Word: murrow
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...husband Philip's manic-depression and tragic suicide in 1963. From Dorothy "Buff" Chandler, he elicited the real reason her husband Norman dropped Robert Taft in 1952 to go for Ike--Buff simply refused to sleep with Norman until he came around. From friends and colleagues of Ed Murrow, Halberstam relates the details of CBS chairman Bill Paley's horning-in on the memorial program to Murrow the day after he died--when it was Paley who had virtually forced Murrow...
Since they had helped create it, Paley and CBS adapted quickly to this new pace. Within a few years, Edward R. Murrow had become a star and his network basked in the reflected glow. As it happened, one of Murrow's college speech teachers had written him and suggested the slight pause in the introduction that he made famous: "This . . . is London." No one at the time seemed troubled by this hint of theatricality; years would pass before politicians began frisking TV anchormen for hints of raised eyebrows or smirks...
Halberstam can be rough on his principals, who sometimes emerge as caricatures, but his harshest treatment goes to Paley. While acknowledging Paley's genius and eminence ("the supreme figure of modern broadcasting"), Halberstam also insists that the chairman coldly let highly profitable entertainment programming elbow out the news division. Murrow, who helped invent broadcast journalism and became a symbol of integrity to colleagues and the public, eventually left the network in despair. Much later, Bill Moyers told Paley that he wanted to quit CBS and return to public broadcasting. Paley asked what it would take to keep him. Moyers said...
...right to 5 editorialize on the air, but, says Paley, "finally we concluded there was no way the network could give editorial opinions on national or international subjects." Why? Because so many of its independently owned affiliates had different political opinions. Paley speaks of "heated arguments" with Ed Murrow, Eric Sevareid and Howard K. Smith about editorializing, which is why your ordinary local late-night radiogabber is a lot freer with his opinions...
Strangely, when Paley pleads his own 3 inability as a television lord to make "fuller and better use of this magic form of a communications," he does not mention Ed Murrow. They were once close, Paley's one exception to his rule about not socializing with office colleagues. Twenty years ago, in a speech that offended Paley, Murrow proposed a plan similar in some respect to the plan Paley now offers. In a cold war period when Murrow thought the country "in mortal danger," the newsman proposed that each of the 20 or 30 largest corporate advertisers give...