MURROW, EDWARD R. 1908-1965

Televsion news reporter

Early Career in Radio

Edward R. Murrow virtually invented modern radio and television news. Renowned for his thoroughness, fairness, and curiously charismatic seriousness, Murrow began his career at CBS News in 1935 not as a broadcaster but as the CBS "director of talks," or educational programs. He served as CBS representative in Europe beginning in 1937; he began his radio broadcasting career by covering the forced merger of Austria with Germany in 1938, beaming reports of the entrance of German troops into Vienna. He gained notoriety for his dramatic radio coverage of the Battle of Britain. But his television documentary news programs, "See It Now" and "CBS Reports," made him a fixture of 1950s television. In the public eye Murrow became the very ideal of a television newsman and a prime source of the great reputation of CBS News.

Broadcaster

Not trained as a journalist or a broadcaster, it was those two fields which soon gathered his attention. In 1938 Murrow found himself in Vienna as Adolf Hitler sent troops to force a merger of Austria with Germany. Given a short deadline and with no experienced radio journalist available, Morrow made his first broadcast on 13 March 1938. The thrill of being in the midst of historic events and reporting their significance to the world captured Murrow's imagination.

The Battle of Britain

Murrow became a public figure through his broadcasts from London during the Battle of Britain, when the Nazi air force attempted to bomb England into surrender. During these radio reports he would sign on saying "This is London." The simple phrase, understated yet dramatic, became synonymous with Murrow. After the war Murrow was named vice-president of CBS for public affairs. He served in that post until 1947, when he returned to the air. "Hear It Now," which first was broadcast in 1950, was Murrow's most respected show on radio.

Suspicious of Television

Murrow was suspicious of television and thought it unsuited to serious journalism, but in 1951 he tried television when he was given the opportunity to adapt the radio program to the new medium. With Fred Friendly, his coproducer and collaborator, Murrow intended "See It Now" to make headlines, not merely to report them. For the first six months, the show was broadcast at 3:30 on Sunday afternoon; its success in both the ratings and with the critics convinced the network to move the show to 6:30 P.M. As coproducer, narrator, and occasional interviewer, Murrow brought integrity and respectability to television news. The first show featured a report on the Korean War that followed the activities of Fox Company, Second Platoon, Nineteenth Infantry Regiment. The report was realistic in a way that World War II newsreels had not been. Murrow reported early in the segment that half the men seen were missing in action or had been killed or wounded since the filming ended. At the end of the segment, the platoon members turned to the camera and stated their names and hometowns. The association of names and faces with the violence of battle brought the war closer to home than the headlines of a newspaper.

Provocative Issues

With Murrow's approach the show was inherently topical and controversial. Examples of subjects covered included the tragedy of racial prejudice in the South, the turmoil surrounding nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer, and the controversy and fear concerning nuclear weapons. Television critic Gilbert Seldes called "See It Now" "the most important show on the air."

Joseph McCarthy

At no time was it more important than in March 1954, when it broadcast a show on Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, then at the peak of his influence and popularity. Murrow used careful editing and his own personal outrage to highlight the cruelty and irrationality of the McCarthy Senate-sanctioned hunt for communists in the government. "See It Now" made a powerful and risky statement against McCarthy which helped bring that suspicious and paranoid era to an end.

Documentaries

In addition to "See It Now," Murrow worked on "Person to Person," a lighter television show of interviews with celebrities in their homes. He initiated "CBS Reports," a highly acclaimed series of hour-long documentaries. The most renowned of these was "Harvest of Shame," an exposé of the harsh conditions under which migrant laborers were exploited in American agriculture. He also hosted "Small World," a show which linked three people around the country by remote hookups and discussed general topics. One such show featured James Thurber, Siobhan McKenna, and Noel Coward on the nature of comedy.

Decline

But the pace of working nonstop for so many years and growing suspicion about the ultimately profit-oriented heart of television began to take its toll on Murrow. As the decade ended and after "See It Now" was canceled, he was a bitter man. While serving as director of the U.S. Information Agency in the John F. Kennedy administration, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. In 1965 he underwent an operation for a brain tumor and died on 27 April 1965. His career remains a model and a source of inspiration for serious television journalists.

Sources:

William Boddy, Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990);

Joseph E. Persico, Edward R. Murrow: An American Original (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988);

Charles Wertenbaker, "The World on His Back," New Yorker, 29 (26 December 1953): 28-45.

Murrow, Edward R. (1908–1965), radio and television journalist.Born in North Carolina and raised in Washington State, Edward R. Murrow gravitated toward broadcasting without prior newspaper or magazine experience. Employed by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), he reported from Europe on the advance of Nazism in the 1930s; his resonant and harrowing accounts of the Battle of Britain and other aspects of World War II made him famous. Returning to the United States after the war, Murrow became a vice‐president of CBS and its director of public affairs. His shift from radio to television coincided with the intensification of the Cold War, which haunted See It Now, the public‐affairs program he produced in partnership with Fred W. Friendly beginning in 1951. When they directly attacked Senator Joseph McCarthy in a See It Now episode broadcast on 9 March 1954, television journalism conveyed liberal revulsion at the Wisconsin Senator's unscrupulous demagoguery, but the ideal of objectivity was weakened. Murrow's delayed but emphatic anti‐McCarthyism (and disappointing ratings) may have led CBS to drop television's most‐honored weekly public‐affairs program four years later, despite his effort to downplay controversy by interviewing celebrities on an entertainment program, Person to Person (1953–1959). Disillusioned with television, Murrow directed the United States Information Agency from 1961 to 1964, when lung cancer forced his retirement. An exemplary professional reputation enabled Murrow to push a temperate liberalism about as far as the mass medium of television would permit; his frustration and disaffection suggested the power of the new medium's commercial and regulatory constraints.
See also Journalism.

Bibliography

Alexander Kendrick , Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow, 1969.
A.M. Sperber , Murrow: His Life and Times, 1986.

Stephen J. Whitfield