Edward R. Murrow Edward Roscoe Murrow (April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965), born Egbert Roscoe Murrow,[1] was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He first gained Edward R. Murrow prominence during World War II with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe for the news division of CBS. During the war he recruited and worked closely with a team of war correspondents who came to be known as the Murrow Boys. A pioneer of radio and television news broadcasting, Murrow produced a series of reports on his television program See It Now which helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, Bill Downs, Dan Rather, and Alexander Kendrick consider Murrow one of journalism's greatest figures, noting his honesty and integrity in delivering the news. Contents Early life Career at CBS Radio Murrow in 1961 World War II Born Egbert Postwar broadcasting career Radio Roscoe Television and films Murrow Criticism of McCarthyism April 25, Later television career Fall from favor 1908 Summary of television work Guilford United States Information Agency (USIA) Director County, North Death Carolina, Honors U.S. Legacy Works Died April 27, Filmography 1965 Books (aged 57) References Pawling, New External links and references Biographies and articles York, U.S. Programs Resting Glen Arden place Farm Early life 41°34′15.7″N 73°36′33.6″W 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) Alma mater Washington [3] Murrow. His parents were Quakers. He was the youngest of three brothers and was a State "mixture of Scottish, Irish, English and German" descent.[4] The firstborn, Roscoe Jr., lived only a few hours. Lacey Van Buren was four years old and Dewey Joshua was two years old University [5] when Murrow was born. His home was a log cabin without electricity or plumbing, on a Occupation Journalist · farm bringing in only a few hundred dollars a year from corn and hay. radio broadcaster When Murrow was six years old, his family moved across the country to Skagit County in Years active 1935–1965 western Washington, to homestead near Blanchard, 30 miles (50 km) south of the Canada– United States border. He attended high school in nearby Edison, and was president of the Known for On-the-spot 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. radio reports from London 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 and other speech. A member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, he was also active in college politics. By his locations in 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 Europe the National Student Federation of America, Murrow gave a speech urging college students during World 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 War II. York. Series of Murrow was assistant director of the Institute of International Education from 1932 to 1935 television 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 news reports positions. He married Janet Huntington Brewster on March 12, 1935. Their son, Charles that led to the Casey Murrow, was born in the west of London on November 6, 1945. censure of Career at CBS U.S. Senator Joseph 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 McCarthy. announcer Bob Trout. Murrow's job was to line up newsmakers who would appear on the Janet network to talk about the issues of the day. But the onetime Washington State speech major Spouse(s) was intrigued by Trout's on-air delivery, and Trout gave Murrow tips on how to Huntington communicate effectively on radio. Brewster (m. 1935) Murrow went to London in 1937 to serve as the director of CBS's European operations. The position did not involve on-air reporting; his job was persuading European figures to Children 1 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 Signature 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 23-passenger 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-the-scene 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 transmitted by shortwave 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 best-selling 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 live, shortwave broadcasts relayed on CBS 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 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. When Murrow returned to the U.S. in 1941, CBS hosted a dinner in his honor on December 2 Murrow lived in a flat on Hallam at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.