in their corner of the world. Until that happens I think we are at the mercy of the corporations who run our media.

[RoseBlue]

pmorlan... I've been dreaming about the same thing for quite some time. The MSM is so out of touch from the rest us. They contribute nothing and serve only as echo chambers for the latest bit of buzz that makes up the white noise that has become media. They not only distract people from the real issues, they manipulate and play upon the public's worst fears. Do you want to see the only genuine, principled response from hosts or pundits these days? Listen to them when they are openly criticized for their tactics. Then they become outraged, simply outraged that the public somehow doesn't get what their role is! Oh, we get it alright. Bill, Mathew, Chris, Mary, Jim, Cokie, George --the list goes on & on. Hang your heads in shame.
Can you imagine a publicly funded news source, free of the blowhard haircuts who confuse their meandering "this n that" nonsense as cogent discourse? One that demanded rigorous standards in thought & word, and that insisted on content, facts, and accountability? It would be so refreshing, so welcome in the wasteland we call corporate MSM, it success would be guaranteed. I'm dying of hunger here!

[Gibbons]

So Clinton is fighting back after surviving all the slings and arrows of the media that always favored Obama up to the Pennsylvania primary and Obama thinks she is not playing fair. Does he think Johnny Mac will treat him with kid gloves? This is not the first close race the democrats have ever had but it is the first one where I have heard so many people wanting to end the game in the seventh inning. Obama cannot think on his feet when he gets hard questions he seems to go into shock, he is still wobbly from the last debate and doesn't want to debate any more. Perhaps Clinton should go to Oregon and debate an empty chair t has been done before.

[InofTouch]

So from one box to another...is it ever going to be different or the same

[randyjet]

I hope that folks will read Shirer's memoirs and Murrow's bios. They were both outstanding reporters. Murrow was told by his bosses to hire only people with good radio voices. He disregarded that and instead hired reporters who knew their stuff. Shirer for example spoke at least three languages fluently and knew Europe like his hometown, but had a lousy voice. What a contrast to our so called journalists today. How many speak any foreign language? I have seen no reporters who have any curiousity or ability to even think. Are there any?

[gregapress]

This is an excellent essay.

[drumz]

Olberman is the closest thing we have to Murrow today.

[fignozzle]

i agree.

[americanwomaninpa]

I don't think so. He is probably spinning as we speak.

[engineer68]

You have that right! No one at MSNBC could carry Murrows' coat.

[NickfromCali]

No one ANYWHERE can carry Murrow's coat (don't mention Faux Noise)

[captainigor]

Good Night, and Good Luck!!

[kellygrrrl]

we're gonna need it