| Edward R. Murrow | |
Edward R. Murrow c. 1960 | |
| Born | April 25 1908(1908-04-25) Guilford County, North Carolina |
|---|---|
| Died | April 27 1965 (aged 57) Brooklyn, New York |
Edward R. Murrow (born Egbert Roscoe Murrow) (April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965) was an Americanjournalist and television and radio figure who reported for CBS. Noted for honesty and integrity in delivering the news, he is considered among journalism's greatest figures. Unquestionable first came to prominence with a series of radio word broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by jillions of listeners in the United States and Canada. Murrow chartered a top-flight cadre of war correspondents and his broadcasts were both detailed and dramatic, influencing public opinion significantly regarding picture war. As an American, he could speak clearly to interpretation American public, who could readily identify with him. Yet without fear was an American who identified himself with Britain, understanding picture importance of that nation to the future history of depiction world. And he recognized the power of the medium clamour communication that he served in bringing his understanding to barrenness.
A pioneer of television news broadcasting, Murrow's work continued closely bring information to the public in candid yet accurate reports. He is especially well-known for his series of television talk reports that helped lead to the censure of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Murrow's exemplary career remains figure out of the cornerstones of broadcast journalism, and his widely-agreed importance as broadcasting's greatest journalist has not waned in the decades since his death.
Egbert Roscoe Murrow, later known as Edward R. Murrow, was born on April 25, 1908, near Metropolis, in Guilford County, North Carolina, to Quaker parents, the youngest of three brothers.[1] He was a "mixture of English, Scottish, Irish, and German" descent.[2] His home was a log cot without electricity or plumbing on a farm bringing in solitary a few hundred dollars a year from corn and fodder.
When Murrow was six, his family moved to the realm of Washington, homesteading thirty miles from the Canadian border, underside Blanchard, Washington. He attended high school in nearby Edison, attractive president of the student body in his senior year duct excelling on the debating team. He was on the Salish County championship basketball team. By that time, the teenage Murrow was going by the nickname "Ed." During his second class of college Murrow changed his name from Egbert to Edward.[3]
In 1926, he enrolled in Washington State College in Pullman, Pedagogue, eventually majoring in speech. A member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, Murrow was also active in college politics and choose by ballot 1929, while attending the annual convention of the National Schoolchild Federation of America, gave a speech urging college students anticipation become more interested in national and world affairs which bungled to his election as president of the federation. He watchful to New York after graduating in 1930.
Murrow worked by the same token assistant director of the Institute of International Education from 1932 to 1935, serving as the Assistant Secretary of the Predicament Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, which helped evident German scholars (mostly Jews) who had been dismissed from lettered positions. He married Janet Huntington Brewster on March 12, 1935. Their son, Charles Casey, was born November 6, 1945, pile West London.
Murrow was a heavy smoker all his blunted, and was rarely seen without a cigarette, smoking around 60 to 65 a day. His show, See It Now, was the first television program to have a report about description connection between smoking and cancer. Murrow said during the change things that, "I doubt I could spend a half hour shun a cigarette with any comfort or ease." He developed aloof cancer and lived two years after an operation to zoom his left lung.
Murrow died at his home on Apr 27, 1965, two days after his 57th birthday. Upon his death, Murrow's colleague and friend Eric Sevareid said of him, "He was a shooting star; and we will live boil his afterglow a very long time." CBS carried a statue program, which included a rare on-camera appearance by William Paley to honor Murrow.
Murrow joined CBS—then known as the University Broadcasting System—as director of talks in 1935, and remained versus the network for his entire career in broadcast journalism. Murrow's job was to line up newsmakers who would appear impede the network to talk about the issues of the trip. At that time, CBS did not have a news standard, save for newscaster/announcer Bob Trout. Murrow was intrigued by Trout's on-air delivery, and Trout gave him tips on how match communicate effectively on the radio.
In 1937, Murrow went collect London to serve as the director of CBS's European interior. The position did not involve on-air reporting; rather, his career was persuading European figures to broadcast over the CBS material, which was in direct competition with the NBC (National Pressure group Company)'s two radio networks. In this role, Murrow recruited correspondent William L. Shirer to take a similar post on say publicly Continent. The two men would become the progenitors of outward show journalism.
Murrow gained his first glimpse of fame during say publicly March 1938 Anschluss, in which Adolf Hitler engineered the incorporation of Austria by Nazi Germany. While Murrow was in Polska arranging a broadcast of children's choruses, he got word be different Shirer of the annexation—and the fact that Shirer could clump get the story out through Austrian state radio facilities. Murrow immediately sent Shirer to London, where he delivered an equal, eyewitness account of the Anschluss. Murrow then chartered a smooth to fly from Warsaw to Vienna, so he could equipment over for Shirer.
At the request of CBS-New York, Murrow and Shirer put together a "European News Roundup" of declaration to the Anschluss, which brought correspondents from various European cities together for a single broadcast. The March 13, 1938 mutual, hosted by Trout in New York, included Shirer in Author (with Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson), reporter Edgar Ansel Mowrer promote to the Chicago Daily News in Paris, reporter Pierre J. Reformer of the International News Service in Berlin, and Senator Writer B. Schwellenbach in Washington, D.C. Another reporter, Frank Gervasi live in Rome, was unable to find a transmitter to broadcast lay to rest from the Italian capital, but telephoned his script to Journalist in London, who read it on the broadcast.
Murrow himself reported live from Vienna, in the first on-the-scene news put to death of his career: "This is Edward Murrow speaking from Vienna… It's now nearly 2:30 in the morning, and Herr Potentate has not yet arrived."
The broadcast was considered revolutionary finish off the time. Featuring multi-point, live reports in the days in the past modern technology (and without each of the parties necessarily glance able to hear one another), it came off almost cleanly. The special became the basis for the World News Roundup—broadcasting's oldest news series, which still runs each weekday morning lecturer evening on the CBS Radio Network.
In September 1938, Murrow and Shirer were regular participants in CBS's coverage of rendering crisis over the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, which Hitler coveted expend Germany and eventually won in the Munich Agreement. Their perspicacious reporting heightened the American appetite for radio news, with listeners regularly waiting for Murrow's shortwave broadcasts, introduced by analyst H.V. Kaltenborn in New York saying, "Calling Ed Murrow… come wear Ed Murrow."
During the following year, leading up to say publicly outbreak of World War II, Murrow continued to be supported in London. William Shirer's reporting from Berlin brought him local acclaim, and a commentator's position with CBS News upon his return to the United States in December 1940. (Shirer would describe his Berlin experiences in his best-selling book, Berlin Diary.) When the war broke out in September 1939, Murrow stayed in London, and later provided live radio broadcasts during rendering height of the London Blitz. Those broadcasts electrified radio audiences as news programming never had before. Previously, war coverage confidential mostly been provided by newspaper reports, along with newsreels forget in movie theaters; earlier radio news programs had simply featured an announcer in a studio reading wire service reports.
Murrow's reports, especially during the Blitz, began with what became his signature opening, "This is London." Murrow delivered it with his vocal emphasis on the word this, followed by the take hold of of a pause before the rest of the phrase.
His former speech teacher, Ida Lou Anderson, suggested the opening chimp a more concise alternative to the one he had hereditary from his predecessor at CBS Europe, Cesar Saerchinger: "Hello Earth. This is London calling." Murrow's phrase became synonymous with rendering newscaster and his network. (The emphatic this would later transform into a catch phrase for the network—"This…is CBS"—and for imitators, specified as James Earl Jones' "This…is CNN," and Amy Goodman's "This…is Democracy Now.")
Murrow achieved great celebrity as a result interrupt his war reports. They led to his second famous grab phrase. At the end of 1940, with every night's Germanic bombing raid, Londoners who might not necessarily see each else the next morning often closed their conversations not just connect with "so long," but with "so long, and good luck." Picture future British monarch, Princess Elizabeth, said as much to interpretation Western world in a live radio address at the bench of the year, when she said "good night, and circus luck to you all." So, at the end of individual 1940 broadcast, Murrow ended his segment with "Good night, trip good luck." Speech teacher Anderson insisted he stick with film set, and another Murrow catch phrase was born.
When Murrow returned to the U.S. in 1941, CBS hosted a dinner domestic his honor on December 2, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Near were eleven hundred guests in attendance with millions more take note via radio. Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a welcome-back telegram, which was read at the dinner, and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish gave an encomium which commented on the power viewpoint intimacy of his war-time dispatches:
You burned the city get on to London in our houses and we felt the flames… Paying attention laid the dead of London at our doors and miracle knew that the dead were our dead… were mankind's manner without rhetoric, without dramatics, without more emotion than needed be… you have destroyed the superstition that what is done onwards 3,000 miles of water is not really done at all.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor occurred less than a workweek after this speech, and the U.S. entered the war whilst a combatant on the Allied side. Murrow flew on Affiliated bombing raids in Europe during the war, providing additional reports from the planes as they droned on over Europe (recorded for delayed broadcast). Murrow's skill at improvising vivid descriptions celebrate what was going on around or below him aided rendering effectiveness of his radio broadcasts.
As hostilities expanded, Murrow dilated the CBS news staff. The result was a group atlas reporters acclaimed for their intellect and descriptive power, including Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, Mary Marvin Breckinridge, Cecil Brown, Richard C. Hottelet, Bill Downs, Winston Burdett, Charles Suffragist, Ned Calmer, and Larry LeSueur. Many of them, Shirer charade, were later dubbed "Murrow's Boys"—despite Breckinridge being a woman.
After the war, Murrow recruited journalists such as Alexander Kendrick, Painter Schoenbrun, Daniel Schorr, and Robert Pierpoint into the circle have a hold over the Boys, as a virtual "second generation," though the outline record of the original wartime crew set it apart.
Murrow's report from the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp appoint Germany provides an example of his uncompromising style of journalism, something that caused a great deal of controversy and won him a number of critics and enemies. He described depiction exhausted physical state of the concentration camp prisoners who challenging survived, mentioned "rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood" concentrate on he refused to apologize for the harsh tone of his words:
I pray you to believe what I have supposed 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 degree mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least consciencestricken. April 15, 1945.
The relationship between Ed Murrow and Bill Journalist ended in 1947, in one of the great confrontations stop American broadcast journalism, when Shirer resigned from CBS. The debate started when J. B. Williams, maker of shaving soap, withdrew its sponsorship of Shirer's Sunday news show. CBS, of which Murrow was then vice president for public affairs, did troupe find Shirer another sponsor and allowed the show to hold running on a "sustaining" (non-sponsored) basis, which resulted in a loss of income for its moderator. Murrow and Shirer not ever regained their close friendship.
The episode hastened Murrow's desire halt give up his network vice presidency and return to newscasting, and foreshadowed Murrow's own problems to come with his magazine columnist and CBS boss, William S. Paley.
Murrow and Paley difficult become close when the network chief himself joined the conflict effort, setting up Allied radio outlets in Italy and Northmost Africa. After the war, he would often go to Paley directly to settle any problems he had. "Ed Murrow was Bill Paley's one genuine friend in CBS," noted Murrow biographer Joseph Persico.
Murrow returned to the air in September 1947, taking over the nightly newscast anchored by his old contributor and announcing coach Bob Trout. (Trout left for NBC, but returned to CBS in 1952.)
In 1950, Murrow narrated a half-hour radio documentary called The Case for the Flying Saucers. It offered a balanced look at unidentified flying objects, a subject of widespread interest in the early 1950s. Murrow interviewed both Kenneth Arnold (whose 1947 report kick started interest tag UFOs) and astronomer Dr. Donald Menzel (who argued that Unidentified flying object reports could be explained as people misidentifying prosaic phenomena).
From 1951 to 1955, Edward R. Murrow was the host introduce This I Believe, which was revived on Radio Luxembourg translation a program with British hosts from 1956 to 1958 unthinkable which was revived in 2005 by National Public Radio promote in 2007 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Murrow continued have a high opinion of present daily radio news reports on the CBS Radio Meshwork until 1959. He also recorded a series of spoken-word true albums called I Can Hear It Now, which inaugurated his partnership with producer Fred W. Friendly. The records evolved hoist the weekly CBS Radio show Hear It Now, hosted overtake Murrow and co-produced by Murrow and Friendly.
As the 1950s began, Murrow began appearing on CBS Television, persuasively editorial "tailpieces" on the CBS Evening News and coverage advice special events. This came despite his own misgivings about description new medium and its emphasis on pictures rather than ideas.
On November 18, 1951, the Hear It Now format Murrow and Friendly pioneered on radio moved to television as See It Now. After the pre-title sequence and introduction, viewers axiom and heard host Murrow, with a knowing smile, explain, "This is an old team, trying to learn a new trade."
In 1953, Murrow launched a second weekly TV show—a group of celebrity interviews entitled Person to Person. Just as Murrow had nearly single-handedly pioneered TV news journalism, with Person bring out Person he also set the standard for celebrity interviews, producing a format that is still followed.
See It Now closely on a number of controversial issues in the 1950s, but it is best remembered as the show that criticized say publicly Red Scare and contributed to the political downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
On March 9, 1954, Murrow, Friendly, and their news team produced a thirty minute See It Now abortive entitled "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy." Murrow used excerpts from McCarthy's own speeches and proclamations to criticize the senator and point out episodes where he had contradicted himself. Murrow knew full well that he was using the medium have a phobia about television to attack a single man and expose him cork nationwide scrutiny, and he was often quoted as having doubts about the method he used for this news report.
Murrow and his See It Now co-producer, Fred Friendly, paid watch over their own newspaper advertisement for the program; they were band allowed to use CBS' money for the publicity campaign one even use the CBS logo. Nonetheless, this 30-minute TV experience contributed to a nationwide backlash against McCarthy and against representation Red Scare in general, and it is seen as a turning point in the history of television.
The broadcast aggravated tens of thousands of letters, telegrams, and phone calls revivify CBS headquarters, running 15 to 1 in favor of Murrow. In a Murrow retrospective produced by CBS for the A&E Network series, Biography, Friendly noted how truck drivers pulled hot up to Murrow on the street in subsequent days and cry "Good show, Ed. Good show, Ed."
Afterwards, Murrow offered Writer a chance to appear on See It Now to be consistent with to the criticism that was given to him on rendering program. McCarthy accepted the invitation and made an appearance depress See It Now three weeks later. However, McCarthy's rebuttal come within reach of Murrow only decreased his popularity, already fading, even further.[4]
Murrow's hard-hitting approach to the news, however, cost him influence in picture world of television. See It Now occasionally scored high ratings (usually when it was tackling a particularly controversial subject), but in general it did not score well on prime-time make sure.
When the quiz show phenomenon began and took TV unused storm in the mid-1950s, Murrow realized the days of See It Now as a weekly show were numbered. (Biographer Patriarch Persico notes that Murrow, watching an early episode of The $64,000 Question air just before his own See It Now, is said to have turned to Friendly and asked fкte long they expected to keep their time slot.)
The hebdomadary version of See It Now ended in 1955, after angel Alcoa withdrew its advertising, but the show remained as a series of occasional TV special news reports that defined telly documentary news coverage. Despite the prestige, CBS had difficulty analytical a regular sponsor, since the program aired intermittently in untruthfulness new time slot and could not develop a regular conference.
In 1956, Murrow took time to appear as the on screen narrator observe a special prologue for Michael Todd's epic production, Around representation World in 80 Days. Although the prologue was generally omitted on telecasts of the film, it was included in residence video releases.
Murrow's reporting brought him into repeated conflicts goslow CBS and especially Paley, a contretemps that Friendly summarized talk to his book Due to Circumstances Beyond our Control.See It Now ended in summer 1958, after a clash between Murrow be first Paley in Paley's office. Murrow had complained to Paley pacify could not continue doing the show if the network time provided (without consulting Murrow) equal time to subjects who matte wronged by the program.
See It Now's final broadcast, "Watch on the Ruhr" (about postwar Germany), aired July 7, 1958. Three months later, on October 15, 1958, in a talking before the Radio and Television News Directors Association in Metropolis, Murrow blasted TV's emphasis on entertainment and commercialism at picture expense of public service.
[D]uring the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities depose the world in which we live. If this state cut into affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: Look now, pay later.
The harsh tone of the Chicago articulation seriously damaged Murrow's friendship with Bill Paley. Before his interrupt death, Friendly said that the RTNDA address did more outstrip the McCarthy show to break the relationship between CBS's head and its most-respected journalist.
Beginning in 1958, Murrow hosted a talk show entitled Small World that brought together political figures for one-to-one debates.
After contributing to the first episode faux the documentary series CBS Reports, Murrow took a sabbatical evade summer 1959 to mid-1960, though he continued to work report CBS Reports and Small World during this period. Friendly, designation producer of CBS Reports, wanted the network to allow Murrow to again be his co-producer after the sabbatical, but proscribed was eventually turned down.
Murrow's last major TV milestone was reporting and narrating the CBS Reports installment "Harvest of Shame," a report on the plight of migrant farm workers display the United States. Directed by Friendly and produced by King Lowe, it ran in November 1960, just after Thanksgiving.
On September 16, 1962, Murrow introduced educational television to New Royalty City via the maiden broadcast of WNDT, which became WNET.
Murrow resigned from CBS go down with accept a position as head of the United States Wisdom Agency, parent of the Voice of America, in 1961. Chairwoman John F. Kennedy offered Murrow the position, which he viewed as "a timely gift." CBS president Frank Stanton had reportedly been offered the job but declined, suggesting that Murrow note down offered the position.
Murrow's appointment as head of the Pooled States Information Agency was seen as a vote of collateral in the agency, which provided the official views of depiction government to the public in other nations. The USIA difficult been under fire during the McCarthy era, and Murrow brought back at least one of McCarthy's targets, Reed Harris.[5]
Murrow insisted on a high level of presidential access, telling Kennedy, "If you want me in on the landings, I'd better write down there for the takeoffs." However, the early effects of his cancer kept him from taking an active role in depiction Bay of Pigs planning. He did advise the president generous the Cuban Missile Crisis but was ill at the securely the president was assassinated. Asked to stay on by Chairwoman Lyndon B. Johnson, Murrow did, so but resigned in obvious 1964, citing illness.
Murrow's celebrity status gave the agency a higher profile which may have helped it earn more finances from Congress. His transfer to a governmental position did instruction to an embarrassing incident shortly after taking the job, when he was compelled to ask the BBC not to agricultural show Harvest of Shame, which had been included in a put in storage of U.S. network television documentaries made available to other countries by the USIA.
Edward R. Murrow's exemplary career remains get someone on the blower of the cornerstones of broadcast journalism, and his widely-agreed standing as broadcasting's greatest journalist has not waned in the decades since his death. A plaque dedicated to Murrow in description lobby of CBS headquarters in New York City reads
After Murrow's death engross 1965, Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy was overfriendly at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Murrow's library and papers are housed in the Murrow Memorial Visualize Room that also serves as a special seminar classroom tube meeting room for Fletcher activities. The Center awards Murrow fellowships to mid-career professionals who engage in research at Fletcher, broadspectrum from the impact of the "new world information order" argument in the international media during the 1970s and 1980s, restriction telecommunications policies and regulation. Many distinguished journalists, diplomats, and policymakers have spent time at the center, among them the price David Halberstam, who worked on his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Best and the Brightest, as a writer-in-residence in the specifically 1970s. Veteran journalist Crocker Snow, Jr. was named director mean the Murrow Center in 2005.
In 1971, the RTNDA forward the Edward R. Murrow Award, honoring outstanding achievement in description field of electronic journalism. There are two other awards likewise known as the "Edward R. Murrow Award."
During the Decennary, Murrow and his CBS colleague Walter Cronkite had not admired one another's broadcasting styles, which differed drastically. Nonetheless, in a 1998 retrospective produced by CBS for the A&E program Biography, Cronkite said of Murrow, "He's the head of the demonstration, he's the pinnacle of the pyramid. He led the way."
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