Edward R. Murrow

Broadcast Journalist

• Born: April 25, 1908
• Birthplace: Greensboro, North Carolina
• Died: April 27, 1965
• Place of death: Pawling, New York

American broadcast journalist

Murrow, the pioneer of news broadcasting, set the standard for objective reporting while warning against the potential for manipulation by electronic journalism.

Areas of achievement Journalism, radio, television

Early Life

Egbert Roscoe Murrow, called “Egg” by family and friends, changed his name to the more common “Edward” as a young man. When he was still a child, his family moved to the Pacific Northwest, where Murrow spent summers working in the logging camps. In high school, he was a superachiever on several levels: a successful athlete, valedictorian of his class, student body officer, and, prophetically, star of the debate team. Following his graduation, the rangy, six-foot two-inch young man returned to the logging camps. In 1926, after one year of this hard labor, he had saved sufficiently to enroll at Washington State University.

His popularity continued in college, enhanced by his dark, handsome looks a physical appearance that would prove useful in his final career choice. In college, he majored in speech, honing his communication skills; he also added acting to his list of credits and began to cultivate the taste for elegant, expensive clothes for which he would later be known.

As the president of the student government, Murrow was a delegate to the annual convention of NSFA, the National Student Federation of America, of which he was elected president. Immediately following his graduation with a B.A. in speech, he moved to New York City to undertake his new, unpaid responsibilities. His tenure with the NSFA afforded him travel throughout Europe, where he began to establish a network of friends and acquaintances that would eventually encompass the most influential people of the time. During these early Depression years, he also traveled frequently within the United States; these experiences were to affect his developing social and political conscience. Murrow resigned from the NFSA in his second year as president (1931) to take a salaried position with the Institute of International Education.

In this position, he was assistant to Stephen Pierce Duggan, director of the institute, a reformer who believed in the betterment of humankind and in the principle of noblesse oblige. Duggan and the Eastern Establishment, to whom he introduced his young protégé, further contributed to Murrow’s political development as well as adding to his list of valuable contacts.

In 1934, Murrow married Janet Brewster. He was earning five thousand dollars a year, a comfortable sum by Depression standards, when he accepted a position at Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) Radio. Eventually, he was made European director for CBS in London. This posting marked the beginning of the CBS wartime news team and Murrow’s own beginning as the major influence in broadcast journalism.

Life’s Work

For an energetic, talented, and idealistic young reporter, there could have been no better vantage point from which to view the ensuing struggle than prewar London. By 1939, Murrow had established a crew that included Eric Sevareid, Bill Henry, William Shirer, and Cecil Brown, among others. Murrow charged them to report the human side of the news, not only the facts but also how the average person reacted to the facts. He also urged them to speak naturally, to be honest, and to be neutral. One of his greatest achievements was the training of this impressive group of reporters, who could communicate over the air a sense of the drama unfolding around them. For the first time, broadcast journalism eclipsed print in popularity. Without endless rewrites, copy editors, layouts, and printings, it was demonstrated that the electronic medium could accurately report the news and do so faster.

As radio’s most recognizable personality, Murrow himself did not realize the extent of his influence or his huge listenership until a 1941 trip to the United States. At a banquet in his honor, the poet Archibald MacLeish, commenting on Murrow’s reports on the attack on London, acknowledged his achievement.

You burned the city of London at our doors and we knew that the dead were our dead . . . were mankind’s dead . . . without rhetoric, without dramatics, without more emotion than need be . . . you have destroyed . . . the superstition that what is done beyond 3,000 miles is not done at all.

Never content to sit back and be the London bureau chief, Murrow needed to face danger, to be present to absorb the flavor of the events he reported. He stood on a rooftop and watched the bombing of London. He flew twenty-five bombing missions, refusing even the president of CBS’s plea that he cease such a dangerous practice. He was in Vienna when the city was occupied by the Nazis and saw at first hand the atrocities of which they were capable. He walked among the half-dead inmates of the concentration camp at Buchenwald soon after it was liberated. His harrowing broadcast describing this experience was reprinted in the media and replayed over and over on the air.

Many years previously, Murrow had begun smoking. As early as 1942, this pleasure had become an addiction; he was smoking up to three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day. He was already exhibiting a “weak chest” and other pulmonary problems. His restless nature, probing mind, need for experience, and inability to relax all led him to periodic exhaustion, requiring hospitalization.

On November 6, 1945, Janet Murrow, at age thirty-five, gave birth to a son, Charles Casey Murrow. With the war over, it was time for the family to return to New York. Murrow took the position of vice president and director of public affairs for CBS.

This was a difficult period of adjustment. Postwar New York was brash and wealthy, in stark contrast to war-torn London; Murrow missed his old friends and colleagues and the excitement of covering the war. After eighteen months in the position, Murrow resigned to return to broadcasting the news. He settled into a comfortable life, doing what he knew and loved best at a salary of $125,000 a year, an amount necessary for a man who enjoyed fine clothes, a good address, fast cars, and the best restaurants.

Augmenting this income were royalties from the Hear It Now recordings. This record was the brainchild of Fred Friendly, a colleague whose partnership would span the remainder of Murrow’s broadcast career. Released in 1948, the record brought together the actual recorded speeches of such personalities as Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Huey Long, Will Rogers, and Edward VIII, with Murrow narrating. A quarter of a million copies were sold in the first year.

See It Now, the documentary program that established Murrow’s reputation as a television journalist, debuted on November 18, 1951, the result of another partnership with Fred Friendly. A precursor to the present-day documentary, the program was improvised and rife with technical problems: blackouts, loss of picture, and so on. The show explored contemporary issues, from what it was like underground with coal miners in West Virginia to the experience of riding a school bus following desegregation in the South. A particularly moving segment was on Korea at Christmas. Rather than focus on military strategies, Murrow interviewed average soldiers and their reactions to the war. Before being canceled, his show won three Peabodys, four Emmys, and various other awards from Look, Saturday Review, the New York Newspaper Guild, and others.

Along with See It Now, Murrow’s other venture into television was Person to Person, a program that took cameras into the homes of the rich and famous while Murrow interviewed them by remote from the studio. Person to Person was an enormous commercial success, widening his audience to include millions of viewers who would never have watched See It Now. Through Person to Person, Murrow became as familiar as the celebrities he interviewed, vastly increasing his credibility. The show also served to document an era, featuring interviews of such diverse subjects as Marilyn Monroe, Fred Astaire, Fidel Castro, and John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline.

In early 1953, Murrow was targeted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He had been too consistently critical of Joseph McCarthy; he was prominent and, through his activities in the 1930’s, he was vulnerable. Murrow fought back with a segment of See It Now entitled “A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.” His strategy was to catch McCarthy in his own contradictions by splicing together his various speeches with Murrow’s voice-over narration. Murrow ended with a speech spoken directly to the camera, not read as was his normal practice.

He [McCarthy] didn’t create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it; and rather successfully. Cassius was right. “The fault, Dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

By the following morning, CBS had received one thousand telegrams applauding the telecast. Murrow, returning from lunch the next day, was mobbed on Fifth Avenue. Variety labeled him “practically a hero.” McCarthy’s power was beginning to wane.

In 1961, exhausted from his years in broadcasting and disillusioned with CBS, Murrow accepted the directorship of the United States Information Agency in the Kennedy administration. His tenure ended after three years, after surgery for cancer of the lung. Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, Murrow died at his farm in New York on April 27, 1965, at the age of fifty-seven.

Significance

Murrow spent his life following the dictates of his conscience: struggling with the top executives at CBS, with Kennedy, with McCarthy, and even with his adoring public. With a profound commitment to fair reporting, Murrow set the standard for broadcast journalism.

He became a dedicated antifascist in the early 1930’s, working with the Emergency Committee to bring out of Europe ninety-one scholars whose lives and works were endangered. These activities would figure prominently in smear tactics made against him by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Although his head-on collision with McCarthy was considered by many to be television’s “finest hour,” Murrow himself agonized over its production. His objectivity and his dedication to balanced presentation were lacking. He called it a “half hour editorial.”

In a career-long relationship, flawed at times with serious bitterness, CBS found the perfect vehicle in Murrow. Not only had nature bequeathed him a mellifluous baritone voice and dark good looks, but he was also a trained and skillful debater. His speaking ability, his passionate social conscience, and his dedication to providing the truth infused his broadcasting with a rare vitality. Yet Murrow was taxed by television in a way that his audiences would never guess: He was incredibly camera shy. He had been nervous on the radio, but television added the dimension of the camera. His hands trembled, the heat of the lights made him perspire and squirm; under the table, his nervous leg jumped.

Murrow’s most enduring battle was with broadcasting itself, to see that it upheld its integrity. Repeatedly to colleagues, in speeches, and in articles he warned of the potential of broadcasting to manipulate the news and the public. At the same time, he believed that broadcasting had the potential to be “a real aid in keeping the light of Western Civilization burning.” In his lifetime, he saw that light burn dangerously low.

Bibliography

Edwards, Bob. Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2004. Edwards chronicles Murrow’s career, describing how his broadcasting innovations affected radio and television newscasts.

Friendly, Fred W. Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control. New York: Random House, 1967. In this occupational memoir of his sixteen years at CBS, Friendly presents a critical, disturbing picture of commercial television. He also discusses See It Now from a production point of view.

Kendrick, Alexander. Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow. Boston: Little, Brown, 1969. Kendrick was one of the so-called Murrow Boys, trained in his tradition. This training gives him an insider’s view in this profusely illustrated and anecdote-rich biography. Often insightful, he captures Murrow’s involvement and his conscience but stops short of any criticism. Good for an overview of the sins of commercial television.

Murrow, Edward R. In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938-1961. Edited by Edward Bliss, Jr. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. These selections were made from five thousand broadcasts, which spanned Hitler’s seizure of Austria to Kennedy’s inaugural address. Bliss, a longtime CBS staffer, has chosen broadcasts that add dimension to history or show Murrow’s perspective on the development of his style.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. This Is London. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941. Texts of his London radio broadcasts from August, 1939, to December, 1940, when he was chief of the European bureau for CBS. The broadcasts read well because Murrow was not only a good speaker but also a sensitive writer with a good grasp of the language. An excellent source for a historical perspective.

Paley, William S. As It Happened: A Memoir. New York: Doubleday, 1979. This autobiography by the founder and president of CBS describes the heyday of radio and television programming, including controversies with Murrow, Daniel Schorr, and the CIA. Often pretentious, he presents a one-sided view without attempting to be analytical. Important for the corporate view of broadcasting.

Seib, Philip. Broadcasts from the Blitz: How Edward R. Murrow Helped Lead America into War. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006. Describes how Murrow covered events in Britain during World War II and how his reporting rallied Americans to support the British by entering the war.

Sperba, A. M. Murrow: His Life and Times. New York: Freudlich Books, 1968. Exhaustive biography. Almost obsessive in its documentation of each detail of Murrow’s life. In this well-balanced, critical presentation, Sperba penetrates the reasons for Murrow’s actions and the sources of his beliefs while communicating Murrow’s passion for proper news reportage. The definitive biography.

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