Word: murrow
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...long and lucrative career on television, CBS's Edward R. Murrow, 52, developed a particular skill for the shame-of-America documentary that trains the camera eye on the dark corners of U.S. life. But last January Murrow decided to go to Washington, accepting a presidential appointment as director of the U.S. Information Agency. Last week, in a bumbling effort to kill a TV documentary that he himself had narrated, Ed Murrow made clear demonstration of the truism that one's view can be shaped...
...after Thanksgiving, the documentary drew for turkey-stuffed Americans a stark picture of the field hands who rove about the country, living in makeshift squalor, and selling their labor for an average of $900 a year. Moving in shirtsleeves among the film's subjects, Narrator Murrow reached heights of personal indignation, as when he quoted one migrant-hiring Southern farmer: "We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them...
Exaggerated Portrait. The plight of the migrant workers is bad; but because of its overstatement, Harvest drew howls, especially from Florida's U.S. Senator Spessard L. Holland, whose state was the one visited by Murrow. Harvest of Shame, said Holland, contained at least seven distortions and errors of fact. Holland cited, among others, the example of the 29-year-old Negro woman who told Murrow that she was the mother of 14 and had earned $1 for a full day's work in the fields. The facts were, said Holland, that seven of her children were dead...
...country for circulation in other nations cannot be reconciled with the ideals of American democracy. In addition, attempting to cover up the unpleasant aspects of American life is as unwise as it is futile. Deficiencies exist and cannot, for long, be hidden by suppression. Whatever his original intentions, Murrow has provided ammunition for those who depict the U.S. as a country where freedom is a word to be talked about abroad and an ideal to be defied here...
Neither expediency nor principle justifies Murrow's action. If there is an explanation, it should be given, so as to resolve this most un-ingenuous paradox...