CBS journalists Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly in happier days |
More than McCarthy finally
did in the award-winning, groundbreaking CBS News series See It Now.
Edward R. Murrow and Fred
Friendly had helped end Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s reign of anticommunist terror
with their much-applauded 1954 exposé, but their reporting made them a
political target.
Nevertheless, they didn’t
back down from controversy, but even subsequent seemingly noncontroversial
topics for the show — on the fate of small farmers, on Hawaiian statehood —
attracted bizarre denunciations and demands for equal time.
The corporate taste for
the predictable profits provided by mindless, soothing programming and Murrow’s
ethical imperatives about the journalistic responsibilities of the television
medium continually clashed.
CBS Chairman of the Board William Paley |
The showdown came in the
office of CBS Chairman of the Board William Paley in 1958. Paley had long been
a principled and hands-off supporter of Murrow’s high-minded journalism, but he
had grown weary of the headaches they caused him. And big profits beckoned from
the cheap quiz shows (whose corrupt practices, ironically, would eventually
give him bigger headaches than See It Now
ever had).
Friendly described the
scene in his memoir Due to Circumstances
Beyond Our Control, noting that: “…Paley quietly said, ‘But I thought that
you and Fred didn’t want to do ‘See It Now’ anymore.’
“ ‘Bill, what I am
proposing is a procedure by which we share in the decision about equal time and
under which we could continue to do ‘See It Now,’ Murrow said. ‘Of course we
want it to continue.’
“The chairman replied with
the firmness that goes with final authority. ‘I thought we’d already decided
about ‘See It Now,” he said flatly.
“Whereupon enforced calm
vanished, and 45-minute scene ensued in which these two commanding figures, the
industry’s foremost reporter and its top executive, who had been intimate
friends for 20 years, faced each other in a blazing showdown with all guns
firing.
“One brief burst of
dialogue told it all.
“ ‘Bill,’ Murrow pleaded
at one point, ‘are you going to destroy all this? Don’t you want an instrument
like the ‘See It Now’ organization, which you have poured so much into for so
long, to continue?’
“ ‘Yes,’ said Paley, ‘but
I don’t want this constant stomach ache every time you do a controversial
subject.’
“ ‘I’m afraid that’s a
price you have to be willing to pay. It goes with the job.’
“Nothing else that was
said mattered. After seven years and almost 200 broadcasts, “See It Now’ was
dead.”
Astute filmgoers will have
recognized that conversation, which appears almost verbatim in Good Night and Good Luck, George
Clooney’s 2005 outsstanding film about Murrow’s battle with McCarthy. The movie
is remarkably faithful to the actual history recorded by Friendly, with David
Strathairn, Frank Langella and Clooney’s dialogue frequently an exact
reproduction of the words of Murrow, Paley and Friendly.
As the ‘50s faded and the
‘60s soared, Friendly sized up why the prestigious program had died.
“The fatal complication —
all the other symptoms could have been treated — was the very strength that
made Murrow unique. The man who could decide to do a program about McCarthy or Radulovich,
or fly off to see Chou En-lai, or to report on smoking and lung cancer, could
only do these broadcasts because of his fortitude and independence, and those
same virtues which gave CBS distinction also brought it controversy, enemies
and ‘stomach aches.’”
“What Paley and (CBS
President Frank) Stanton did not realize at the time, and what we failed to
articulate — if in fact we truly understood it — was that Murrow’s independent
spirit was the biggest asset the corporate body had. CBS couldn’t afford a
platoon of Murrows, but logistically and spiritually, it could certainly
support one responsible, universally respected, if not unanimously applauded,
reporter who was able and willing to do and say precisely what a corporation
could not.”
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