Showing posts with label Edward R. Murrow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edward R. Murrow. Show all posts

Thursday, March 09, 2017

'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves'


Sixty-three years ago tonight, Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly went to war in defense of an idea. That idea is the United States of America.
 

That defense on CBS Television's news program See It Now necessarily meant declaring war on one of our occasional demagogues who rise to the level of existential threat. In 1954, that demagogue was Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R, Wisconsin). His particular -ism, involving a witch hunt that exploited people's intense fear of communism early on in the Cold War, came to bear his name -- McCarthyism.

McCarthyism looked to be a war on communist subversion by any means necessary. What McCarthyism actually was was an assault against our American foundational idea.


We always seem to forget that America is not a nation -- it is a country and an idea. A country organized around an idea.

NATURALLY, we never exactly (or even roughly) live up to the idea -- the ideal -- but the point is that we keep aiming for it. In that respect, it's like Christianity. Yes, you're a sinner, but you repent and keep trying to do better.

The times when this country truly is in peril is when we lose the narrative. With McCarthyism, we twisted the narrative and used that idea against itself, as a justification for cynical subversion. The Reds weren't the only subversives in this national morality play. Who knew?

Now we struggle for control of the narrative of another American morality play. McCarthyism has become Trumpism, after our latest existential threat, President Donald J. Trump.


And I wonder whether this time we've thrown away the script -- the founding ideal -- altogether.

As Ed Murrow said, our defense is not of one party or another, but instead it is of the truth. I think we have a steeper hill to climb than that of 1954. In 1954, Americans had many questions, but No. 1 on the list didn't seem to be Pontius Pilate's -- "What is truth?"

I'LL CLOSE with Murrow's final words on that historic telecast. They're better than any I'll ever write. Apply to our present national emergency as needed.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable 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.

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Because CNN can't afford 20ish strippers


Occasionally, I am compelled to haul out a dire warning about television legendary broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow delivered to the Radio and Television News Directors Association . . . in October 1958.

As far as I can tell, each time the sad pairing of Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper on the alleged
Cable News Network drove me to it.

Here we go again.


AND HERE Murrow goes again -- out of dire necessity. Not that there's any saving us now.

I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.

We are to a large extent an imitative society. If one or two or three corporations would undertake to devote just a small fraction of their advertising appropriation along the lines that I have suggested, the procedure would grow by contagion; the economic burden would be bearable, and there might ensue a most exciting adventure--exposure to ideas and the bringing of reality into the homes of the nation.

To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.

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.

-- Edward R. Murrow, 1958

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Another giant of television falls



Another giant of television journalism has died -- Don Hewitt, of cancer at 86.

We know him as the founding producer of 60 Minutes on CBS, or perhaps as the producer and director of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate. What is less known is that Hewitt was one of the men who helped to create television journalism, starting in 1948 as an associate director of Douglas Edwards With the News.

OR THAT, according to his CBS obituary, he was behind so much else that gave TV news its shape and character:

He was the executive producer of the first half-hour network newscast when the "CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite" became the first to go to a 30-minute format on Sept. 2, 1963. Among Hewitt's innovations was the use of cue cards for newsreaders, the electronic version of which, the TelePrompTer, is still used today. He was the first to use "supers" - putting type in the lower third of the television screen. Another invention of Hewitt's was the film "double" - cutting back and forth between two projectors - an editing breakthrough that re-shaped television news. Hewitt also helped develop the positioning of cameras and reporters still used to cover news events, especially political conventions.

IN HIS OBIT on The Associated Press wires, there's a quote from Hewitt's memoir. This really says it all:
Hewitt often said the accepted wisdom for television news writers before “60 Minutes” was to put words to pictures. He believed that was backward.

A Sunday evening fixture, “60 Minutes” was television’s top-rated show four times, most recently in 1992-93. While no longer a regular in the top 10 in Hewitt’s later years, it was still TV’s most popular newsmagazine.

Upon the launch of “60 Minutes,” Hewitt recalled that news executive Bill Leonard told him to “make us proud.”

“Which may well be the last time anyone ever said ‘make us proud’ to anyone else in television,” he wrote in his memoir. “Because Leonard said ‘make us proud’ and not ‘make us money,’ we were able to do both, which I think makes us unique in the annals of television.”

DON HEWITT is dead. And with the passing of each member of his generation of video journalists, television comes just a little bit closer to fulfilling the dire warning about its future, sounded in 1958 by an old CBS colleague, Edward R. Murrow:

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.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Merely wires and lights in a box

Following that last post -- about what passes for informational content on cable news channels these days -- I thought it might be appropriate to post a couple of the 7,231.459,295 reasons we all should be profoundly sorry that Edward R. Murrow is dead.

Above is a link to the first of those reasons, the famed CBS newsman's 1945 report from the Nazis' just-liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. What follows is a story from WREG television in Memphis about another of the countless reasons we should mourn that there are no men -- or women -- like Murrow on the American airwaves today.


IN HIS FAMOUS SPEECH to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Murrow pretty much said it all. He warned, in concluding:
I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.

We are to a large extent an imitative society. If one or two or three corporations would undertake to devote just a small traction of their advertising appropriation along the lines that I have suggested, the procedure would grow by contagion; the economic burden would be bearable, and there might ensue a most exciting adventure--exposure to ideas and the bringing of reality into the homes of the nation.

To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.

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.
"If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us."

Monday, November 03, 2008

See it now . . . if you have the stomach

Click on picture for video.


Where have you gone, Ed Murrow? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

We are no longer a serious people but are, on the other hand, manifestly stupider than we used to be. Journalism's -- and society's -- grown-ups are mostly all dead now, and we cultural riders of the short bus are on our own.

I DON'T KNOW, perhaps nicotine has gotten a really bad rap in the last 50 years.

At any rate, here's the
link to the page containing the Edward R. Murrow interview, conducted on WGBH television in 1959.

That is all. I'll post this without further comment because, frankly, what the hell else is there to say? The primary-source material speaks for itself.

Friday, August 29, 2008

See, it's kind of like Foster Brooks
telling Lindsay Lohan to sober up


It's a bad, bad reflection on the product you're putting on the air when the likes of Connie Chung is telling your anchors to grow up.

TO REMIND YOU of how horrible an indictment that is for MSNBC's political coverage, I reluctantly have posted Mrs. Maury Povich's -- Really, doesn't that say it all right there? -- farewell to her and Maury's three viewers when the cable network canceled their weekend show in 2006.

But, for what it's worth, here's a
Wall Street Journal account of on-air behavior so disturbing that Chung was willing to suffer the inevitable slings and arrows (such as mine) accompanying her, of all people, calling out the malefactors:
The convention was supposed to be the network's coming-out party as a hub for politics. But a year of programming and personnel changes have led to behind-the-scenes strain, which bubbled to the surface repeatedly this week in open arguments between hosts.

In an uncomfortable moment Tuesday night, an exhausted-looking "Hardball" host Chris Matthews shouted at a producer ("I'll wrap in a second!") before a stilted exchange with "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann, in which the two argued about who was talking out of turn. Mr. Olbermann made a flapping-lips hand gesture, and Mr. Matthews took umbrage. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer sat quietly on-screen, waiting to be interviewed.

That incident followed a seven-minute back-and-forth Tuesday afternoon between "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough and network correspondent David Shuster. Mr. Scarborough, a former Republican representative from Florida, accused Mr. Shuster, a registered independent, of taking a "cheap shot" by mentioning his party affiliation. Mr. Scarborough sarcastically added: "I feel so comforted by the fact that you're an independent. I bet everyone at MSNBC has 'independent' on their voting cards."

Since the early days of CNN's "Crossfire," cable news has relied on strong personalities to keep drama high and viewers tuned in throughout the day, when news isn't always exciting enough to keep the audience's attention. Passionate debate can make for great television -- and terrific ratings.

But some found this level of personal bickering hard to watch.

"My reaction to that is: 'Grow up!' They have to just grow up," said Connie Chung, a former MSNBC host and former co-anchor of "CBS Evening News."

I DON'T KNOW about you, but I need a stiff drink.

But until I can go round up a fifth of Early Times for each of us, I thought I'd remind us all of what it was like when the grown-ups still ran TV news: