Murrow: A real story

The practice of historiography focuses on how the changing story of the past reflects the times of the storytellers, not the past itself. Today, we're all historians and reporters, because we're all contributing to the debate about current and past events in a public discourse that, ultimately, shapes how future generations will remember their past.

With the release of Good Night and Good Luck, the film about Edward R. Murrow's confrontation with Senator Joe McCarthy through his television show, See It Now (you can see the show, too), the parallels and differences between the rise of television news and blogs are bound to be discussed. In this context, Murrow is both the model for would-be media revolutionaries and the source of the faults in the television news—someone to be discussed, but not embraced. Here, for example, is what blogger Jeff Jarvis had to say about the film, Murrow and the lessons for citizen journalists (Jarvis criticizes "Murrow-worshipers" elsewhere, attributing the mistakes of the grandsons and granddaughters to the father of television and radio journalism):

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Edward R. Murrow: God or not?:

As courageous and laudable as Murrow’s stand against American tyranny was – and it was – I also wonder whether it helped lead to the downfall of Dan Rather, the downsizing of CBS News, and perhaps even the decline of mainstream journalism itself.

For Murrow’s triumph led to a half-century-long era of haughtiness, self-importance, and separation from the public in the news. That may not be his responsibility – though he is shown at the start and end of the film dismissing the decadence, escapism, distraction, and amusement of television and America’s mass tastes (either out of snobbery or more likely out of shame, since he, too, catered to them on his own celebrity slather show). His disciples came to believe that the wattage of their broadcast towers entitled them to equivalent power in society. They thought they were no longer hacks looking out for the common man – as common men themselves – but instead the saviors of society (and rich ones at that). They were the ones who dubbed themselves the Tiffany Network. They thought they could do no wrong.

And then along came Dan.

Ain’t Edward R. spinning in is grave now?

These founding fathers of TV news could convince themselves of their invincibility because they came into journalism just as television itself destroyed competition in local newspapers and established an age of monopoly news, of one-size-fits-all mass media, of fewer voices and less diversity of views. And so CBS News pulled the rest of TV – and print journalism, too – up on a pedestal, above it all. The age of the oracles began, an age that – thanks to the internet – is just now ending, as declared by no one less than the current president of CBS News, Andrew Heyward.

Isn’t that ironic: The most mass medium in history gave birth to a class of media snobs. And the until-recently-exclusive medium (for the technologically sophisticated at the start) cuts them down to earth and once again empowers the little guy.

I don't think Murrow is now spinning or ever has spun in his grave, because he was plenty worried about the state of television long before his untimely death from cancer. What Jarvis neglects to mention is that Murrow was the creator of both radio and television journalism as we know it—virtually everything we still know as familiar formats, from the daily news program, the live report during wartime and live video feeds, split-screen and celebrity interviews to the international roundtable discussion, were created by Murrow, usually on the fly using tools that were barely up to the task, having been invented only months before. He did not succeed because of technical sophistication. He succeeded because he knew how to tell a story.

I happen to have gone to the same college Murrow did, even working on one of the radio stations in the building named after him. For many years, I've been hearing and reading about the man, who—less than Woodward and Bernstein—was an inspiration for my migration to journalism. After reading Jarvis' comments and former Morning Edition host Bob Edwards' Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism—the audiobook version is here—(it's a chatty introduction to Murrow, the best of the Murrow biographies, I think is A.M. Sperber's Murrow: His Life and Times), I'd like to offer a different interpretation of Murrow, one that attempts to see him in the larger context of the evolution of media instead of the progenitor of the media bloggers would like to replace.

I'll do this by "fisking" Mr. Jarvis's posting.... after all, why not take a new media format as the template for critiquing a misplaced criticism of previous media.

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Edward R. Murrow: God or not?:

Even in his title, Jeff Jarvis misses one of the keystone elements of Murrow's reality. He never considered himself a god, and welcomed mockery of the idea. During the post-WWII era, when he returned to New York from London to head up CBS's nascent news organization, even his wife was a member of the Murrow-Isn't-God Club, a group of journalists and staffers who knew better than to buy the myth. Among other things, Murrow lied about his age and his education (claiming to have a Master's degree from Stanford) to get his first job with CBS. He was as human as anyone and knew it.

As courageous and laudable as Murrow’s stand against American tyranny was – and it was – I also wonder whether it helped lead to the downfall of Dan Rather, the downsizing of CBS News, and perhaps even the decline of mainstream journalism itself.

Murrow said in his first broadcast about the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, years before his campaign against McCarthy: "The right of dissent—or, if you prefer, the right to be wrong—is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society. That's the right that went down first in every nation that stumbled down the trail of totalitarianism." Murrow would not condemn Rather, though he would certainly have reprimanded Rather's misjudgments in the Bush-National Guard story. Being wrong sometimes is the natural condition of humanity and the processes that Murrow put in place, with producers Don Hewitt (who went on to start 60 Minutes) and Fred Friendly (played by George Clooney in the new movie, which will probably now be how Friendly is best remembered), sough to assure as many checks and balances on individual mistakes as possible on a limited budget.

CBS News expanded dramatically after Murrow left, claiming much more of the broadcast schedule than at any time during Murrow's tenure with the company. It's down-sizing had little to do with its insulation from the market (as Jarvis suggests below), because it was down-sized in response to market forces. Advertisers bought into other programs and CBS News was cut back. Those cut-backs contributed to limited resources for checking stories, but they did not betray an essential flaw in the process of fact-checking, they merely demonstrated that you can't be authoritative on a small budget.

Murrow paid repeatedly for the controversies he pursued, losing sponsorships from Campbell's Soup and Alcoa along the way. The important point, however, is that he pursued an agenda he believed served the public's best interests nevertheless. That principle is the one Murrow should be remembered for, for it is the same one that is espoused by all media, even bloggers.

For Murrow’s triumph led to a half-century-long era of haughtiness, self-importance, and separation from the public in the news. That may not be his responsibility – though he is shown at the start and end of the film dismissing the decadence, escapism, distraction, and amusement of television and America’s mass tastes (either out of snobbery or more likely out of shame, since he, too, catered to them on his own celebrity slather show). His disciples came to believe that the wattage of their broadcast towers entitled them to equivalent power in society. They thought they were no longer hacks looking out for the common man – as common men themselves – but instead the saviors of society (and rich ones at that). They were the ones who dubbed themselves the Tiffany Network. They thought they could do no wrong.

Murrow in his famous speech about the television wasteland to the Radio and Television News Directors Association in 1958, that is apparently portrayed in the movie (I have not seen it yet, as it hasn't come to my area) specifically dismisses the idea that newspeople should be haughty or self-important. Murrow was sure the reporter could do wrong, as his own friends and network were attacked mercilessly by other journalists who supported McCarthy. It was this kind of blind subjectivity Murrow campaigned against. He himself was not objective, but believed in the ability of reason to discover and test facts in order to produce an analysis that would be of value to the viewer. Indeed, Murrow believed this so much that when CBS got carried away with offering free airtime to any critic of Murrow's programming, he railed against the airing of propaganda to CBS Chairman William Paley.

Murrow was poor at birth and his last major journalistic effort, Harvest of Shame, returned to the question of poverty. Having read much about the man, I do not think that he ever forgot the common man within himself. However, he did pull himself up by sheer intellectual will power and if that's a sin, so be it. It is not a sin to be smart, only to lord it over someone else.

In the RTNDA speech, Murrow also addressed the obligation of a mass media to dedicate some part of its profit to the public good, not as a matter of noblesse oblige, but as the price of doing business:

I have no technical advice or counsel to offer those of you who labor in this vineyard that produces words and pictures. You will forgive me for not telling you that instruments with which you work are miraculous, that your responsibility is unprecedented or that your aspirations are frequently frustrated. It is not necessary to remind you that 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....

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....

Sometimes there is a clash between the public interest and the corporate interest. A telephone call or a letter from the proper quarter in Washington is treated rather more seriously than a communication from an irate but not politically potent viewer. It is tempting enough to give away a little air time for frequently irresponsible and unwarranted utterances in an effort to temper the wind of criticism.

Upon occasion, economics and editorial judgment are in conflict. And there is no law which says that dollars will be defeated by duty. Not so long ago the President of the United States delivered a television address to the nation. He was discoursing on the possibility or probability of war between this nation and the Soviet Union and Communist China--a reasonably compelling subject. Two networks CBS and NBC, delayed that broadcast for an hour and fifteen minutes. If this decision was dictated by anything other than financial reasons, the networks didn't deign to explain those reasons. That hour-and-fifteen-minute delay, by the way, is about twice the time required for an ICBM to travel from the Soviet Union to major targets in the United States. It is difficult to believe that this decision was made by men who love, respect and understand news.

Let us have a little competition. Not only in selling soap, cigarettes and automobiles, but in informing a troubled, apprehensive but receptive public. Why should not each of the 20 or 30 big corporations which dominate radio and television decide that they will give up one or two of their regularly scheduled programs each year, turn the time over to the networks and say in effect: "This is a tiny tithe, just a little bit of our profits. On this particular night we aren't going to try to sell cigarettes or automobiles; this is merely a gesture to indicate our belief in the importance of ideas." The networks should, and I think would, pay for the cost of producing the program. The advertiser, the sponsor, would get name credit but would have nothing to do with the content of the program. Would this blemish the corporate image? Would the stockholders object? I think not. For if the premise upon which our pluralistic society rests, which as I understand it is that if the people are given sufficient undiluted information, they will then somehow, even after long, sober second thoughts, reach the right decision--if that premise is wrong, then not only the corporate image but the corporations are done for.

There used to be an old phrase in this country, employed when someone talked too much. It was: "Go hire a hall." Under this proposal the sponsor would have hired the hall; he has bought the time; the local station operator, no matter how indifferent, is going to carry the program-he has to. Then it's up to the networks to fill the hall. I am not here talking about editorializing but about straightaway exposition as direct, unadorned and impartial as falliable human beings can make it. Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information....

This 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 those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, "When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.

And then along came Dan.

Well, to be accurate, after Murrow left CBS, Dan Rather, a rookie reporter in Texas jumped into a flood-swollen river to save a horse during a live report—it landed Rather the CBS gig. It was kind of a Geraldo moment and we should have known he had the grandstander in him. Most of the Murrow Boys, as his reporting hires were called during World War II, had moved on by the time Rather reached the network. Any influence Murrow had on Rather was reflected and, as I say, the mistake that brought Rather low was really rather trivial if you accept that humans are fallible, and defensive, which was the primary source of the compounded errors about the Bush-National Guard story, which was largely correct.

Ain’t Edward R. spinning in is grave now?

Here we come to the issue of the present decrying the past to justify itself, which is an intellectual waste of time when applied to superlative innovators like Murrow.... Bloggers and citizen journalists today should be competing with Murrow's example of courage and conviction—both to the truth and the value of a well-researched and thoroughly reasoned analysis. As we look at the evolving myth of Murrow, we also look at the way media people feel about themselves. This is the work of historiography and, eventually, we'll be analyzing today's Murrow commentators through another lens. Hopefully it will be a better one (not to say Jarvis' view is bad, only that we can hope for improvements in media that allow greater generosity toward the past and, by extension, broader access in the media to views that recognize and celebrate the full story of human fallibility.

These founding fathers of TV news could convince themselves of their invincibility because they came into journalism just as television itself destroyed competition in local newspapers and established an age of monopoly news, of one-size-fits-all mass media, of fewer voices and less diversity of views. And so CBS News pulled the rest of TV – and print journalism, too – up on a pedestal, above it all. The age of the oracles began, an age that – thanks to the internet – is just now ending, as declared by no one less than the current president of CBS News, Andrew Heyward.

The newspapers were not destroyed by television at the time Murrow was working, this is a phenomenon that began in earnest in the early 1960s and gathered real momentum during the next couple decades, until newspaper circulation began to drop precipitously in the 1990s. There were 1,772 daily newspapers in the United States in 1950, only nine fewer a decade later. Circulation of papers rose during the 1950s until the 1990s. Economic decisions about the role of news in the corporate budget had much more to do with the era of "monopoly news," and even that notion is debatable, as the number of print publications, television networks and other media (including the Web) exploded during the same years.

Murrow's confidence had much to do with his mastery of the previous medium, radio, not to mention his own success in networking with the influencers of his time. That did not contribute to a sense of invincibility, but of careful exegesis of the experience of a reporter in the field. Consider how tentatively Murrow described his entering the Buchenwald concentration camp on the day of its liberation (where he gave away all the money he was carrying, violating the notion of a reporter being beyond the events they cover):

"I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words.... If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least bit sorry."

This is not journalism on a pedestal, but a raw account of events. When Murrow confronted McCarthy in 1954, he carefully destroyed the perception of authority created by the Senator, citing the McCarthy's waving of documents that he described as "confidential" during hearings which were, in fact, publicly available for a small fee, and documented how conservative newspapers, not just liberal ones and the television media (already a whipping boy of the conservatives), were expressing serious doubts about McCarthy and his tactics. Only after building this case through the unraveling of McCarthy's tactics, did Murrow provide his analysis (calling for many voices to participate in a debate rather than he and McCarthy alone):

"This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve.... The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable aid and comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his; he didn't create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it and rather successfully. Cassius was right. 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.' Good night and good luck."

Isn’t that ironic: The most mass medium in history gave birth to a class of media snobs. And the until-recently-exclusive medium (for the technologically sophisticated at the start) cuts them down to earth and once again empowers the little guy.

I've been the little guy who got the power of the press in his hands, both as a reporter in a media conglomerate and as a self-publisher. Both experiences struck me full of awe and Murrow's principles have been invaluable as a firm ground to stand on and a tonic against a swollen ego.

The irony, to me, is that the founders of this new egalitarian medium are much more interested in separating themselves from all tradition and all predecessors, suggesting a kind of quasi-religious ascension from a corrupt past into a pure future. This is a kind of hubris far more likely to undercut the credibility of the new media in short order than any of the real or imagined faults of a small group of reporters and producers around Murrow who had the good fortune to have access to a new technology. If success in this era, when we all have access to a new media, is dependent on a sense that users of one form and format of expression are inherently superior to others, we've only managed to repeat the mistakes we condemn.

Technorati Tags: blogging, Jarvis, Murrow, Media

Comments

[Dave Pentecost]

Re your question on my site: No I don't think Murrow is turning in his grave. He's taking a deep drag on his cigarette and shaking his head at the many methods of guilt by association we have at our disposal, and the slickness of the demagoguery from all directions. McCarthy was clever but too patently a villain - and that can't only be in hindsight. Our McCarthys are smooth and confident and on message.

Murrow wished us luck, but he always seemed doubtful that it would turn up. I think he saw what we'd be dealing with, from both media and government.

As far as new media goes, I agree with your diagnosis of amnesia. News reports, interviews, personal statements didn't begin with dot.com consciousness. There was recorded music before mp3s. And in the age of the video iPod, there has yet to be a web format any more entertaining and informative than television or film at its best. Both of which require an intricate team effort that is mostly lost on bloggers, video and otherwise.

But don't get me started...