Edward R. Murrow’s Story— and his Enduring Influence on Journalism

"Good night, and good luck”...It was a nightly close immortalized by Emmy-winning journalist Edward R. Murrow following each of his broadcasts. He gained prominence during World War II with live broadcasts from Europe. Reporting from the front, he flew with 25 combat missions in Europe during the war.

Edward R. Murrow brought rooftop reports of the Blitz of London into America's living rooms before this country entered World War II. After the war, Murrow and his team of reporters brought news to the new medium of television.

A pioneer of radio and television news broadcasting, Murrow produced a series of reports on his television program See It Now that helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Murrow won four Peabody awards, the Medal of Freedom, and as an American was knighted an honorary commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, Bill Downs, Dan Rather, and Alexander Kendrick consider Murrow one of journalism's greatest figures, noting his honesty and integrity in delivering the news.

Edward Roscoe Murrow was born Egbert Roscoe Murrow on April 25, 1908 at Polecat Creek, near Greensboro, in Guilford County, North Carolina, to Quaker farmers Roscoe and Ethel Murrow.

He was the youngest of three brothers and was a "mixture of Scottish, Irish, English and German" descent. The firstborn, Roscoe Jr., lived only a few hours. Lacey Van Buren was four years old and Dewey Joshua was two years old when Murrow was born. His home was a log cabin without electricity or plumbing, on a farm bringing in only a few hundred dollars a year from corn and hay.

When Murrow was six years old, his family moved across the country to Skagit County in western Washington, to homestead near Blanchard, 30 miles south of the Canada–United States border. He attended high school in nearby Edison, and was president of the student body in his senior year and excelled on the debate team. He was also a member of the basketball team which won the Skagit County championship.

After graduating from high school in 1926, Murrow enrolled at Washington State College across the state in Pullman, and eventually majored in speech. By his teen years, Murrow went by the nickname "Ed" and during his second year of college, he changed his name from Egbert to Edward. In 1929, while attending the annual convention of the National Student Federation of America, Murrow gave a speech urging college students to become more interested in national and world affairs; this led to his election as president of the federation.

After earning his bachelor's degree in 1930, he moved back east to New York. He parlayed his successful NSFA presidency into a job as assistant to the director of the Institute of International Education, where he was assistant director of the Institute of International Education from 1931 to 1935. He also served as assistant secretary of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars. Financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, the organization arranged exchanges between international and American students and professors.

After the Nazis came to power in Germany, the IIE’s network of scholars and academic institutions provided a foundation for the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German (later, Foreign) Scholars (ECADFS). Founded in 1933, the Emergency Committee facilitated the employment of refugee scholars in the United States, many of whom were Jews who had been barred from their positions under Nazi racial laws. The ECADFS made grants-in-aid directly to colleges, universities, and research centers, enabling them to offer endangered refugee scholars the financial means required by the US government to be admitted to the country. Over its 12 years of existence, the ECADFS provided grants for 335 applicants totaling $1.5 million.

Murrow left the organization in 1935 to join the nascent Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), which had been on the air since 1927. His career, and the prestige of CBS, would be linked for the next 25 years.

That same year, he married Janet Huntington Brewster on March 12, 1935.

At CBS, Murrow’s first position was Director of Talks and Education. CBS did not have news staff when Murrow joined, except for announcer Bob Trout. Murrow's job was to line up newsmakers who would appear on the network to talk about the issues of the day. But the onetime Washington State speech major was intrigued by Trout's on-air delivery, and Trout gave Murrow tips on how to communicate effectively on radio.

The pivotal event in Murrow’s career was his appointment as CBS’s European director in 1937 in London. Murrow arrived in a Europe on the verge of disaster.

The position did not involve on-air reporting—instead, his job was persuading European figures to broadcast over the CBS network, which was in direct competition with NBC's two radio networks. During this time, he made frequent trips around Europe.

He was deeply committed to informing Americans about the threat of Nazism in Europe, and he hoped to impress upon his fellow citizens the urgency of a response. He could not be “objective” about the rise of fascism, he said. A “thousand years of history and civilization,” Murrow wrote, were “being smashed while America remained on the sidelines.”

He convinced CBS to let him hire a small group of talented young journalists to cover the mounting crisis.

In 1937, Murrow hired journalist William L. Shirer, and assigned him to a similar post on the continent. This marked the beginning of the "Murrow Boys" team of war reporters.

Murrow gained his first glimpse of fame during the March 1938 Anschluss, in which Adolf Hitler engineered the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. While Murrow was in Poland arranging a broadcast of children's choruses, he got word from Shirer of the annexation—and the fact that Shirer could not get the story out through Austrian state radio facilities. Murrow immediately sent Shirer to London, where he delivered an uncensored, eyewitness account of the Anschluss. Murrow then chartered the only transportation available, a 23-passenger plane, to fly from Warsaw to Vienna so he could take over for Shirer.

At the request of CBS management in New York, Murrow and Shirer put together a European News Roundup of reaction to the Anschluss, which brought correspondents from various European cities together for a single broadcast. On March 13, 1938, the special was broadcast, hosted by Bob Trout in New York, including Shirer in London, reporter Edgar Ansel Mowrer of the Chicago Daily News in Paris, reporter Pierre J. Huss of the International News Service in Berlin, and Senator Lewis B. Schwellenbach in Washington, D.C. Reporter Frank Gervasi, in Rome, was unable to find a transmitter to broadcast reaction from the Italian capital but phoned his script to Shirer in London, who read it on the air.

Murrow reported live from Vienna, in the first on-the-scene news report of his career:

"This is Edward Murrow speaking from Vienna.... It's now nearly 2:30 in the morning, and Herr Hitler has not yet arrived."

The broadcast was considered revolutionary at the time. Featuring multipoint, live reports transmitted by shortwave in the days before modern technology, and without each of the parties necessarily being able to hear one another, it came off almost flawlessly.

The special became the basis for World News Roundup—broadcasting's oldest news series, which still runs each weekday morning and evening on the CBS Radio Network.

In September 1938, Murrow and Shirer were regular participants in CBS's coverage of the crisis over the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, which Hitler coveted for Germany and eventually won in the Munich Agreement. Their incisive reporting heightened the American appetite for radio news, with listeners regularly waiting for Murrow's shortwave broadcasts, introduced by analyst H. V. Kaltenborn in New York saying, "Calling Ed Murrow ... come in Ed Murrow."

During the following year, leading up to the outbreak of World War II, Murrow continued to be based in London. William Shirer's reporting from Berlin brought him national acclaim and a commentator's position with CBS News upon his return to the United States in December 1940.

Shirer would describe his Berlin experiences in his best-selling 1941 book Berlin Diary. When the war broke out in September 1939, Murrow stayed in London, and later provided live radio broadcasts during the height of the Blitz in London After Dark. These live, shortwave broadcasts relayed on CBS electrified radio audiences as news programming never had: previous war coverage had mostly been provided by newspaper reports, along with newsreels seen in movie theaters; earlier radio news programs had simply featured an announcer in a studio reading wire service reports.

Murrow's reports, especially during the Blitz, began with what became his signature opening, "This is London," delivered with his vocal emphasis on the word this, followed by the hint of a pause before the rest of the phrase. His former speech teacher, Ida Lou Anderson, suggested the opening as a more concise alternative to the one he had inherited from his predecessor at CBS Europe, Cesar Saerchinger: "Hello America. This is London calling." Murrow's phrase became synonymous with the newscaster and his network.

By autumn 1940 only the British Isles remained standing against the Nazi juggernaut. Throughout World War II Murrow was a witness, telling the story on the ground in London, reporting from the air over Berlin, and entering the concentration camp at Buchenwald.

Murrow achieved celebrity status as a result of his war reports. They led to his second famous catchphrase, at the end of 1940, with every night's German bombing raid, Londoners who might not necessarily see each other the next morning often closed their conversations with "good night, and good luck."

American listeners were riveted by his reports and by the sound of bombs exploding in the background.

The future British monarch, Princess Elizabeth, said as much to the Western world in a live radio address at the end of the year, when she said "good night, and good luck to you all". So, at the end of one 1940 broadcast, Murrow ended his segment with "Good night, and good luck." Speech teacher Anderson insisted he stick with it, and another Murrow catchphrase was born.

When Murrow returned to the U.S. in 1941, CBS hosted a dinner in his honor on December 2 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. 1,100 guests attended the dinner, which the network broadcast. Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a welcome-back telegram, which was read at the dinner, and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish commented on the power and intimacy of Murrow's wartime dispatches:

"You burned the city of London in our houses and we felt the flames that burned it," MacLeish said. "You laid the dead of London at our doors and we knew that the dead were our dead, were mankind's dead. You have destroyed the superstition that what is done beyond 3,000 miles of water is not really done at all."

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor occurred less than a week after this speech, and the U.S. entered the war as a combatant on the Allied side.

Murrow flew on 25 Allied combat missions in Europe during the war, providing additional reports from the planes as they droned on over Europe (recorded for delayed broadcast). Murrow's skill at improvising vivid descriptions of what was going on around or below him, derived in part from his college training in speech, aided the effectiveness of his radio broadcasts.

As hostilities expanded, Murrow expanded CBS News in London into what Harrison Salisbury described as "the finest news staff anybody had ever put together in Europe".

Murrow so closely cooperated with the British that in 1943 Winston Churchill offered to make him joint director-general of the BBC in charge of programming. Although he declined the job, during the war Murrow did fall in love and had an affair with Churchill's daughter-in-law, Pamela, whose other American lovers included Averell Harriman, whom she married many years later. Pamela wanted Murrow to marry her, and he considered it; however, after his wife gave birth to their only child, Casey, in the west of London on November 6, 1945, he ended the affair.

Reports about the mass murder of Europe’s Jews had become available to American radio networks in early 1942. Unable to confirm the facts independently, the networks were hesitant to transmit them. At the end of June 1942, a CBS radio newscaster read an excerpt from a confirmed World Jewish Congress report that more than one million Jews had been killed. Few other details were offered until December 13, 1942, when Murrow broadcast this commentary his listeners:

“What is happening is this: millions of human beings, most of them Jews, are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency and murdered.” The phrase “concentration camp,” he continued, “is obsolete . . . It is now possible to speak only of "extermination camps."

Perhaps Murrow’s most memorable broadcast to America, however, came when he transmitted his wrenching eyewitness account of the liberation of the Buchenwald camp in April 1945, the first radio report from a concentration camp by an American journalist.

The result was a group of reporters acclaimed for their intellect and descriptive power, including Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, Mary Marvin Breckinridge, Cecil Brown, Richard C. Hottelet, Bill Downs, Winston Burdett, Charles Shaw, Ned Calmer, and Larry LeSueur. Many of them, Shirer included, were later dubbed "Murrow's Boys"—despite Breckinridge being a woman. In 1944, Murrow sought Walter Cronkite to take over for Bill Downs at the CBS Moscow bureau. Cronkite initially accepted, but after receiving a better offer from his current employer, United Press, he turned down the offer.

After the war, Murrow recruited journalists such as Alexander Kendrick, David Schoenbrun, Daniel Schorr and Robert Pierpoint into the circle of the Boys as a virtual "second generation", though the track record of the original wartime crew set it apart.

On April 12, 1945, Murrow and Bill Shadel were the first reporters at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. He met emaciated survivors including Petr Zenkl, children with identification tattoos, and "bodies stacked up like cordwood" in the crematorium. In his report three days later, Murrow said:

“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've offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry.”

— Extract from Murrow's Buchenwald report. April 15, 1945.

In December 1945 Murrow reluctantly accepted William S. Paley's offer to become a vice president of the network and head of CBS News, and made his last news report from London in March 1946.

His presence and personality shaped the newsroom. After the war, he maintained close friendships with his previous hires, including members of the Murrow Boys. Younger colleagues at CBS became resentful toward this, viewing it as preferential treatment, and formed the "Murrow Isn't God Club." The club disbanded when Murrow asked if he could join.

During Murrow's tenure as vice president, his relationship with Shirer ended in 1947 in one of the great confrontations of American broadcast journalism, when Shirer was fired by CBS. He said he resigned in the heat of an interview at the time, but was actually terminated.

The dispute began when J. B. Williams, maker of shaving soap, withdrew its sponsorship of Shirer's Sunday news show. CBS, of which Murrow was then vice president for public affairs, decided to "move in a new direction," hired a new host, and let Shirer go. There are different versions of these events; Shirer's was not made public until 1990.

Shirer contended that the root of his troubles was the network and sponsor not standing by him because of his comments critical of the Truman Doctrine, as well as other comments that were considered outside of the mainstream. Shirer and his supporters felt he was being muzzled because of his views. Meanwhile, Murrow, and even some of Murrow's Boys, felt that Shirer was coasting on his high reputation and not working hard enough to bolster his analyses with his own research. Murrow and Shirer never regained their close friendship.

The episode hastened Murrow's desire to give up his network vice presidency and return to newscasting, and it foreshadowed his own problems to come with his friend Paley, boss of CBS.

Murrow and Paley had become close when the network chief himself joined the war effort, setting up Allied radio outlets in Italy and North Africa. After the war, he would often go to Paley directly to settle any problems he had. "Ed Murrow was Bill Paley's one genuine friend in CBS," noted Murrow biographer Joseph Persico.

In 1947 Murrow teamed with news producer Fred Friendly to create a set of phonograph records, “I Can Hear It Now.” That partnership evolved into a weekly radio news-magazine, “Hear It Now,” which was followed in 1951 by a television program, See It Now.

Murrow returned to the air in September 1947, taking over the nightly 7:45 p.m. newscast sponsored by Campbell's Soup and anchored by his old friend and announcing coach Bob Trout. For the next several years Murrow focused on radio, and in addition to news reports he produced special presentations for CBS News Radio. In 1950, he narrated a half-hour radio documentary called "The Case of the Flying Saucer." It offered a balanced look at UFOs, a subject of widespread interest at the time. Murrow interviewed both Kenneth Arnold and astronomer Donald Menzel.

From 1951 to 1955, Murrow was the host of This I Believe, which offered ordinary people the opportunity to speak for five minutes on radio. He continued to present daily radio news reports on the CBS Radio Network until 1959. He also recorded a series of narrated "historical albums" for Columbia Records called I Can Hear It Now, which inaugurated his partnership with producer Fred W. Friendly. In 1950 the records evolved into a weekly CBS Radio show, Hear It Now, hosted by Murrow and co-produced by Murrow and Friendly.

As the 1950s began, Murrow began his television career by appearing in editorial "tailpieces" on the CBS Evening News and in the coverage of special events. This came despite his own misgivings about the new medium and its emphasis on pictures rather than ideas.

On November 18, 1951, Hear It Now moved to television and was re-christened See It Now. In the first episode, Murrow explained: "This is an old team, trying to learn a new trade."

In 1952, Murrow narrated the political documentary Alliance for Peace, an information vehicle for the newly formed SHAPE detailing the effects of the Marshall Plan upon a war-torn Europe. It was written by William Templeton and produced by Samuel Goldwyn Jr.

In 1953, Murrow launched a second weekly TV show, a series of celebrity interviews entitled Person to Person.

See It Now focused on a number of controversial issues in the 1950s, but it is best remembered as the show that criticized McCarthyism and the Red Scare.

On June 15, 1953, Murrow hosted The Ford 50th Anniversary Show, broadcast simultaneously on NBC and CBS and seen by 60 million viewers. The broadcast closed with Murrow's commentary covering a variety of topics, including the danger of nuclear war against the backdrop of a mushroom cloud.

Murrow also offered indirect criticism of McCarthyism, saying:

"Nations have lost their freedom while preparing to defend it, and if we in this country confuse dissent with disloyalty, we deny the right to be wrong."

Forty years after the broadcast, television critic Tom Shales recalled the broadcast as both "a landmark in television" and "a milestone in the cultural life of the '50s".

On March 9, 1954, Murrow, Friendly, and their news team produced a half-hour See It Now special titled "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy".

Murrow had considered making such a broadcast since See It Now debuted and was encouraged to by multiple colleagues including Bill Downs. However, Friendly wanted to wait for the right time to do so.

Murrow used excerpts from McCarthy's own speeches and proclamations to criticize the senator and point out episodes where he had contradicted himself. Murrow and Friendly paid for their own newspaper advertisement for the program; they were not allowed to use CBS's money for the publicity campaign or even use the CBS logo.

The broadcast contributed to a nationwide backlash against McCarthy and is seen as a turning point in the history of television. It provoked tens of thousands of letters, telegrams, and phone calls to CBS headquarters, running 15 to 1 in favor.

In a retrospective produced for Biography, Friendly noted how truck drivers pulled up to Murrow on the street in subsequent days and shouted "Good show, Ed."

Murrow offered McCarthy the chance to respond to the criticism with a full half-hour on See It Now. McCarthy accepted the invitation and appeared on April 6, 1954. In his response, McCarthy rejected Murrow's criticism and accused him of being a communist sympathizer [McCarthy also accused Murrow of being a member of the Industrial Workers of the World which Murrow denied.

McCarthy also made an appeal to the public by attacking his detractors, stating:

Ordinarily, I would not take time out from the important work at hand to answer Murrow. However, in this case I feel justified in doing so because Murrow is a symbol, a leader, and the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual Communists and traitors.

Ultimately, McCarthy's rebuttal served only to further decrease his already fading popularity. In the program following McCarthy's appearance, Murrow commented that the senator had "made no reference to any statements of fact that we made" and rebutted McCarthy's accusations against himself, famously arguing,

“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”

Murrow's hard-hitting approach to the news, however, cost him influence in the world of television. See It Now occasionally scored high ratings (usually when it was tackling a particularly controversial subject), but in general, it did not score well on prime-time television.

When a quiz show phenomenon began and took TV by storm in the mid-1950s, Murrow realized the days of See It Now as a weekly show were numbered.

See It Now was knocked out of its weekly slot in 1955 after sponsor Alcoa withdrew its advertising, but the show remained as a series of occasional TV special news reports that defined television documentary news coverage. Despite the show's prestige, CBS had difficulty finding a regular sponsor, since it aired intermittently in its new time slot (Sunday afternoons at 5 p.m. ET by the end of 1956) and could not develop a regular audience.

In 1956, Murrow took time to appear as the on-screen narrator of a special prologue for Michael Todd's epic production, Around the World in 80 Days.

Beginning in 1958, Murrow hosted a talk show entitled Small World that brought together political figures for one-to-one debates. In January 1959, he appeared on WGBH's The Press and the People with Louis Lyons, discussing the responsibilities of television journalism.

Murrow appeared as himself in a cameo in the British film production of Sink the Bismarck! in 1960, recreating some of the wartime broadcasts he did from London for CBS.

Murrow's reporting brought him into repeated conflicts with CBS, especially its chairman William Paley. See It Now ended entirely in the summer of 1958 after a clash in Paley's office. Murrow had complained to Paley he could not continue doing the show if the network repeatedly provided (without consulting Murrow) equal time to subjects who felt wronged by the program.

According to Friendly, Murrow asked Paley if he was going to destroy See It Now, into which the CBS chief executive had invested so much. Paley replied that he did not want a constant stomach ache every time Murrow covered a controversial subject.

See It Now's final broadcast, "Watch on the Ruhr" (covering postwar Germany), aired July 7, 1958. Three months later, on October 15, 1958, in a speech before the Radio and Television News Directors Association in Chicago, Murrow blasted TV's emphasis on entertainment and commercialism at the expense of public interest in his "wires and lights" speech:

During the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: Look now, pay later.

The harsh tone of the Chicago speech seriously damaged Murrow's friendship with Paley, who felt Murrow was biting the hand that fed him. Before his death, Friendly said that the RTNDA (now Radio Television Digital News Association) address did more than the McCarthy show to break the relationship between the CBS boss and his most respected journalist.

Another contributing element to Murrow's career decline was the rise of a new crop of television journalists. Walter Cronkite's arrival at CBS in 1950 marked the beginning of a major rivalry which continued until Murrow resigned from the network in 1961. Murrow held a grudge dating back to 1944, when Cronkite turned down his offer to head the CBS Moscow bureau.

With the Murrow Boys dominating the newsroom, Cronkite felt like an outsider soon after joining the network. Over time, as Murrow's career seemed on the decline and Cronkite's on the rise, the two found it increasingly difficult to work together. Cronkite's demeanor was similar to reporters Murrow had hired; the difference was that Murrow viewed the Murrow Boys as satellites rather than potential rivals, as Cronkite seemed to be.

Throughout the 1950s the two got into heated arguments stoked in part by their professional rivalry. At a dinner party hosted by Bill Downs at his home in Bethesda, Cronkite and Murrow argued over the role of sponsors, which Cronkite accepted as necessary and said "paid the rent." Murrow, who had long despised sponsors despite also relying on them, responded angrily. In another instance, an argument devolved into a "duel" in which the two drunkenly took a pair of antique dueling pistols and pretended to shoot at each other.

Despite this, Cronkite went on to have a long career as an anchor at CBS.

After the end of See It Now, Murrow was invited by New York's Democratic Party to run for the Senate. Paley was enthusiastic and encouraged him to do it. Harry Truman advised Murrow that his choice was between being the junior senator from New York or being Edward R. Murrow, beloved broadcast journalist, and hero to millions. He listened to Truman.

Murrow resigned from CBS to accept a position as head of the United States Information Agency, parent of the Voice of America, in January 1961. President John F. Kennedy offered Murrow the position, which he viewed as "a timely gift." CBS president Frank Stanton had reportedly been offered the job but declined, suggesting that Murrow be offered the job.

His appointment as head of the United States Information Agency was seen as a vote of confidence in the agency, which provided the official views of the government to the public in other nations. The USIA had been under fire during the McCarthy era, and Murrow reappointed at least one of McCarthy's targets, Reed Harris.

Murrow insisted on a high level of presidential access, telling Kennedy, "If you want me in on the landings, I'd better be there for the takeoffs." However, the early effects of cancer kept him from taking an active role in the Bay of Pigs Invasion planning. He did advise the president during the Cuban Missile Crisis but was ill at the time the president was assassinated. Murrow was drawn into Vietnam because the USIA was assigned to convince reporters in Saigon that the government of Ngo Dinh Diem embodied the hopes and dreams of the Vietnamese people. Murrow knew the Diem government did no such thing. Asked to stay on by President Lyndon B. Johnson, Murrow did so but resigned in early 1964, after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

Murrow's celebrity gave the agency a higher profile, which may have helped it earn more funds from Congress.

Near the end of Murrow's life, when health problems forced him to resign from the USIA, Paley reportedly invited Murrow to return to CBS. Murrow, possibly knowing he could not work, declined Paley's offer.

A chain smoker throughout his life, Murrow was almost never seen without his trademark Camel cigarette. It was reported that he smoked between sixty and sixty-five cigarettes a day, equivalent to roughly three packs.

See It Now was the first television program to have a report about the connection between smoking and cancer. During the show, Murrow said, "I doubt I could spend a half hour without a cigarette with any comfort or ease." He developed lung cancer and lived for two years after an operation to remove his left lung.

Murrow died at his home in Pawling, New York on April 27, 1965, two days after his 57th birthday. His colleague and friend Eric Sevareid said of him, "He was a shooting star; and we will live in his afterglow a very long time."

Edward R. Murrow Quotes:

“To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.”

“Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.”

“The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.”

“Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.”

“The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.”

"Good night, and good luck.”