Edward R. Murrow from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
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Edward R. Murrow From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Edward R. Murrow KBE (born Egbert Edward R. Murrow Roscoe Murrow;[1] April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965) was an American KBE broadcast journalist. He was generally referred to as Ed Murrow. He first came to prominence with a series of radio broadcasts for the news division of the Columbia Broadcasting System during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States. During the war he assembled a team of foreign correspondents who came to be Murrow in April 1956 known as the Murrow Boys. Born Egbert Roscoe Murrow April 25, 1908 A pioneer of television news Guilford County, broadcasting, Murrow produced a series of reports that helped lead to the censure North Carolina, U.S. of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Fellow Died April 27, 1965 (aged 57) journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, Bill Pawling, New York, U.S. Downs, Dan Rather, and Alexander Resting Glen Arden Farm Kendrick consider Murrow one of place 41°34′15.7″N 73°36′33.6″W journalism's greatest figures, noting his honesty and integrity in delivering the Alma mater Washington State – 1930 news. Occupation Journalist Radio broadcaster Known for Onthespot radio reports from Contents London and other locations in Europe during World War II. 1 Early life Series of television news reports 2 Career at CBS that led to the censure of U.S. 2.1 Radio Senator Joseph McCarthy. 3 World War II 4 Postwar broadcasting career Spouse(s) Janet Huntington Brewster (1935–65) 4.1 Radio Children Charles Casey Murrow 4.2 Television and films Parent(s) Roscoe Conklin Murrow 4.2.1 Criticism of Ethel Murrow McCarthyism Signature 4.2.2 Later television career 4.2.3 Fall from favor 4.3 Summary of television work 4.4 United States Information Agency (USIA) Director 5 Death 6 Honors 7 Legacy 8 Filmography 9 References 10 External links and references 10.1 Biographies and articles 10.2 Programs Early life Murrow was born Egbert Roscoe Murrow at Polecat Creek, near Greensboro,[2] in Guilford County, North Carolina, the son of Roscoe Conklin Murrow and Ethel F. (née Lamb) Murrow. His parents were Quakers.[3] He was the youngest of three brothers and was a "mixture of English, Scottish, Irish and German" descent.[4] The firstborn, Roscoe Jr., lived only a few hours. Lacey Van Buren was four years old and Dewey Roscoe was two years old when Murrow was born.[5] His home was a log cabin without electricity or plumbing, on a farm bringing in only a few hundred dollars a year from corn and hay. When Murrow was six years old, his family moved across the country to Skagit County in western Washington, to homestead near Blanchard, 30 miles (50 km) south of the Canada– US border. He attended high school in nearby Edison, and was president of the student body in his senior year and excelled on the debate team. He was also a member of the basketball team which won the Skagit County championship. After graduation from high school in 1926, Murrow enrolled at Washington State College (now Washington State University) across the state in Pullman, and eventually majored in speech. A member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, he was also active in college politics. By his teen years, Murrow went by the nickname "Ed" and during his second year of college, he changed his name from Egbert to Edward. In 1929, while attending the annual convention of the National Student Federation of America, Murrow gave a speech urging college students to become more interested in national and world affairs; this led to his election as president of the federation. After earning his bachelor's degree in 1930, he moved back east to New York. Murrow was assistant director of the Institute of International Education from 1932 to 1935 and served as assistant secretary of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, which helped prominent German scholars who had been dismissed from academic positions. He married Janet Huntington Brewster on March 12, 1935. Their son, Charles Casey Murrow, was born in the west of London on November 6, 1945. Career at CBS Murrow joined CBS as director of talks and education in 1935 and remained with the network for his entire career.[2] CBS did not have news staff when Murrow joined, save for announcer Bob Trout. Murrow's job was to line up newsmakers who would appear on the network to talk about the issues of the day. But the onetime Washington State speech major was intrigued by Trout's onair delivery, and Trout gave Murrow tips on how to communicate effectively on radio. Murrow went to London in 1937 to serve as the director of CBS's European operations. The position did not involve onair reporting; his job was persuading European figures to broadcast over the CBS network, which was in direct competition with NBC's two radio networks. During this time, he made frequent trips around Europe.[6] In 1937, Murrow hired journalist William L. Shirer, and assigned him to a similar post on the continent. This marked the beginning of the "Murrow Boys" team of war reporters.[7] Radio Murrow gained his first glimpse of fame during the March 1938 Anschluss, in which Adolf Hitler engineered the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. While Murrow was in Poland arranging a broadcast of children's choruses, he got word from Shirer of the annexation—and the fact that Shirer could not get the story out through Austrian state radio facilities. Murrow immediately sent Shirer to London, where he delivered an uncensored, eyewitness account of the Anschluss. Murrow then chartered the only transportation available, a 23passenger plane, to fly from Warsaw to Vienna so he could take over for Shirer.[8] At the request of CBS management in New York, Murrow and Shirer put together a European News Roundup of reaction to the Anschluss, which brought correspondents from various European cities together for a single broadcast. On March 13, 1938, the special was broadcast, hosted by Bob Trout in New York, including Shirer in London (with Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson), reporter Edgar Ansel Mowrer of the Chicago Daily News in Paris, reporter Pierre J. Huss of the International News Service in Berlin, and Senator Lewis B. Schwellenbach in Washington, D.C. Reporter Frank Gervasi, in Rome, was unable to find a transmitter to broadcast reaction from the Italian capital, but phoned his script to Shirer in London, who read it on the air.[9]:116–120 Murrow reported live from Vienna, in the first on thescene news report of his career: "This is Edward Murrow speaking from Vienna.... It's now nearly 2:30 in the morning, and Herr Hitler has not yet arrived." The broadcast was considered revolutionary at the time. Featuring multipoint, live reports in the days before modern technology (and without each of the parties necessarily being able to hear one another), it came off almost flawlessly. The special became the basis for World News Roundup—broadcasting's oldest news series, which still runs each weekday morning and evening on the CBS Radio Network. In September 1938, Murrow and Shirer were regular participants in CBS's coverage of the crisis over the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, which Hitler coveted for Germany and eventually won in the Munich Agreement. Their incisive 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 in Ed Murrow." During the following year, leading up to the outbreak of World War II, Murrow continued to be based in London. William Shirer's reporting from Berlin brought him national 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 bestselling 1941 book Berlin Diary.) When the war broke out in September 1939, Murrow stayed in London, and later provided live radio broadcasts during the height of the Blitz in London After Dark. These broadcasts electrified radio audiences as news programming never had: previous war coverage had mostly been provided by newspaper reports, along with newsreels seen in movie theaters; earlier radio news programs had simply featured an announcer in a studio reading wire service reports. World War II Murrow's reports, especially during the Blitz, began with what became his signature opening, "This is London," delivered with his vocal emphasis on the word this, followed by the hint of a pause before the rest of the phrase. His former speech teacher, Ida Lou Anderson, suggested the opening as a more concise alternative to the one he had inherited from his predecessor at CBS Europe, Cesar Saerchinger: "Hello America. This is London calling." Murrow's phrase became synonymous with the newscaster and his network.[10] Murrow achieved great celebrity status as a result of his war reports. They led to his second famous catchphrase. At the end of 1940, with every night's German bombing raid, Londoners who might not necessarily see each other the next morning often closed their conversations with "good night, and good luck." The future British monarch, Princess Elizabeth, said as much to the Western world in a live radio address at the end of the year, when she said "good night, and good luck to you all". So, at the end of one 1940 broadcast, Murrow ended his segment with "Good night, and good luck." Speech teacher Anderson insisted he stick with it, and another Murrow catchphrase was born.