Edward
Murrow was
born in Polecat Creek, Greensboro, on 25th April, 1908. Murrow attended
Edison High School before studying at Washington State College.
Murrow joined the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1935 as director
of talks. His appointments included William
L. Shirer in
Germany. Two years later he was sent to
London to arrange concerts for the radio
network. Murrow was still in England on the outbreak of the Second
World War and over the next six years reported the conflict for
CBS. His eyewitness reports on the Blitz
made him a national figure in the United States.
In 1945 Murrow moved to mainland Europe, first reporting the war from
France and later in Germany.
He was also with Allied troops when they entered the extermination
camps at
Buchenwald.
After the war Murrow returned to the United States
where he become involved in producing television programmes. In 1951
he inaugurated in-depth television journalism with his weekly, 30
minute, See
It Now.
He also presented Person
to Person,
where he interviewed well-known public figures.
Murrow, like many other liberal journalists,
became increasingly concerned about the impact that Joe
McCarthy anti-communist campaign was having on America. He was
particularly upset by the attacks on George
Marshall, a man Murrow regarded as "the greatest living American".
A friend of Murrow's, Larry Duggan, Director of the Institute of International
Education (IIC), was also accused of being a member of the Communist
Party and ordered to appear before the House
of Un-American Activities Committee. Unwilling to name radicals
he had associated with in his youth, Duggan committed suicide by jumping
from his sixteenth-floor office.
Murrow now decided to speak out and complained about McCarthy's treatment
of Henry
Dexter White, who Joe McCarthy had recently
accused of being a communist spy. Murrow was now accused of being
part of the "Moscow conspiracy" and it was suggested that
as "an anti-anti-Communist was as dangerous as a Communist".
In early 1954 Murrow and
his producer, Fred
Friendly, decided
to devote an edition of See
It Now
to McCarthyism. CBS was unhappy with the idea and had been one of
those television companies that had been part of the blacklist to
prevent people named by Joe
McCarthy from being employed in the industry. The
CBS introduced its own "loyalty oath" contract and sacked
some workers because they had previously been members of the Communist
Party. CBS and the sponsor of See
It Now,
refused to publicize the proposed McCarthy programme, and as a result,
Murrow and Friendly decided to use $1,500 their own money to pay for
ads in the newspapers.
On 9th March, 1954, Murrow's See
It Now
programme, dealt with McCarthyism.
During the broadcast Murrow commented: "The
line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and
the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly.
We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep
into our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not
descended from fearful men, not men who feared to write, to speak,
to associate, and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthty's methods to
keep silent. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot
escape responsibility for the result."
The following morning the New York Times
claimed that with the programme, "broadcasting recaptured its
soul". The day after the programme CBS announced that 12,348
people phoned in comments about the programme, and the opinions went
fifteen-to-one in Murrow's favor. The sponsors also reported receiving
over 4,000 letters, with the vast majority supporting Murrow's stance.
The persecution of those opposed to McCarthyism
continued. When the See
It Now programme ended on
9th March, Don Hollenbeck, came on the
air with the regular 11.00 p.m. news and said: "I want to associate
myself with every word just spoken by Ed Murrow." Hollenbeck
was denounced in the pro-McCarthy press as a communist. After three
months of smears, Hollenbeck, unable to take the strain, committed
suicide.
When
Joe
McCarthy was asked what he thought of the
programme he replied: "I never listen to the extreme left-wing,
bleeding heart elements of radio and TV." Several times over
the next few days he attacked Murrow. He claimed that Murrow had "sponsored
a communist school in Moscow" and "acted for the Russian
espionage and propaganda organization known as VOKS, a job which would
normally be done by the Russian secret police." He claimed that
Murrow's friendship with Harold Laski, a
leading figure in the British Labour Party,
was an example of his pro-Communist sympathies.
McCarthy's downfall came as a result of the televised senate investigations
into the United States Army. One newspaper,
the Louisville Courier-Journal,
reported that: "In this long, degrading travesty of the democratic
process McCarthy has shown himself to be evil and unmatched in malice."
Leading politicians in both parties, had been embarrassed by McCarthy's
performance and on 2nd December, 1954, a censure motion condemned
his conduct by 67 votes to 22.
In the late 1950s Murrow became disillusioned
with television broadcasting. He disagreed with the emphasis being
placed on producing entertainment-based programmes. Murrow left broadcasting
in 1961 and joined the United
States Information Agency (USIA). However, suffering from lung cancer,
he was forced him to resign in 1964. The cancer spread to the brain
and Edward Murrow died at Glen Arden, on 27th April, 1965.
(1) Edward
Murrow, CBS radio broadcast from London
(10th September 1940)
For three hours after the night attack got
going, I shivered in a sandbag crow's-nest atop a tall building near
the Thames. It was one of the many fire-observation posts. There was
an old gun barrel mounted above a round table marked off like a compass.
A stick of incendiaries bounced off rooftops about three miles away.
The observer took a sight on a point where the first one fell, swung
his gun-sight along the line of bombs, and took another reading at
the end of the line of
fire. Then he picked up his telephone and shouted above the half gale
that was blowing up there, "Stick of incendiaries, - between
190 and 220 - about three miles away." Five minutes later a German
bomber came boring down the river. We could see his exhaust trail
like a pale ribbon stretched straight across the sky. Half a mile
downstream there were two eruptions and then a third, close together.
The first two looked as though some giant had thrown a huge basket
of flaming golden oranges high in the air. The
third was just a balloon of fire enclosed in black smoke above the
house-tops. The observer didn't bother with his gun-sight and indicator
for that one. Just reached for his night glasses, took one
quick look, picked up his telephone, and said, "Two high explosives
and one oil bomb," and named the street where they had fallen.
There was
a small fire going off to our left. Suddenly sparks showered up from
it as though someone had punched the middle of a huge camp-fire with
a tree trunk. Again the gun sight swung around, the bearing was read,
and the report went down the telephone lines: "There is something
in high explosives on that fire at 59."
There was
peace and quite inside for twenty minutes. Then a shower of incendiaries
came down far in the distance. They didn't fall in a line. It looked
like flashes from an electric train on a wet night, only the engineer
was drunk and driving his train in circles through the streets. One
sight at the middle of the flashes and our observer reported laconically,
"Breadbasket at 90 - covers a couple of miles." Half an
hour later a string of fire bombs fell right beside
the Thames. Their white glare was reflected in the black, lazy water
near the banks and faded out in midstream where the moon cut a golden
swathe broken only by the arches of famous bridges.
We could
see little men shovelling those fire bombs into the river. One burned
for a few minutes like a beacon right in the
middle of a bridge. Finally those white flames all went out. No one
bothers about the white light, it's only when it turns yellow that
a real fire has started.
I must have
seen well over a hundred fire bombs come down and only three small
fires were started. The incendiaries aren't so bad if there is someone
there to deal with them, but those oil bombs present more difficulties.
As I watched
those white fires flame up and die down, watched the yellow blazes
grow dull and disappear, I thought, what a puny effort is this to
bum a great city.
(2) Edward
Murrow, CBS radio broadcast from Buchenwald
(15th April 1945)
As I walked down to the end of the barracks,
there was applause from the men too weak to get out of bed. It sounded
like the hand clapping of babies; they were so weak.
As we walked out into the courtyard,
a man fell dead. Two others - they must have been over sixty - were
crawling toward the latrine. I saw it but will not describe it.
We went to the hospital; it was
full. The doctor told me that two hundred had died the day before.
I asked the cause of death; he shrugged and said, "Tuberculosis,
starvation, fatigue, and there are many who have no desire to live."
Professor Richer said perhaps
I would care to see the small courtyard. I said yes. He turned and
told the children to stay behind. As we walked across the square I
noticed that the professor had a hole in his left shoe and a toe sticking
out of the right one. He followed my eyes and said, "I regret
that I am so little presentable, but what can one do?" At that
point another Frenchman came up to announce that three of his fellow
countrymen outside had killed three S.S. men and taken one prisoner.
We proceeded to the small courtyard.
The wall was about eight feet high; it adjoined what had been a stable
or garage. We entered. It was floored with concrete. There were two
rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white.
Some of the bodies were terribly bruised, though there seemed to be
little flesh to bruise. Some had been shot through the head, but they
bled but little. All except two were naked. I tried to count them
as best I could and arrived at the conclusion that all that was mortal
of more than five hundred men and boys lay there in two neat piles.
It appeared that most of the men
and boys had died of starvation; they had not been executed. But the
manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Buchenwald.
God alone knows how many men and boys have died there during the last
twelve years. Thursday I was told that there were more than twenty
thousand in the camp. There had been as many as sixty thousand. Where
are they now?
As I left the camp, a Frenchman
came up to me and said, "You will write something about this,
perhaps?" And he added, "To write about this you must have
been here at least two years, and after that - you don't want to write
any more."
I pray you to believe what I have
said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only
part of it. For most of it I have no words. If I've offended you by
this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry.
(3)
Edward Murrow, speech to his staff before the broadcast of the See
It Now programme on Joe McCarthy (9th March, 1954)
No one man can terrorize a whole
nation unless we are all his accomplices. If none of us ever read
a book that was "dangerous", had a friend who was "different",
or joined an organization that advocated "change", we would
all be just the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants.
(4) Edward Murrow, See It
Now (9th March, 1954)
The line between investigating
and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin
has stepped over it repeatedly.
We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep
into our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not
descended from fearful men, not men who feared to write, to speak,
to associate, and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthty's methods to
keep silent. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot
escape responsibility for the result.
(5)
Gilbert Seldes, The Public
Arts (1956)
See It Now is the most
important show on the air - not only for the solutions it found to
some problems, but also for the problems it tackled without finding
the right answers.
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