Murrow: His Life and Times (1999) by A.M. Sperber

In late 2014, when I was reading this book (first published in 1986), Richard C. Hottelet, the last of the original “Murrow’s Boys,” died in Connecticut at the age of 97. There is so much about Edward R. Murrow’s story that feels old and distant – grainy black-and-white telecasts and lots of cigarette smoking – but in many ways we are stilling living with his legacy, and Hottelet’s recent death reminds us that it really wasn’t all that long ago.

A.M. Sperber delivers here a long (very long), highly favorable, but credible life narrative of Edward R. Murrow, the godfather of radio and television news. Several things make Murrow a fascinating subject for a full length and undeniably definitive biography. First, unlike many other leading men from the early twentieth century, Murrow came from nothing. Originally from North Carolina, where his ancestors were anti-slavery Quakers, Murrow spent his formative years in the logging country of the Pacific Northwest, where he worked dangerous jobs in the timber industry and gradually developed a deep sympathy for organized labor, including the radical Wobblies. He was a good athlete and a serious student, but nearly never made it to college because his family couldn’t afford it. He took time off after high school to work and save money for tuition, eventually enrolling at sleepy Washington State College in Spokane, where he quickly established himself as a student leader – a fact that quickly paid incredibly handsome dividends.

In a striking series of events, Murrow went from “big man on campus” at tiny Washington State to a leadership position at a national college organization based in New York City, which opened up an array of connections for a “…a half-educated guy from a Western cow college,” to quote Murrow himself. Not long after arriving in New York he took over the “Emergency Committee to Rescue Scholars,” an endeavor to protect persecuted intellectuals and scientists in fascist Europe, a unique role that allowed him foster relationships with powerful men that would later prove crucial professionally. Everyone, it seems, was dazzled by the extraordinarily handsome, self-assured, and unflappable young man from Washington state who was coordinating exit visas and visiting professor assignments at American universities. He was a real life Don Draper, only with a conscience.

At the age of 27 (although his employers evidently believed that he was 32), Murrow was made Director of Talks for the fledgling radio outfit, Columbia Broadcasting Systems (CBS). When the Second World War broke out, Murrow was in London and worked hard to stay there through the worst of the London Blitz, when his voice and daring real-time broadcasts back home made him a household name. He reported live from rooftops as German bombs rained down in all directions. “It was The War of the Worlds come to life,” Sperber writes, “the fantasy of 1938 become the reality of 1940, the rooftop observer, reporting on the life and death of cities, no longer an actor in a studio.”
Indeed, physical courage may be top among a seemingly unending stream of flattering adjectives that Sperber heaps upon Murrow (e.g. articulate, intelligent, modest, compassionate, innovative, and so on). But the fact remains that Murrow took part in 25 bomber missions over Germany during the war, a feat that is stunning in its recklessness. Later, he was embedded with the lead units entering Nazi occupied Europe, including the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp. “For [Murrow], [Buchenwald] had personal implications,” Sperber says, “it would remain a benchmark, permanent reminder of man’s capability,” especially after his valiant efforts to save Jewish scholars before the war.

When Murrow returned home after the war he was a hero and probably the most recognized voice in America after the death of Franklin Roosevelt. Thus began the golden age of radio and TV news – and the zenith of Murrow’s influence and professional happiness. Radio and TV were still novelties and news still mattered – at least for a few years before the nation fully returned to peace.

“See it Now,” the post-war program Murrow produced with his protégé Fred Friendly, was “…the most widely discussed, most electric, most admired and most reliably condemned program on television.” But hard-hitting, honest and compelling television journalism was a shooting star of sorts. “The problem of the time was money – news wasn’t making any,” Sperber writes. Murrow wanted and hoped that TV news could educate the average American to make better-informed and more vocal citizens and voters. However, by the 1950s, Quiz Shows were all the rage and drawing the big sponsorship dollars. Controversial news shows like Murrow’s were scaring off advertisers while simultaneously losing viewers, a dangerous downward spiral. Murrow grew increasingly concerned over the power of advertiser dollars and their implicit ability to veto certain programs, particularly those that were politically controversial. “If … news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, then I don’t care what you call it – I say it isn’t news,” Murrow famously claimed. His effort to stave off the challenge was his popular “Person to Person,” very much the reality TV of its day, which helpfully paid the bills for the more serious “See It Now.” Eventually, “Person to Person” was wrongly (mostly wrongly anyhow) implicated in the Quiz Show scandal of the late 1950s, a tarnishing that Murrow did not deserve, certainly did not anticipate, and never forgave.

From his famed McCarthy fight in the early 1950s, captured in the film “Good-bye and Good Luck,” to his death in 1965, Murrow’s professional life was a slow, sad and inexorable decline. CBS News, the very organization he created, seemed to do everything possible to get rid of him, eventually promoting his protégé, Fred Friendly, to Head of News. He joined the Kennedy administration as head of the US Information Agency in 1961, largely because he had no other job opportunities and the New Frontier was eager to bolster their image and agenda abroad by having it broadcast by none-other-than Edward R. Murrow. It was an three year stint the Murrow would call “the most interesting and rewarding of his entire experience,” although Sperber clearly doesn’t believe it. Murrow died in April 1965 at the age of 57 after a long, “unpretty and messy” battle with lung cancer, a result of his life long 50+ cigarette-a-day habit.

“Murrow: His Life and Times” is a lionization of the subject. Yet, the author does make two persistent critiques. First, the newsman was addicted to nicotine; he simply couldn’t quit smoking and it would literally be the death of him. Second, and less fully developed by Sperber, Murrow was notoriously cliquey. Either you were one of “his boys” or an outsider and someone not be trusted. None other than Walter Cronkite was a rival and card-carrying member of the “Murrow Isn’t God” club at CBS (Sperber cheerfully notes that Murrow proactively sought membership in the club as well). Nevertheless, upon his death, Cronkite eulogized Murrow as someone who “…made television news a profession a man could be proud of.”

For as much as Murrow bemoaned the state of news and the popularity of inane television programming – it was FCC Chairman Newton Minnow that referred to TV as a “vast wasteland” in 1961—it is easy to argue that things are much worse today, when shows like “Duck Dynasty” and “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” are megahits and viewers can pick their news program depending on their political preferences. It’s a world that Murrow would abhor and be ashamed of.