 Bob Edwards, author of Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. Photo courtesy XM Satellite Radio.
Bob Edwards visited the Palouse last spring to talk about his
book on Murrow at GetLit!, the annual literary festival sponsored
by Eastern Washington University and the EWU Press. Prior to his
arrival, Mary Hawkins, the program director for Northwest Public
Radio, interviewed Edwards for Washington State
Magazine.
Mary Hawkins: Why a book about Edward R. Murrow?
Bob Edwards: A book on Edward R. Murrow, because I was
asked to do a book for a series from John Wiley and Sons called
"Turning Points." They just asked me to write a book in the series,
and I said "Can I write about Murrow?" And they said "Okay."
Murrow had two important turning points. One was in radio in
1938 covering the war in Europe. It changed the face of radio news.
News had been covered completely different before then. It was
event-oriented. There was no daily assignment of original
reporting, no overseas staff.
He did it again in 1951 on television. There had been a CBS
Evening News for three or four years. But it was headlines and
very old film. What Murrow did was original reporting, stories that
you couldn't find in the Washington Post or New York
Times, and set the standard for what constituted news and how
it should be covered.
I wanted this generation to know that we didn't always do it
this badly, that once there was a very high standard, and you
didn't have so-called news that consisted of celebrity gossip and
crime and the disease of the week and all the interviews with
starlets. That's what we're doing now in primetime network
magazines.
MH: What Murrow did was go into a place and describe the
scene like no one had ever done before. Where did he come up with
that?
BE: He was very good at painting word pictures. I'm not very
good at that. He was very conscious of the fact that there was a
radio audience, and he wanted you to see what he was seeing. And
was as good as a novelist in allowing you to do that.
The other gifts, I know where he came by those. He was a speech
major at Washington State. So he had the broadcasting part down. He
knew how he sounded and knew how to write for the ear, not for the
eye, the way a print reporter would.
But I don't know where he got the journalism, because he was an
instant journalist. He had no training, no background. He was kind
of thrust on the air in an emergency situation covering Germany's
annexation of Austria in 1938. From that moment on, he was a
journalist.
He seemed to instinctively know how to do that, and I really
marvel at that.
MH: In a way it was a perfect fit, transforming from a
junior executive to a foreign correspondent. And he was sent over
there, wasn't he, to set up live interviews for other people? One
of his great gifts was what we call today networking.
BE: Yes, his job was to take some person [whom] CBS in New
York wanted to talk with and put that person before a microphone.
But he had great contacts. He had worked in [the] student
government movement, the National Student Federation, and later . .
. for the Institute of International Education, and was responsible
for bringing to America some of the greatest minds of Europe
escaping the Nazis. So he knew very important people and scholars
and politicians of Europe and opposition politicians and the shadow
cabinets.
That's a great background for journalism, knowing the right
people and having all of their phone numbers and addresses and what
bars they drink in.
MH: Murrow made some fast friends and some fast enemies
during his career. Let's talk a minute about his relationship with
Bill Paley. That was an interesting relationship, wasn't it?
BE: Paley was the founding chairman of CBS, and Murrow was
his star. It was in the television era that the relationship
between Paley and Murrow was strained, because CBS had changed. It
was a much bigger conglomerate-real estate, records, movies-in the
end CBS even owned the New York Yankees. And they were the worst
owners the Yankees ever had, I'll tell you.
Being a more complicated, diverse company, more attention was
given to the price of a share of stock. More attention was paid to
the bottom line. Murrow did very controversial programs post-war on
television, and sponsors don't like controversy. Sponsors want
everyone watching the program to be happy and to be pleased and to
buy their products. And they got very upset by some of the programs
Murrow did on Joseph McCarthy and the anti-communist hysteria of
the time. And all the political programs Murrow was doing, that
upset Congress.
Paley didn't like people in Congress complaining about his
programs. The FCC and on and on. The relationship grew very
strained. Paley told Murrow, "Your programs give me stomach aches."
Murrow told Paley, "Well it goes with the job." And Paley didn't
think they went with the job. Paley was the boss. He decided what
went with the job. So ultimately, Murrow was marginalized at CBS,
and their relationship ended very badly. Murrow was so seldom used
on CBS, he quit in 1961 and joined the brand new Kennedy
administration as director of the United States Information
Agency.
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