 Edward
R. Murrow, Howard K. Smith, Eric Sevareid, and David Schoenbrun. Photo
courtesy WSU Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections.
MH: Murrow really built the CBS news network. There was a
group of people known as "Murrow's boys." How did that come
about?
BE: He needed people to cover the war. They had no overseas
staff, except for Murrow himself and William L. Shirer, a very fine
newspaper and wire service reporter. So they started with those
two, but they needed many more, for it was after all a world war.
Murrow hired people on the basis of their smarts and their
contacts. He didn't care how they sounded, if their voices were
pretty or whatever. In fact, he rather liked to tweak his bosses in
New York. If they didn't like somebody because their voice was not
so hot, that was a plus for Murrow.
MH: Especially one fellow in particular, right? White?
BE: Right. He was Murrow's rival, Paul White, who ran CBS
News in New York. Murrow won that battle. He was particularly good
at stealing people from United Press. Apparently, United Press had
a great training program and brought their young reporters up to
speed very fast and able to handle any situation.
From United Press, Murrow took Bill Downs, Charles Collingwood,
Howard K. Smith.
MH: Where did [Eric] Sevareid come from?
BE: Sevareid came from newspapers in Paris. Before that he'd
worked for a Minneapolis paper. He tried to take another big
reporter from UP, Walter Cronkite. Cronkite went back and told UP
he'd got this offer from Murrow for this radio thing, CBS. United
Press gave him a $25 raise and kept him. Cronkite didn't join CBS
until the television era, after the war. Murrow never forgave
Cronkite for that. He held a grudge. Cronkite had said no to him.
You didn't say no to Murrow.
MH: He was an interesting man in that regard. He seemed to
be fearless. He didn't care if he made enemies because he knew how
to come out ahead. That seemed to be part of the fun for
Murrow.
BE: Well, yeah, but also, he was kind of destined to fall on
his sword. He wouldn't compromise, under any circumstances. He
wouldn't compromise in his battles with his employer, and that
ultimately cost him. He was a purist. He felt that you do the right
thing regardless of the consequences. In the business world,
sometimes you have to compromise.
He felt that at times journalistic principles were more
important than corporate interests. Obviously, his employers felt
otherwise.
MH: Ultimately they did, when the bottom line wasn't quite
going their way.
BE: It really started with the McCarthy broadcast, which was
Murrow's finest hour, but was also the beginning of the end. Joseph
McCarthy was . . . so identified with the anti-communist cause that
they put his name on the whole period, the McCarthy Era. McCarthy
was using our fear of the Soviet Union to advance his own political
career. He wasn't the only one to do that-Richard Nixon, of course,
and many others did it-but the difference with McCarthy is the way
he carried out his hearings. He was a bully, a tyrant. He didn't
care anything about Consitutional rights of due process. If you
appeared before McCarthy's committee, you were guilty until proven
innocent.
Murrow didn't care for those tactics and exposed him on
television. There had been newspaper columnists and the like who
had taken brave stands, because that was a brave thing to do at
that time. But it hadn't been done on television. To say McCarthy
was a bully is one thing. To see it on film, as Murrow showed
America in March 1954, was to really bring home to Americans that
this was just wrong. That was really the beginning of the end for
McCarthy.
It was Murrow's finest hour, but it just drew more attention to
the controversial nature of his broadcast. Two years after his
McCarthy broadcast, he lost his sponsor. Two years after that he
lost his program. See It Now was the name of the series. Two
years after that, he was out at CBS.
MH: You wrote that Murrow should be the standard to which
all others should be compared. When you're the first at something,
you get to write a lot of your own rules. Murrow was the right
personality, in a way, at the right time.
BE: Yes, he set a standard very high, very early. The
problem with Murrow is, when we see what happens to someone who
insists that journalistic principles take precedence over corporate
interests or any other interests, we see the outcome of that fight.
So no one fights it anymore. No one had the clout of Murrow to be
able to do the broadcast he did. And knowing how he ended up with
CBS, no one cares to make that fight again, because they know the
same outcome will occur. If it can happen to a Murrow, it can
certainly happen to the rest of us.
MH: Any junior correspondent. In fact, I think nowadays,
people don't think necessarily about being a journalist in the
traditional sense of journalism-do you?-in broadcast journalism
anyway.
BE: I think public radio has a very high standard of news.
It's more balanced than Murrow was, to tell you the truth. Murrow
didn't care about putting two spinners on and having each spin the
opposite version of what the other was saying. That would seem like
a waste of time to him. He went out and did his investigations, did
all his interviews, and then told you what he felt was the truth.
You might disagree with that. But that is what he arrived at. He
didn't carefully number the voices you heard in his reports by
ideology.
He arrived at a truth, and that was his broadcast. We just don't
do that anymore. We have 2 minutes, 13 and a half seconds for the
conservative and 2 minutes, 13 and a half seconds for the liberal.
We call this balance, and I guess it is in terms of air time, but
is it really balance, is it the truth?
MH: Well, and Murrow was so incredibly powerful. Nowadays
younger people especially don't realize at that time you just had
to beat out NBC. There were only two networks, so the power of an
Edward R. Murrow, he was the news. What an incredible mantle to
wear.
BE: Yes, he didn't have to contend with the remote control.
Nowadays, there are so many choices, the audience is so divided,
that no one has the power, the clout, the command of an audience
that Murrow was able to achieve in his day. He did have an ABC, but
it wasn't as developed as it is today. So you're right, all he had
to do was beat out NBC.
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