Edward R. Murrow: This Reporter
Edward R. Murrow: This Reporter (1990) This PBS American Masters 1990 Emmy winner, is available now on DVD. It gives teachers covering the United States since 1941 material for the classroom and provides two models for young media professionals: the model of Murrow himself, and of this thought-provoking documentary.
The first part of This Reporter begins with quotes from leading broadcasters of 1990. Then it joins Murrow in Europe, excerpting his radio coverage of World War II. One problem of a television documentary about radio is what to do on screen during audio clips. This Reporter alternates images of people listening to radios with footage of events Murrow described.
As post-war television overtakes radio, Murrow initially disliked television’s privileging images over ideas. Concurrently, Murrow was always searching for the “little picture” of individual experience through which his audience could look to see the larger issues. Murrow created a program of “little pictures,” the investigative reporting called See It Now.
At this point This Reporter detours to Murrow’s childhood in a poor North Carolina family that attempted to improve its chances by homesteading in Washington state. The implication was that Murrow’s respect for people of all walks of life stemmed from his own humble beginning. Murrow’s World War II coverage suggests another theory. From 1938 to 1945, Murrow reported on how government leaders altered individual lives without ever seeing the individuals affected. It is not surprising that Murrow became committed to informing people what was happening in the world.
One See It Now episode concerned Milo Radulovich, who was discharged from the Air Force for consorting with relatives accused of reading Communist literature. the first time Murrow publicly engaged McCarthyism. Murrow’s confrontation with McCarthy himself swiftly follows. Viewing both the Radulovich and McCarthy stories helps deflect the criticism that Murrow attacked an already weakened McCarthy. Murrow’s attention to the nation’s Milo Raduloviches contributed to McCarthy’s weakening.
His attacks on McCarthy definitely contributed to the weakening of Murrow’s position. Soon after the McCarthy episode, Alcoa, the sole sponsor for See It Now, declined to renew its contract. Murrow said he accepted Alcoa’s explanation that it based its decision on declining ratings rather than the McCarthy episode. This ‘acceptance’ was reflected in his 1958 speech at the Radio and Television New Directors Association in which he laid the blame for the escapism of most television programming on sponsors’ endless search for larger audiences.
Murrow provided some escapism himself, hosting an interview show called Person to Person. The eyewitnesses interviewed for This Reporter differed as to whether Murrow valued the program. The footage of Murrow interviewing another candidate for an American Masters documentary, Sophie Tucker, indicates historians should be grateful for the material Murrow collected.
Even escapism can be controversial; controversy over Person to Person ended Murrow’s regularly scheduled programming. The 1959 quiz show scandal led Frank Stanton of CBS to pledge never to mislead audiences about ‘anything.’ Murrow protested that this was impossible; Person to Person, for example, was rehearsed, not the spontaneous dropping in on a celebrity that it seemed to be. The show was cancelled.
In 1961, Murrow became director of the U.S. Information Agency. He resigned in 1964 and died in 1965. This Reporter ends with students at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn viewing and commenting on Murrow’s 1960 Harvest of Shame. This sequence forms a continuum with the previous interviews of eyewitnesses and experts. The young people do not yet have analytical skills or precise vocabularies. They do, though, share the professionals’ enthusiasm for good work.
The high school sequence leads to one last observation about the emphases in This Reporter. Throughout the documentary, Murrow was praised for his professionalism. The professionalism stemmed from Murrow’s having his heart in the right place.
Mary Elizabeth Brown Marymount Manhattan College mbrown1@mmm.edu
