“Edward R. Murrow and the Positive Power of Journalism”

Abby Fennewald

Leonard Steinhorn, SOC University Honors Spring 2013

Abstract: Can a journalist change society? In the case of Edward R. Murrow, the answer is yes, and this paper explores Murrow’s broadcasting career as a case study of the positive social impact that journalism can have. The paper will frame its examination with a discussion of how media influence the public at large and how the media's impact changed with the advent of broadcast journalism. Murrow drew national attention to previously underreported issues and parts of our society, and he pioneered broadcast journalism techniques and visual storytelling while doing so. Murrow drew large audiences because of his personal skill as a broadcaster as well as his willingness to challenge the status quo and speak truth to power. Today, the legacy of his work lives on as he, like other journalists whose stories influenced society, has been immortalized by Hollywood. Today, in a time when the role and style of journalism is constantly changing, and when resources for investigative journalism shrink, it is important to study and highlight practitioners who show that good reporting and afflicting the comfortable represent the best in American journalism.

“He was the conscience of all of us.” — Daniel Schorr

Edward R. Murrow has a unique place in the pantheon of television broadcasters. Not only was he one of the earliest — making a transition from radio to television early in the new medium’s history — he was one of the best. His level of dedication to his craft was unparalleled, and continues to be the gold standard. As Daniel Schorr put it, “He made you feel important. He made you feel that journalism was important.”1 Today, there is no equivalent for Murrow. “I don’t see anybody” doing what Murrow did, Marvin Kalb, the last man Murrow hired at CBS, said.2 Kalb said of Murrow’s work, “Some of it was investigative, some was trailblazing, some was courageous.” Although Kalb says no one is like Murrow in today’s media landscape, he says that today’s television news does try to do some investigative work. One of the inhibiting factors, he says, is the money it takes to separate a team from the regular staff to go and do the investigation, as well as the lack of easy access to the funding.3 Still, he says, “I don’t think there can be another Murrow,” because everyone operates in the wake of what he did. One of the things that stood out to Kalb most about Murrow was his curiosity. The two met because Kalb was a PhD student writing about the Soviet Union, and Murrow called him to find out more. They were supposed to meet for only 30 minutes, but the meeting lasted for three hours. To Kalb, that suggested that here was a man who was extremely curious, and he says that curiosity and interest carried over into just about everything Murrow did.4 Perhaps most importantly, that curiosity coincided with what Murrow thought the American people needed to know.5 Additionally, Kalb says that, “If Murrow did anything it was to think long and hard before he went on the air,” while today’s live broadcasting with a 24-hour news cycle doesn’t allow time for a lot of thinking.6 Additionally, Kalb thinks investigative reporting could help save newspapers from their economic problems. A reader can “get the main stories from any gadget,” he said. What newspapers should do is focus on investigative work.7

Because of Murrow’s unique place in broadcast history, this paper uses him as a case study for the potential positive social impact of journalism in the hands of a good journalist, as well as for a discussion about what influences help set the news agenda. Even Murrow operated under influences from a variety of sources, including advertisers, whose role has only increased since his time. He, however, didn’t allow those pressures to prevent him from showing the truth that was going uncovered in the rest of the media. Murrow used his air time to show the stories he

1 The Murrow Boys. The Newseum, 2008. 2 Kalb, Marvin. Personal Interview. 9 April 2013. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. thought were important, like those of Milo Radulovich, unfairly discharged from the Air Force reserves in the 1950s because of supposed Communist sympathies, and Annie Lee Moss, a communications clerk at the Pentagon who McCarthy questioned intensively. There were countless other stories like theirs, of groups and individuals who were being mistreated or ignored by society, and Murrow covered them, even when it meant standing up to the heads of his network. Murrow was a natural in front of the camera, but more importantly he had a deep commitment to the news in a way that was unprecedented. Today’s journalists, who work in a post-Murrow era, should strive to match his commitment to the truth and to showing all sides of society, something that while difficult should be achievable. Even in the opening broadcast of See It Now, featuring a simultaneous viewing of both coasts of the United States, Murrow was able to stand apart from others. As Jack Gould wrote in his New York Times review of the program, “In less knowing hands than Mr. Murrow’s, the simultaneous pick-ups on the two coasts might have been only an amazing stunt, but he also pointed the meaningful moral: television is a medium to be approached in humility.”8 Perhaps this lesson, which Murrow demonstrated throughout his tenure on the air, is what sets him apart and is what journalists today should attempt to emulate.

8 Gould, Lewis L., ed. The New York Times Reviews by Jack Gould. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002, 77.

“Edward R. Murrow was the king, for heaven’s sake. I wasn’t even a pretender.” – Walter Cronkite9

Edward R. Murrow understood perhaps better than anyone else at the time the possible implications of his work and its potential power. “The instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to these ends. Otherwise it is merely lights and wires in a box,” he said.10 The difference comes down to who is using those lights and wires. The journalists behind the camera and in front of it get to decide what the story will be and how to tell it. And Murrow, clearly, was a natural. With no formal training in broadcasting, he managed to become a trusted voice on the radio during World War II,11 and was able to translate that into a successful television broadcasting career at a time when few even believed television would have the same power as newspapers or radio. When See It Now began on CBS in 1951, Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly, referred to themselves as “an old team trying to learn a new trade.”12 By the time the program officially ended its run in 1958, however, they had shown just how powerful television could be when used to illuminate issues previously outside the public’s eye. For some, See It Now, “represented TV’s arrival as a news medium and indicated potential for better things to come. Critics raved … Finally, educated people would admit without shame that they owned a TV set.”13 Murrow was one of the first veteran correspondents to take his talents to television. He kept his radio news show, which is where the money and audience were at that time,14 but in the end Murrow’s success showed just how powerful television could be. “The initial stars of radio and TV had been vaudeville entertainers. Murrow, no less a star, gave broadcasting some class and a mission of public service beyond entertainment,” wrote legendary NPR broadcaster Bob Edwards.15 Murrow’s work was especially important because of the precedent it set for subsequent television reporting. Never before had television effectively taken on public issues in this way. As Richard Kaplan, a television producer for CBS as well as many other networks, wrote, “Despite its growing public power, the medium had not yet established its authority to report on public affairs. Television news was a mere 15 minutes a day of headlines, while more serious reporting was reserved for radio and the daily papers. Television thus lacked the authority and prestige to

9 Cronkite, Walter and Don Carleton. Conversations with Cronkite. Austin: The University of Texas at Austin, 2010, 135. 10 Burns, Eric. Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: Television’s Conquest of America in the Fifties. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010, 16. 11 Christians, Clifford G., Mark Fackler and John P. Ferre. Ethics for Public Communication: Defining Moments in Media History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 4. 12 Murrow, Edward R. and Fred Friendly. See It Now. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955, xi. 13 Edwards, Bob. Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2004, 107. 14 Ibid, 100. 15 Ibid, 4. stand up to the might of an angry governmental agency.”16 See It Now, however, had the power television had lacked. Murrow was a trusted news voice, and CBS allowed him to broadcast in a way few others could. One of the things that sets Murrow apart from the others is his own recognition of the power of the medium and the respect and integrity he used in preparing his broadcasts. As he said when he first began his television career, “We want you to know that we are aware of the electronic wonder entrusted to our fingers. As human beings, we hope we are up to it; as reporters we hope that we never abuse it.”17 During the course of its run, See It Now provided news segments that focused on dealing with controversial topics in depth. For example, one program created soon after the Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court case told the story of race relations in two towns, both deep in the South. Through conversations with members of various communities in the towns, Murrow was able to illuminate feelings about segregation in a way that revealed the complexities of the issue. When asked about the integration of schools, white students remarked that it would take a lot of adjustment, or that they believed it would be difficult for both races, but they also said they had been taught to respect the African Americans who worked in their homes, just not to socialize with them.18 African American students were also interviewed, and they said they liked the Supreme Court ruling because they felt that “we, as Negroes, can get a broader education and can advance father than we have in the past.”19 By portraying different opinions about the decision, Murrow was able to give viewers a complete picture. This treatment of in-depth coverage and analysis, was also given on topics ranging from the ACLU’s actions in Indianapolis to the story of apartheid in South Africa. Murrow’s methods were far-reaching, and he always managed to portray opinions of outsiders or the group with little power. Even early in See It Now’s tenure Murrow was pushing boundaries. He took a camera crew to South Korea for Christmas 1952, and the resulting program showed Murrow talking predominantly with enlisted soldiers, not officers, about their experiences in the war. The program allowed the war to come inside people’s homes and show them what the war was like for those fighting in it. This is a shift in war coverage generally associated with coverage of the Vietnam War, yet Murrow was doing something similar two decades before. Perhaps the power of television, and of Murrow’s style in particular, was never more evident than in the case of the two Murrow pieces about Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who in the early 1950s led a witch-hunt for Communists through the federal government. Fear of Communism was strong in the post-World War II era, and McCarthy was able to take advantage of it to propel himself into the national spotlight. Murrow, however, helped expose McCarthy’s unethical tactics on

16 Kaplan, Rich. “Journalism and McCarthyism.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006, 41. 17 Friendly, Fred. Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control. New York: Random House, 1967, xvi. 18 Murrow, Edward R. and Fred Friendly. See It Now. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955, 71. 19 Ibid, 73. See It Now, through multiple episodes that showed the results of McCarthy’s efforts as well as putting his tactics on display. Although the most well known segments, of Milo Radulovich and McCarthy himself, are now seen as a crucial part of the story of Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare, it didn’t have to be this way. With another reporter, these stories wouldn’t have been told. Murrow, when deciding to do the broadcast, said, “No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.”20 He was determined to not be one of them. The Milo Radulovich episode, which preceded the coverage of McCarthy himself by five months, epitomizes why See It Now was uniquely powerful. The show did something that remains a common tactic on modern TV news —showed the story of an individual. “See It Now was built on a foundation of the ‘little picture,’ explaining a news event by showing the impact on one person. The McCarthy story had to be the perfect little picture. We were looking for a Milo Radulovich long before we knew who Milo was,” producer Fred Friendly said.21 Radulovich was a reserve Air Force lieutenant, discharged as a security risk because of his ties to Communist sympathizers. Murrow and Friendly, with Joe Wershba reporting, began by reiterating, through Radulovich himself, that the Air Force didn’t question his personal loyalty at all.22 They went on to talk about Radulovich’s case with his attorney, Charles Lockwood, who remarked that, “The Air Force did not produce a single witness. We were not told who the accusers were. We have no right to confront them or cross-examine them.”23 The program also used interviews with other people in the town to show the opinion of the larger community. The chief marshal of the town, who had known Radulovich for ayear, said, “Why, it’s still a mystery to me why they are condemning him for something that his father did.”24 A woman who manages a store downtown was also interviewed about the petition supporting Radulovich’s loyalty that she started. Radulovich’s wife also appeared on the segment, and she said she was glad her husband was fighting his discharge. “As far as publicity is concerned,” she said, “it makes the rest of the country know what’s happening, and they all feel for us and want to help us. I don’t regret anything — him coming forward and fighting it.”25 By taking the time to cover his story through talking to Radulovich’s family and neighbors, Murrow and See It Now showed how unnecessary his dismissal was, and after the program Radulovich was reinstated. Although the Radulovich episode never received the kind of public attention the McCarthy episode did, Friendly said, “Ed Murrow and I maintained that the Radulovich program was one of the finest things we’d ever done, a rare moment in history. Four decades later I cannot quarrel

20 Friedman, John S. The Secret Histories. New York: Picador, 2005, 111. 21 Friendly, Fred W. “The Night Television Documentaries Changed Forever.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006, 14. 22 Murrow, Edward R. and Fred Friendly. See It Now. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955, 31. 23 Ibid, 33. 24 Ibid, 34. 25 Ibid, 37. with that assessment.”26 This episode is the perfect example of how powerful journalism can be, and the role it can play in bringing untouched issues to the forefront of the public’s minds. Months later Murrow finally took on McCarthy directly. Some had criticized Murrow for not speaking out sooner, suggesting that he was “resting on laurels” instead of continuing to take on the issues, according to Joe Wershba, who worked on See It Now. “Perhaps his stung pride gave Murrow’s attack on McCarthy, when it finally came, a sharper edge,” he wrote.27 After weeks of holding the McCarthy program, waiting for the perfect opportunity, it was finally aired on March 9, 1954.28 ”Seconds before airtime, Friendly observed, ‘This is going to be a tough one.’ Murrow replied, ‘After this one, they’re all going to be tough.’”29 This statement shows Murrow’s own recognition of the impact of what he was doing, and his knowledge of what the consequences would be. Clearly, Murrow believed it was worth it. As he said in that broadcast, “We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.”30 As for the content of the program, “There was something about the way that they had been edited together, one immediately following the other, that demonstrated more clearly than ever the unrelenting nature of McCarthy’s vituperation, thus making the whole of his anti-Communist campaign seem greater, and more irrational, than the sum of its parts.”31 Even in his introduction to the program, Murrow used McCarthy’s words against him. He said, “Our working thesis tonight is this question: If this fight against Communism is made a fight between America's two great political parties, the American people know that one of these parties will be destroyed, and the Republic cannot endure very long as a one party system.”32 McCarthy had originally made that statement mere months before the broadcast. Before showing McCarthy interrogating others, Murrow used a clip of McCarthy saying that he felt bullied by others to set up the contrast. “You know, I used to pride myself on the idea that I was a bit tough, especially over the past eighteen or nineteen months, when we've been kicked around and bull whipped and damned. I didn't think that I could be touched very deeply.”33 Murrow’s statistics, as

26 Friendly, Fred. “The Night Television Documentaries Changed Forever.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006, 16. 27 Wershba, Joseph. “Murrow vs. McCarthy: See It Now.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006, 27. 28 “Edward R. Murrow: A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.” Media Resources Center, Moffitt Library, University of California at Berkeley. 1993. 29 Edwards, Bob. Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2004, 114. 30 Good Night and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006. 31 Burns, Eric. Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: Television’s Conquest of America in the Fifties. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010, 177. 32 “Edward R. Murrow: A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.” Media Resources Center, Moffitt Library, University of California at Berkeley. 1993. 33 Ibid. well as his video clips, helped give new context to McCarthy’s statements and actions. McCarthy claimed that it was only leftist newspapers who had attacked him, but Murrow showed that fully three-fourths of the 50 largest circulating papers had condemned McCarthy’s actions on one of his cases.34 Then, in longer clips of McCarthy in investigation hearings, Murrow allowed McCarthy’s words to speak for themselves, as he bullied witnesses and seemed coarse at best. Murrow’s commentary, in the other hand, remained understated. Even as he closed the program, Murrow was firm but didn’t appear as forceful as McCarthy had. For his part, McCarthy realized that Murrow was exceptional and his broadcast powerful, and that he therefore deserved his attention, although he phrased it somewhat differently. Murrow had said from the beginning that McCarthy was welcome to reply in a separate broadcast, and McCarthy took advantage of the opportunity. “Now ordinarily, ordinarily, I would not take time out from the important work at hand to answer Murrow,” he said. “However, in this case I feel justified in doing so because Murrow is a symbol, the leader, and the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual Communists and traitors.”35 Although Murrow’s power is surely not what McCarthy meant to communicate, in retrospect it shows McCarthy’s acknowledgement of Murrow’s influence over the American people, and their trust in him. And, it turns out, McCarthy was right to be somewhat fearful of Murrow. The day after the broadcast showing McCarthy in his own words CBS received the largest positive response it had ever received to any program.36 In the first few hours CBS received 12,348 calls and telegrams regarding the program, 11, 567 of which supported Murrow.37 This was not the first time McCarthy had been questioned in the press, but Murrow had a higher profile and was able to take McCarthy on in the most effective way. Other journalists who had written about McCarthy included Drew Pearson, “Washington Merry-Go-Round columnist,” Herb Block, editorial cartoonist at The Washington Post, Norman Cousins, Jack Anderson, the Alsop brothers, Time magazine, and the New York Post.38 While these journalists all certainly contributed to the growing momentum against McCarthy, Murrow’s high profile and large audience, as well as the medium of television itself, combined to make his program the most powerful. His broadcast “marked the first time on American television that McCarthy’s citations had ever been refuted by the recital of the true facts in each case.”39 And, as in all of Murrow’s broadcasts, “His facts were solid, his scope

34 Ibid. 35 Burns, Eric. Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: Television’s Conquest of America in the Fifties. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010, 179. 36 Friedman, John S. The Secret Histories. New York: Picador, 2005, 111. 37 Wershba, Joseph. “Murrow vs. McCarthy: See It Now.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006, 35. 38 Everitt, David. A Shadow of Red: Communism and the Blacklist in Radio and Television. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2007. 39 Kendrick, Alexander. Prime Time: The life of Edward R. Murrow. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1969, 111-112. thorough, his analysis on target, and his principles uncompromised. He was authoritative without being imperious.”40 Additionally, Murrow’s work inspired others to speak out, including Chicago Bishop Bernard Sheil who gave a speech against McCarthy in April, and a “Joe Must Go” movement started by a Wisconsin Republican newspaper. Additionally, it was not long after Murrow’s program that the Senate Republican Policy Committee began a study of the rules of procedure for investigating committees like McCarthy’s.41 Murrow, adding to his own credibility, allowed McCarthy to come on his program and give a rebuttal to everything Murrow said. When McCarthy took Murrow up on his offer of airtime in early April, however, he appeared distracted and jumpy, and his unfounded accusations only served to make Murrow’s previous program more powerful. Even after showcasing McCarthy in his own words, Murrow knew his work wasn’t finished. A third episode, about Annie Lee Moss, was aired a week later on March 16. The episode was especially incriminating for McCarthy, as she appeared particularly harmless and he appeared distracted and unprepared. Years later it was revealed that, in fact, Ms. Moss did have some Communist connection. In her FBI file, released years after the fact, the evidence shows papers including membership lists from two Communist party branches and the Communist Political Association with Moss identified by name, race, age and occupation.42 McCarthy, almost in spite of himself, had found a real Communist even while he lacked the proof necessary to convict her. Murrow, however, “defended his program, saying the point was not Moss’s politics but rather her right to due process.”43 He also made the point that McCarthy, as in all of his cases, had offered no proof, giving no reason to believe Moss’s guilt at the time.44 Murrow knew, perhaps better than anyone around him, that what he was doing by taking on McCarthy was both necessary and dangerous in its ability to set a precedent. He showed the American people that, “dissent was as much a right as McCarthy’s bullying was a wrong,”45 and yet in another broadcaster’s hands television the same medium and methods could send messages with a far less positive intent and outcome. Anyone with the right skills and harmful agenda could have taken advantage of what TV had to offer as a uniquely visual medium.46

40 Edwards, Bob. Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2004, 7. 41 Burns, Eric. Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: Television’s Conquest of America in the Fifties. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010, 178. 42 Friedman, Andrea. “The Strange Career of Annie Lee Moss: Rethinking Race, Gender, and McCarthyism.” Journal of American History 9 4.2 (2007). 43 Edwards, Bob. Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2004, 117. 44 Ibid, 102. 45 Pilger, John. Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism that Changed the World. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005, 27. 46 Burns, Eric. Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: Television’s Conquest of America in the Fifties. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010, 177. The show ended in 1958 when its airtime was given to programs with more commercial appeal. Murrow recognized this move for what it was, and in October 1958 gave a speech at the Radio and Television News Directors Association’s gathering that showed how he felt. The speech told the group that they were failing the American public. Prime time programming was not tackling important issues, and Murrow was not afraid to say it. “He was acting from his personal hurt but also from the frustration that a great resource was being squandered.”47 He tried to remind the group that the public was open to the kind of programming they were no longer willing to support. “I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry’s program planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is — an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate.”48 Murrow also recognized, of course, that the main motivation for these programming moves was executives’ desire to make TV even more profitable. Murrow pointed out that the factors that combined to determine programming, show business, advertising and news, were largely incompatible. In response he said, “But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights of the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse.”49 Beyond the economic motivation, Murrow saw and wasn’t afraid to say that television “in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us.”50 In today’s media landscape, it’s hard to imagine that the culture of competing for profits in media began so early, and that even in Murrow’s time TV was primarily entertainment and not news. The problems in the industry, including the lack of oversight to ensure responsible programming, are still the same as they were over 50 years ago when Murrow made this speech. Although the speech caused controversy within the television industry because it was a blatant attack on the direction the networks were moving, and CBS executives distanced themselves from Murrow’s message in order to appease advertisers, he wasn’t gone from their programming. See It Now was off the air, but Murrow was still reporting for Person to Person, and in 1960 returned to report for the Fred Friendly-produced documentary Harvest of Shame. Friendly had wanted Murrow to work as a producer on the project, but CBS executives didn’t want him that close to the new project, and only allowed him to report on part of the series. Harvest of Shame allowed Murrow to once again take on the role of the “conscience of the nation,” as the documentary depicted and explained the plight of migrant workers travelling across the country looking for work.51 This was among

47 Edwards, Bob. Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2004, 136. 48 Murrow, Edward R. RTNDA Convention. Chicago, Il. 15 Oct 1958. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Kaplan, Rich. “Journalism and McCarthyism.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006. the first of the series CBS Reports, which Fred Friendly was asked to produce in the wake of the quiz show scandal in the late 1950s. The new style of quiz shows, which had gained a lot of popularity among mass audiences, were in fact rigged and not genuine, and when that was revealed the networks had to make amends. CBS felt they had to have some substantive programming as retribution, which was part of the reason Murrow was allowed to report.52 When completed, the product was “a document of man’s exploitation of man that was full of anguish and outrage,” Friendly wrote.53 “Not since McCarthy had we done a broadcast that created such impact, and never again would any of our programs create such clamor for change. Those migrants who were able to see it, as well as Secretary Mitchell and a few senators who cared, congratulated us.”54 Murrow, of course, was influential in creating the final product. He “wanted deep understanding, not pity, so he reworked the final scenes consistent with a documentary format.”55 His parting words were a clear call to action for the audience. “Is it possible we think too much in terms of Christmas baskets and not in terms of eliminating poverty? … The people you have seen do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do. Good night and good luck.”56 This call to action is very much in the same vein as what he tried to do on See It Now, although perhaps it is more overt. His moral code was ‘rooted in populism and justice,’ in the words of NPR’s Bob Edwards — he saw that we have obligations to each other, and he knew that television was one way of working toward fulfilling them. Murrow was and is known for the integrity he showed in all of his work. As Walter Cronkite put it, “He just felt it, understood it, and communicated it to others at CBS.”57 This integrity and trust helped shape what television could become, and foreshadowed the unifying nature of modern television. Through his work, Cronkite said, “a community was forming, understanding itself, defining its purpose, and transforming from isolationist into activist, from Me to We. … A meaningful culture is created when speakers construct, maintain, and transform it.”58 Murrow led this community, and his voice came to be a formative one for the rest of the network he worked for. As his biographer Alexander Kendrick wrote, “It was not his specific attitude on any question that gave him his authority and credit. He often tended to take a conservative view. But his general attitude of open- mindedness, which is the core of liberalism, influenced the people who worked with him and the CBS way of handling the news, raising the level of reporting and

52 Friendly, Fred W. Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control. New York: Random House, 1967, 105- 106. 53 Ibid, 121. 54 Ibid, 122. 55 Christians, Clifford G., Mark Fackler and John P. Ferre. Ethics for Public Communication: Defining Moments in Media History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 13. 56 Ibid, 13. 57 Cronkite, Walker and Carleton, Don. Conversations with Cronkite. Austin: The University of Texas at Austin, 2010, 141. 58 Christians, Clifford G., Mark Fackler and John P. Ferre. Ethics for Public Communication: Defining Moments in Media History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 10. heightening the climate of inquiry. The ‘Murrow style’ became, and to some degree still remains, the CBS style.”59 This “Murrow style” and his natural integrity is part of the reason Murrow was so effective in his attack on McCarthy. He didn’t automatically give in to ideas about objectivity the way so many journalists in the modern media do. The networks may have wanted the news to be noncontroversial, but Murrow questioned the news rather than simply reciting it. That sense of obligation to each other within the national community that Bob Edwards saw led him to cover McCarthy in a far different way than others. As Fred Friendly said after the episode aired, “We were faced with what was looming to be the most controversial broadcast to date in the history of television, and telling only one side of the story. Murrow and I discussed our uneasiness and concluded that sometimes there just aren’t arguments on both sides of an issue.”60 This same sentiment remained prevalent when working on Harvest of Shame. Friendly and Murrow recognized, of course, the importance of balancing the opinions they showed. Friendly wrote: “But though objectivity is part of responsible reporting, all arguments, as Murrow had said, are not equal. The two sides to the migrant workers’ plight could not counterbalance each other, and no reporter with a conscience could end such a report without letting the viewer know how he felt. As Murrow once asked, ‘Would you give equal time to Judas Iscariot or Simon Legree?’”61

Still, Murrow’s brand of advocacy journalism is far removed from what modern pundits put on the air. “Murrow’s seminal contribution was truth told with passionate reserve—never a charismatic call to action, always a courageous confrontation with the brutal facts.”62 Murrow expressed what he believed his own role to be when he said, “It is no part of a reporter’s function to advocate policy. The most that I can do is to indicate certain questions facing America. You [citizens] must supply the answers.”63 Second, even Murrow could never have had the impact he did without support from CBS and, for a while, corporate sponsors. Eventually, however, his ideals were outweighed by a desire to be as profitable as possible. “There are those in the industry who believe broadcasting can move men, and even those who believe it could move mountains, but they are outnumbered by those who believe all it has to do is move goods.”64 The FCC has no real power to hold stations to any

59 Kendrick, Alexander. Prime Time: The life of Edward R. Murrow. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1969, 26. 60 Friendly, Fred W. “The Night Television Documentaries Changed Forever.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006, 15. 61 Friendly, Fred W. Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control. 122. 62 Christians, Clifford G., Mark Fackler and John P. Ferre. Ethics for Public Communication: Defining Moments in Media History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 15. 63 Seib, Philip. Broadcasts from the Blitz. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006, 150. 64 Kendrick, Alexander. Prime Time: The life of Edward R. Murrow. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1969, 6. obligation to provide a public service, and an increase in corporatism even in the 1960s made news into a commercial product of its own.65 Even by the late 1960s TV had become the greatest ad medium ever with a turnover of $3 billion a year.66 Murrow’s See It Now sponsor, ALCOA, had some influence, although Murrow, “resisted the influences that sought conformity in thought and popular and easy answers.”67 ALCOA largely stuck with Murrow, and didn’t pull its funding until a year after the McCarthy broadcast. In that year, Murrow covered issues including nuclear war, civil rights, cigarette smoking, and cancer.68 However, during the McCarthy broadcast itself ALCOA left Murrow and Friendly on their own. There was no money to advertise the program, so Murrow and Friendly used $1200 of their own money to take out an ad in the New York Times.69 Today, perhaps no one in the news media leads public opinion the same way Murrow was able to. Maybe they couldn’t even if they tried. Chain ownership, both of newspapers and TV stations, makes a true competition of ideas nearly impossible. Affiliates want to carry more programs with mass appeal so that they continue to bring in money from advertisers. This is clear to see even within the network that once supported Murrow. CBS had 250 local outlets by the late 1960s, but for public service programs an acceptance of just 90 stations was average. The others showed old movies or reruns of old television programs in their place, as those programs had already proven their public appeal.70 Murrow’s programs were “information rich, sponsor poor,” which worked for him, as an already established voice in American living rooms.71 That kind of leadership of the public would be hard to replicate today, with the diversified means of getting information that are available. Murrow had already made his way into American living rooms, talking with people in a manner reminiscent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats of the 1930s.72 “Today, even with twenty-four-hour cable news channels yearning for a running story, the multitude of channels are controlled by a few conglomerates focused on the bottom line, and the potential audience is fractured. It’s hard to imagine … that a courageous television journalist could hope to make an impact on American society as did Edward R. Murrow.”73 With so many cable channels and Internet blogs, no one journalist can stand as a leader the way Murrow did. Beyond that, commercial appeal has long surpassed public service as the guiding principle

65 Ibid, 7. 66 Ibid, 8. 67 Ibid, 9. 68 Kaplan, Rich. “Journalism and McCarthyism.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006, 48. 69 Ibid. 70 Kendrick, Alexander. Prime Time: The life of Edward R. Murrow. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1969, 16. 71 Christians, Clifford G., Mark Fackler and John P. Ferre. Ethics for Public Communication: Defining Moments in Media History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012,13. 72 Ibid, 5. 73 Kaplan, Rich. “Journalism and McCarthyism.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006, 48. for what makes news. This brings journalism to a point where appeal for the lowest common denominator is most common, especially among network news channels that can potentially reach the broadest audiences. There seems to be no place for a journalist like Murrow, who recognized the dangers of providing a media microphone for whoever can bring the most money to the network. It is easy to imagine the horror with which Murrow would watch today’s cable and network news. As he once said, “The fact that your voice is amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other does not confer upon you greater wisdom or understanding than you possessed when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other.”74 At the end of his career, Murrow seems to have understood what would continue to be the real question for journalists, even as the technology landscape evolved in ways he could never have imagined. We can only hope that modern broadcasters will continue to recognize and challenge forces in the public and in the industry the same way he did. “The speed of communications is wondrous to behold,” he said. “It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue. The most sophisticated satellite has no conscience. The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.”75

74 Potter, Deborah. “What Would Murrow Do?” American Journalism Review. Oct 2008. 75 Kendrick, Alexander. Prime Time: The life of Edward R. Murrow. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1969, 5. “I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television — of that I am quite sure.” — E.B. White, 193876

When E.B. White said those words in 1938, words that Fred Friendly used to open his own book about his television career, he could not have known how far television’s influence would spread. Neither could he have known that journalists, network executives and the public would struggle for years with what role TV could and should play in people’s lives—if it should inform or entertain, serve as a mirror or as a lamp for society. This metaphor of the mirror and the lamp — the mirror reflecting back how we see society, the lamp illuminating what we hadn’t previously seen — is perhaps the guiding question for all those who produce and consume media. Traditionally, the media has been expected to function as a mirror, discussing issues of importance that are at the forefront of the national conversation, and explaining what we already know to be true. Still, mirrors, and the media they represent always impact what they reflect back to us because of the angle they take and the way they position themselves. Regardless of how the media attempts to cover issues they have some impact on how their consumers see the world.77 The debate about the role of media and its influence on readers and viewers continues, but within this large debate are several other issues. When television first began, many didn’t believe it would even take hold as a serious news medium. Later, as it proved its potential for mass appeal, television executives had to balance commercial and political agendas and deal with their emerging role as agenda setters. They faced what came to be known as the “public interest conundrum” — the choice between giving the public what they want and giving them what they need. All of these issues fed into the largest question, the one of impartiality. Because of the way we absorb and learn information, television was able to have a vastly different influence than newspapers and magazines, and even radio. As Geiger and Newhagen found in their study, television is different because it presents information on two sensory channels — audio and visual — in a continuous stream. Additionally, it unfolds in real time, so the viewer has to construct a mental image with all of the information from the program.78 A viewer’s memory for television is based on the degree of association in a viewer’s experience, and because television segments generally build on one another, a network of association between items is established. Although Geiger and Newhagen didn’t find a noticeably stronger learning affect for messages received via television compared to other methods, the means of

76 Friendly, Fred W. Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control. New York: Random House, 1967. 77 Hodgson, Godfrey. America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon—What Happened and Why. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, 135. 78 Geiger, Seth and John Newhagen. “Revealing the Black Box: Information Processing and Media Effects.” Journal of Communication. 43.4 (1993), 43. communicating messages in television are clearly different than what journalists had experienced before. Other studies, like one by Hans-Bernd Brosius, showed what kind of information could be learned best through television. Because, as Geiger and Newhagen knew, viewers form cognitive schema to help learn and remember information, too much information becomes a cognitive overload while too little is hard to understand because there isn’t enough context. Adding more, separate items to one message interferes with the set schema, causing viewers to not learn as effectively.79 These studies help explain why Murrow’s See It Now broadcasts were so effective in communicating their messages. Murrow was a natural explainer, so the schemas could be set effectively for people to remember well, and each broadcast focused on one topic rather than jumping between them. Murrow’s shows gave in- depth attention to one issue, so viewers could learn what he was saying well. Additionally, Brosius’ study shows that information about topics with illustrated items could be reproduced more readily by viewers than information without illustration.80 This makes the case for the power of television fairly strongly, as photos and video allow broadcasters to show rather than tell their stories, creating strong memories of the information for viewers. Murrow, according to The New Yorker, was, “a master of pictorial presentation and [one who] rarely forgets that television is designed for the eye as well as the ear.”81 Despite what we know now about how television is able to send its messages, when it first began its power wasn’t taken seriously. From 1954 to 1964, many believed that newspapers had nothing to fear from television, as it was an inferior medium. They believed that television could never be a substitute for newspapers, and that in fact any competition created between the mediums could be healthy for newspapers.82 Others, like John R. Kirkpatrick, president of Madison Square Garden, simply thought that television wouldn’t have a place in home, but would take up a place in the theater alongside movies.83 To others, a one-hour dramatic program seemed too long for in-the-home entertainment, and they believed these programs couldn’t last.84 Perhaps most surprising given today’s television programming, critics didn’t believe that showing reruns of programs would work, arguing that audiences would be bored.85 Others even thought television would never be a primary activity for most viewers. An article in Fortune in 1939 argued that, “Considering the necessity for close attention from the viewer, it is doubtful that there will ever be more than a 25 percent coverage of the available audience, except

79 Brosius, Hans-Bernd. “Influence of Presentation and News Content on Learning From Television News.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. 33.1 (1989), 8. 80 Ibid, 10. 81 Achter, Paul J. “TV, technology, and McCarthyism: crafting the democratic renaissance in an age of fear.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 90.3 (2004), 14. 82 Heflin, Kristen. “The Future Will Be Televised: Newspaper Industry Voices.” American Journalism, 27.2 (2010), 87. 83 Boddy, William. Fifties Television: The Industry and its Critics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990, 22. 84 Ibid, 66. 85 Ibid, 67. in very special cases.”86 This idea seem almost laughable today, in an era when television networks and cable channels continue to net huge profits, entertainment programs lasting an hour have millions of weekly viewers, and some cable networks use large portions of their airtime to show programs that first aired years before. Later, in the decade from 1964 to 1974, some in the industry would suggest that television and newspapers work together to create a better product.87 This idea is not as far from modern reality, as news organizations strive for a convergence of all forms of media. Newspapers and magazines have websites that feature video content, and broadcast and cable channels have websites with complete news articles and blog posts. However, this really signals more direct competition between the types of media rather than a desire to work together. One thing that has remained the same, however, is the recognition that the drama of stories being reported and the personality of the person reporting played a role almost equal to that of the content of the news itself. Stories needed to make a dramatic impact as well as inform people, and, “The messenger, not the message, becomes the news.”88 “In television journalism more than in print journalism the symbol of truth often becomes the image of the journalist—the aggressive investigator or advocate willing to challenge authority—rather than the story itself. Style tends to predominate over content and context.”89 This leads to the question of whether a reporter or television anchor can effectively have both style and content, and how they balance their role as messenger with their duty to provide information. Murrow was a leader in this ability, and seems to have no peers in modern television news. “Murrow was the strong, worldly-wise, tired hero of the traditional epic, not today’s corporate hero for whom efficiency would always overcome ambiguity.”90 Murrow, though not technically a news anchor, accomplished what today is the job of anyone sitting behind a news desk. “The news anchor does more than read us the news; he guides us through the world as his news organization has defined it that day.”91 Along with television’s clear power to send messages effectively, it was eventually powerful because of how widespread it became. In 1950 only a small percentage of northeasterners had television sets in their homes. By 1960, however, nearly 90 percent of US households owned a television set.92 With this growth in reach, television exponentially increased it power. While newspapers and magazines had to convince individual households to subscribe, broadcast networks were immediately accessible after purchasing a television. The networks had to compete for an audience, but the potential was immediately in place. This momentum was fed by the suburbanization occurring in cities across the country.

86 Ibid, 20. 87 Heflin, Kristen. “The Future Will Be Televised: Newspaper Industry Voices.” American Journalism, 27.2 (2010), 87. 88 Himmelstein, Hal. Television Myth and the American Mind. Westport: Praeger, 1994, 249. 89 Ibid, 253. 90 Ibid, 255. 91 Ibid, 255. 92 Achter, Paul J. “TV, technology, and McCarthyism: crafting the democratic renaissance in an age of fear.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 90.3 (2004), 6. Fewer people were in an area where they could receive a daily copy of a major newspaper, but they could continue to see the same news broadcasts regardless of where they were living.93 As Fred Friendly put it, “The fact is that TV can triple the audience and it doesn’t cost a penny more.”94 Once networks had decided to make a program, they simply had to market it to the best of their ability. This newfound power led to a larger debate, which still continues, about television’s role in setting the public agenda and what influences should be given attention. Although this has not turned out to be the case, television was, in the beginning, part of “the US tendency to imbue technological objects with hopes and dreams for national progress.”95 As many studies have found, agenda-setting goes both ways — media coverage can raise awareness of an issue, but awareness of an issue can also lead to more coverage.96 For this reason, scholars like Benson began studying media as an independent variable when considering the national political agenda. They can’t be considered merely a way to analyze the outcome, as media outlets of all types are part of the process.97 Because the media play a role in agenda setting, it is also important to study how organizations decide what events and issues will be covered. It would be unfair to portray the media as simply “a site on which various social groups…struggle over the definition and construction of social reality,” as that would relegate journalists to a passive role, when in fact they have far more autonomy in what they report.98 Instead, scholars like Gitlin have identified other factors that shape what media audiences see and hear. Gitlin emphasizes three main factors: the journalists themselves, the organizational structures of news outlets, and institutions or social conditions outside the news organization including technological factors, national culture, economics, and the audience.99 These factors show that two separate kinds of influence are at work as the media sets the agenda — the journalists, their news outlets, and other surrounding institutions all manage to exert commercial influence on what stories get covered. If news isn’t profitable, journalists can’t continue their work. The other factors Gitlin mentions, national culture, the outside economy, and the audience, are all societal pressures. Journalists have to be aware of the world around them for the stories themselves in addition to anticipating what will be well received and will fit with the current societal climate. Together, these economic and social forces conflate commercial interest with good journalism, leaving us with a product that is perhaps not as useful from a

93 Baughman, James L. The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in American since 1941. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, 61. 94 Hodgson, Godfrey. America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon—What Happened and Why. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, 135. 95 Achter, Paul J. “TV, technology, and McCarthyism: crafting the democratic renaissance in an age of fear.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 90.3 (2004), 3. 96 Brosius, Hans-Bernd. “The Agenda-Setting Function of Television News.” Communication Research, 17.2 (1990), 186. 97 Benson, Rodney. “Bringing the Sociology of Media Back In.” Political Communication, 21 (2004), 276. 98 Ibid, 278. 99 Ibid, 279. societal standpoint as it could be.100 Metropolitan Television president Ira Hirshman seemed to sense this coming dilemma in 1945, before television had really taken hold. He said, “I hope we will have the self-control and the sense of standards to start television on a better path than that on which oral radio was started… The way that radio has…aimed at the least common denominator…is something which is not a compliment to our people.”101 Often, networks strive first to be profitable, meaning that, “A history of television must therefore be in part a history of industrial giants like RCA and AT&T, as well as of Madison Avenue advertising agencies and their corporate clients.”102 Interestingly, when the decisions about how to prioritize programming were made, CBS did consider catering to a more highly educated audience at the risk of losing the masses.103 Ultimately, however, “To survive, CBS had to give the majority of people the kind of programs it wanted to hear.”104 Today, that translates largely into entertainment. Although documentaries, which serve as a modern television equivalent of what Murrow’s programs did, could take on some serious topics, they were mostly confined to broad social issues like Vietnam or race, rather than unknown topics.105 Even Fred Friendly made it clear that his programs needed sponsoring to survive, writing that, “The CBS Reports unit won every prize available to it that year, including three Peabody awards; most encouraging of all, every broadcast except Lippmann’s was sponsored.”106 This shows that he knew that without sponsoring, even winning Peabody awards couldn’t ultimately guarantee success, and he was willing to do what it took to stay on the air. As early as mid-1967 David Brinkley said that television was lacking in excitement. “In the non-news areas, like documentaries, we lean toward soft, pastel programs—trips through the Louvre, or up the Nile with gun and camera—that seem to me rather irrelevant to the time we live in.”107 The economic factor is seen in situations like that of the mid-1960s, when Gulf Oil, for example, didn’t want to sponsor NBC programs about racial problems in the US or politics in the Middle East, which socially were the most relevant topics.108 Even Murrow ultimately couldn’t escape this, as ALCOA stopped supporting him weekly in 1955 as he took on controversial topics.

100 Meyer, Philip. “The Influence Model and Newspaper Business.” Newspaper Research Journal 25.1 (2004), 66. 101 Boddy, William. Fifties Television: The Industry and its Critics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990, 97. 102 Ibid, 3. 103 Baughman, James L. The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in American since 1941. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, 34. 104 Ibid, 34. 105 Hodgson, Godfrey. America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon—What Happened and Why. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, 137. 106 Friendly, Fred. Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control. New York: Random House, 1967, 119. 107 Hodgson, Godfrey. America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon—What Happened and Why. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 108 Ibid. One result of the need for profit is the drop in policy or government related news stories that occurred from 1977 to June 2001 as found by a PEJ study. The study analyzed evening news bulletins and found that policy or government news had dropped from 37 percent of all stories to just five percent.109 In the same time, domestic stories rose from eight to 18 percent, and celebrity and lifestyle news tripled from six to 18 percent.110 Dan Rather, in reference to this trend, said, “We have allowed this great resource to be cheapened. We should be ashamed.”111 This shift in stories is representative of a “public-interest conundrum” faced by all media outlets. This conundrum represents the debate over giving the public the stories they want or the stories journalists think they should see, or if these two extremes are mutually exclusive.112 Finding a balance between these two goals is something that often seems to be lost in modern media, but is something Murrow was successful in doing. This occurred on See It Now, as Murrow stood up to CBS executives to produce programming he believed was important, but also on later Murrow-led programs like Small World, which brought “out some healthy airings on many questions, with Murrow . . . steering the discussions into exciting channels.”113 Small World focused on conversations among a few interviewees with different perspectives on the same topic, and allowed them to have an open discussion that people could see directly. This back and forth, moderated by Murrow, was successful in being both entertaining and informative, as many of the people interviewed were celebrities in some way. While there are certainly examples of successful interview programs today, few combine personalities the way Murrow did to create an entertaining show even for people with little knowledge of the subject. Because creating a balance of what could be considered “public affairs” programming with entertainment programming is so difficult and is so often overlooked, it is possible that only more regulation could allow this to occur. This, of course, could be seen as an infringement on free speech and the free market, but some minimal regulation with little enforceable power has been attempted before. The 1934 Communications Act, for example, which created the FCC, “required the holders of broadcast licenses to operate in “the public interest, convenience and necessity” in return for use of publicly-owned airwaves.”114 This goes back to the idea that because broadcast airwaves are limited they are a public resource and should be used in service of everyone. This provision was never made enforceable, although there was more emphasis put on public service by networks in the 1950s as a reaction to the quiz show scandals. After networks were caught rigging these live shows, an FCC order

109 Barnett, Stephen. “TV news and the echo of Murrow.” British Journalism Review: 19(4), 2008. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid. 112 Collins, Kathleen. “Murrow and Friendly’s Small World: Television Conversation at the Crossroads.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 40.1 (2012), 10. 113 Ibid, 8. 114 Barnett, Stephen.“TV news and the echo of Murrow.” British Journalism Review: 19(4), 2008. to re-emphasize news and public service commitments was their “punishment.”115 Although the FCC had no real power to enforce this, the networks did make moves to replace some of their high-profit quiz shows with lower-profit public affairs programming. However, this renewed commitment soon faded, as dramatic news stories like Vietnam, civil rights demonstrations, urban riots, and moon landings created good business for news organizations on their own.116 No longer was news less profitable than entertainment — audiences were eager to watch stories of conflict from across the country and around the world. Then, when those issues faded or were resolved, entertainment was revived as the most profitable programming. This somewhat regulated commitment to public service programming helped propel and perpetuate Murrow’s success. His shows were not making big money for CBS, but he was allowed to continue anyway, a move that is much less likely to occur today. As Columbia University journalism professor Nicholas Lemann wrote in his review of Good Night, and Good Luck, “The structure that encouraged Murrow, uncomfortable as it may be to admit, was federal regulation of broadcasting. CBS, in Murrow’s heyday, felt that its prosperity, even its survival, depended on demonstrating to Washington its deep commitment to public affairs.”117 Ultimately, however, scholars have noted that without any regulation, the emphasis on entertainment was inevitable. “The absence of paternalism common in many other countries—by which we mean concrete if broad stipulations regarding the cultural, educational, and public service goals of broadcasting—coupled with open competition for survival meant that the main means of financial support was the drawing of large audiences attractive to advertisers. The entertaining of viewers was clearly the best technique for the task.”118 In other countries, most notably Great Britain with the BBC, much more government attention is given to what is put out on the airwaves. “The United States is the only Western nation relying so exclusively upon advertising effectiveness as the gatekeeper of its broadcasting activities.”119 As journalists and broadcasts networks strive to provide balance between public service and profit making and consider all of the factors that create powerful news, the question of objectivity versus editorializing also comes to the forefront. Journalists can have roles as watchdogs or as advocates, and that role has shifted and evolved over time. In the late 1950s, for example, as Americans were still in fear as a result of McCarthyism, “to be controversial was the kiss of death,” according to Murrow biographer Ann Sperber.120 In fact around this time, “When Newsweek surveyed the 15 stations in the industry, nearly all television stations agreed that

115 Ibid. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid. 118 Comstock, George and Erica Scharrer. Television: What’s On, Who’s Watching, and What It Means. San Diego, Academic Pressi, 1999, 8. 119 Ibid, 26. 120 Collins, Kathleen. “Murrow and Friendly’s Small World: Television Conversation at the Crossroads.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 40.1 (2012), 8. impartiality—in the form of taking both sides, or not taking sides—was the best course of action.”121 Murrow, however, was never afraid to speak his mind on his programs, although the question remained as to whether this was the best course of action. As written in Newsweek, “He [Murrow] is ... a policymaker for a major network, and was presumed by many to be speaking for others as well as himself. There are those who believe that anyone less than a director would never be permitted so much freedom. The public response left no doubt as to the political opinions of those who made their views known, but they left one big question unanswered: Is it right in principle for television to take a clear stand on one side of an issue?”122 Of course what really separates Murrow from others who may choose to advocate a point of view is that what Murrow advocated was the truth. He was not selective in choosing his facts, but simply covered facts that others had not. In regard to the infamous McCarthy program specifically, “’We leaned over backward to be fair,’ Murrow asserted, adding that he … ‘realizes that television could be an instrument of evil in the wrong hands.’”123 And, in many ways, his ability be an advocate for truth meant that, “in one sense, he was the admired pioneer of TV journalism; in another sense, he represented the worst fears of television dystopians,”124 who feared the power television journalists could have. While Murrow showed character, they feared that others could amass the same prestige he enjoyed, but use it for less pure purposes. This idea merely reinforces the importance of Murrow’s commitment to fact as well as his own good character, which surely played a role in guiding his coverage Murrow defended what he did on the McCarthy program, saying, “I believed twenty years ago and I believe today that mature American students and professors can engage in conversation and controversy, in the clash of ideas, with Communists anywhere without becoming contaminated or converted. To deny this would be to admit that in a realm of ideas, faith and conviction, the Communist cause, dogma and doctrine, are stronger than our own.”125

Although Murrow’s broadcast was completely fact-based, and in fact relied mostly on showing McCarthy in his own words, “The ethics of radio and TV had the whole country talking—many people wondered about the rules and regulations that affect the broadcasting industry. Everyone was suddenly aware of the problems of “equal time” and “editorializing” and the networks’ obligations to the public. Above all, the public was aware of Joseph McCarthy’s and Edward R. Murrow’s sizzling arguments on the airwaves.”126

121 Achter, Paul J. “TV, technology, and McCarthyism: crafting the democratic renaissance in an age of fear.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 90.3 (2004), 10. 122 Ibid, 13. 123 Ibid, 12. 124 Ibid, 14. 125 Ibid, 17. 126 Ibid, 11. One perspective on the issue suggests that no news story can ever be truly objective, as a journalist’s past experiences always somehow inform how they present a story. “No journalist can divorce him or herself from the community of persons and thus cannot, in reality, stand apart from the world he or she cover. The resolution of the debate is really a matter in which whoever disseminates news either directly or indirectly determines its ideological slant.”127 However, truly responsible journalists, like Murrow, can counteract this by committing to covering all of the facts, wherever the truth might lie. In Murrow’s case, this meant not ignoring what McCarthy was doing in the Senate, but using his prestige to bring attention to it. In other cases this requires journalists to uncover stories and issues that are out of the public eye, as Murrow helped do in Harvest of Shame and muckrakers did for decades on similar issues. Murrow, ultimately, practiced his own brand of advocacy journalism. He separated himself from the rest, however, by simply advocating for truth, especially where it had been unreported before. He showed a willingness to find stories wherever they were, and brought issues that weren’t being covered to national attention. His programs show that he was a lamp, not a mirror, for society. Instead of simply reflecting back what people already knew and believed, he was able to act as a lamp and show them new issues. Murrow was effective in doing this because he was already held in high regard by his fellow journalists and the American public. Although he faced the same influences that modern journalists do in deciding what to cover, he also recognized a commitment to the truth that guided all of his stories. Ultimately, he served the public, not his network, and stood up to commercial influences by giving the public what he thought they needed to hear, rather than simply what they wanted.

127 Himmelstein, Hal. Television Myth and the American Mind. Westport: Praeger, 1994, 250. “This incident and time has been a passion of mine because it is one of the few times you could point to where broadcast journalism actually changed the world and people’s minds. McCarthy was untouchable until Murrow stepped up. It was one of those great moments where you really had to be brave.” —George Clooney on Good Night, and Good Luck128

Modern journalists all work in the wake of what Murrow achieved. He enjoyed a level of respect and trust that most modern journalists will never reach, but all of them should aspire to. His work in bringing forth issues that were previously untouched or underreported should be repeated more often than it is in today’s media landscape. Although work like Murrow’s is hard to recreate, and is not the path of least resistance that is so tempting given the influences journalists work under, it is certainly remembered fondly by Hollywood. Good Night, and Good Luck, the 2005 movie that depicted the Murrow and McCarthy showdown, for example, glorified Murrow’s work while making $31.5 million in the US.129 George Clooney, who directed and co-wrote the movie, as well as playing a small role in it, said the movie is important because of what it can teach about this period in American history. “There’s an opportunity that one in a hundred young kids actually might learn who Murrow is and have some discussion and have some understanding of what and how dangerous a democracy can be if fear is used as a weapon.”130 Beyond that, Clooney reinforced the idea that what Murrow did, especially in the case of McCarthy, was special because of the untouched stories he covered. “The idea is that power has the microphone and can get it anytime it wants. The idea behind taking up a side is to say, ‘Listen, here’s a voice that doesn’t get heard enough or isn’t heard enough.’ Generally, that’s against any power.”131 Good Night, and Good Luck shows Murrow as the hero that he is, despite its necessary simplification of the forces shaping Murrow’s ability to take on McCarthy. What’s more interesting, however, is how other movies also portray journalists as heroes, fighting the system. Investigative journalism may not be as prominent today as it once was, but that doesn’t stop the American public from paying to see movies about its heyday. As one scholar found, “Movies in general, and journalism movies in particular, are almost always reinforcing ideals or mythic notions about democracy and the role of the press.”132 In fact, he said, journalism movies almost always underscore the notion that “journalism is important, journalism has a central place

128 “About the Production.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006, 71. 129 “Good Night, and Good Luck.” BoxOfficeMojo.com. IMDb. 15 April 2013. 130 “About the Production.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006, 75. 131 Feld, Rob. “Q&A with George Clooney and Grant Heslov.” Good Night, and Good Luck: The Screenplay and History Behind the Landmark Movie. New York: Newmarket Press, 2006, 96. 132 Chamberlain, Craig. “Movies Elevate, Rather Than Denigrate, Journalism and Reporters, Author Says.” Illinois News Bureau. 16 June 2004. Web. 15 April 2013. in American life and in democracy, that journalism can and should be performed well. And if journalism somehow has lost its way — because of money pressures, sensationalism, television, sleaze — then one way or another it can find its way again, and journalists can do the right thing and make a difference.”133 Besides journalism’s importance, movies often glamorize reporters and their editors, while not depicting the reality of reporters’ lives. As New York Times columnist Dan Barry put it, “Hollywood has never tried too hard to convey a typical reporter’s work life because so much of it involves bearing witness to the actions of others. This may include trying to stay alive on a battlefield, of course, but a reporter is more often trying to remain conscious during that zoning commission meeting in Woonsocket.”134 What they do accomplish, however, is capturing, “the camaraderie and cacophony of the newsroom. Using a whole lexicon of inside terms, screenwriters still savor the notion of reporters and editors crusading for justice, investigating the corrupt and revealing nefarious government cover ups. Not to mention solving a crime or two.”135 Movies from Good Night, and Good Luck and All the President’s Men to Almost Famous and Anchorman have attempted to depict journalists, almost always in a positive light. But while audiences clamor for movie characters who are crusaders for truth, various forces in reality combine to prevent powerful investigative work like what we see on screen. If audiences love to see David fight Goliath on screen, then maybe there doesn’t need to be a choice between giving people what they want and giving them what they need to see on television. Journalists can serve as lamps, rather than mere mirrors, of society, in the hope that people will like to see on television what they see immortalized in film. There can never be another Murrow, but journalists can emulate his work and cover the stories that are going unseen by the public.

133 Ibid. 134 Barry, Dan. “Real Reporters on the Screen? Get Me Rewrite!” New York Times. 8 June 2012. Web. 15 April 2013. 135 Thompson, Bill. “Newspaper Movies Still on Front Page.” Post and Courier. 22 March 2012. Web. 15 April 2013. Works Cited

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