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Photo: The Edward R. Murrow Center
It seems in this time of government corruption and doubts about the media, that we need to remember the words of Edward R. Murrow. For those of you who do not know Murrow, let’s just say he was probably one of–if not the–greatest radio and television journalists. I do not use the phrase journalist lightly. There are too many news readers, entertainers and propagandists masquerading as journalists today. Murrow was the real deal. He also was one heck of a writer as this speech shows.
Murrow was born near Polecat Creek in North Carolina (yes, there really is such a place). He became famous for his live radio broadcasts during the London blitz of World War II. If you have never heard one of them, they are spine tingling as you can hear the sounds of air raid sirens and bombs dropping. Murrow could have broadcast from the safety of a bunker like others, but instead courageously brought the blitz into American living rooms by daring to broadcast from places like a roof top during a bombing attack. Later that courage would distinguish him when he moved on to television where he was the first journalist to investigate and condemn Joe McCarthy.
Murrow’s “See it Now” program and his documentaries for the now-defunct CBS Reports set a standard for broadcast journalism that we are struggling to recover today. Murrow was named head of the United States Information Agency by John Kennedy, where he brought back the respect the agency had lost duri8ng the Eisenhower Administration. Murrow died of lung cancer in 1965 (he was a heavy smoker).
The 2005 film “Good Night and Good Luck” takes its title from the phrase Murrow used to end all his broadcasts. George Clooney directed the film and also had a hand in the screenplay. David Strathairn played Murrow. The film received six Oscar nominations, but did not win in any of the categories it was nominated in.Murrow’s 1958 speech shows how television and radio journalism never took him up on any of his suggestions. As for today’s journalists he would be appalled at the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. A few of the references in the speech may be unfamiliar. Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan hosted what were known then as variety shows. They are now extinct from television programming were extremely popular in the 1950s. Here is Murrow’s speech:
This might just do nobody any good. At the end of this discourse a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest, and your organization may be accused of having given hospitality to heretical and even dangerous ideas. But the elaborate structure of networks, advertising agencies, and sponsors will not be shaken or altered.
It is my desire, if not my duty, to try to talk to you journeymen with some candor about what is happening to radio and television. And if what I say is responsible, I, alone, am responsible for the saying of it.
Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about 50 or 100 years from now — and there should be preserved the kinescopes of one week of all three networks — they will there find, recorded in black and white and in color, evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and complacent. We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information.
>Our mass media reflect this.
But 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 at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge and retribution will not limp in catching up with us. Just once in awhile let us exalt the importance of ideas and information. Let us dream to the extent of saying that on a given Sunday night, a time normally occupied by Ed Sullivan is given over to a clinical survey on the state of American education. And a week or two later, a time normally used by Steve Allen is devoted to a thoroughgoing study of American policy in the Middle East.
Would the corporate image of their respective sponsors be damaged?
Would the shareholders rise up in their wrath and complain?
Would anything happen, other than a few million people would have received a little illumination on subjects that may well determine the future of this country — and therefore the future of the corporations?
To those who say people wouldn’t look, they wouldn’t be interested, they’re too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter’s opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.
This instrument can teach. It can illuminate and, yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it towards those ends.
Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights — in a box.
Good night and good luck.
Print Posted by: liberalamerican
