Word: murrow
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...September to the firing of 74 of some 1,400 CBS News employees. (In all, about 600 of the 24,000 jobs at CBS were eliminated in 1985.) The move infuriated CBS News journalists, whose independence is a cherished tradition stretching back to the days of Edward R. Murrow. Adding to the outcry were complaints about efforts to jazz up -- critics said trivialize -- the division's approach to reporting the news. As discontent grew, a group of senior CBS journalists, including Anchorman Rather, 60 Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt and Commentator Bill Moyers, made an offer to buy the news...
...today's TV reporters, Murrow remains the all but universally acknowledged beau ideal. His fearless and candid World War II reporting taught not only America but Britain that journalism must be more than propaganda. Indeed, the BBC asked him to direct its programming, an honor he reluctantly declined. Later Murrow helped establish, at considerable personal cost, the principle that TV journalism must be as free, as challenging and as crusading as its counterparts in print. And he did so, unlike virtually any of his contemporaries, without ever having worked for a newspaper or having been steeped in print's traditions...
There is need for a thorough, dispassionate biography of Murrow, one that could assess his precise contributions to American journalism--and to modern relations between the news media and Government during his stint as director of the U.S. Information Agency in the Kennedy Administration. Ann M. Sperber, a former book editor and freelance writer, has doggedly undertaken the task in Murrow: His Life and Times. Her volume is nothing if not inclusive: it mentions head colds and household accidents, and is replete with sometimes pointless anecdotes in which Murrow is at most a peripheral figure--half a page, for example...
...matters of fact, Sperber seems considerably more sound. She secured cooperation from Murrow's widow Janet and son Casey, and reflects the family point of view. Yet she does note, albeit very briefly, Murrow's hard drinking, bursts of temper and infidelities, especially his open wartime love affair with Pamela Churchill, the British Prime Minister's daughter-in-law--matters the docudrama deliberately overlooked. Using declassified FBI files, Sperber demonstrates abuses by that agency, the State Department and its Passport Bureau to harass Murrow and suggests their files were leaked to Alcoa, which then withdrew sponsorship of Murrow's trademark...
Sperber is neither a subtle reader of Murrow's prose nor, despite her Fulbright-scholar background in political science, a decisive analyst of his ideology. She does evoke the shy, moody, sometimes preening yet fiercely loyal man who inspired such admiration and affection. Still, this should not be the conclusive Murrow biography...