Oct 18, 2005
Jesse Lemisch: Murrow in the Blitz
To the Editor:
Early in World War II, Edward R. Murrow was deeply and emotionally committed to American support of the embattled British. This influenced his dramatic CBS rooftop broadcasts from London during the Nazi bombing. As Neal Gabler writes ["Good Night, and the Good Fight," Op-Ed, October 9], Murrow "[held] out his microphone so that listeners could hear the explosions during the London Blitz."
There is more to this than Gabler reports. In his landmark study, Documentary Expression and Thirties America [Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1986 (1973), p 89], William Stott writes of Murrow:
"He told his wife in a later note that he had broken network rules and run the transcribed sound of a bomb falling nearly on mike, because he wanted 'pretty strong meat' to 'take the heart out of a few people' listening; he wanted to shake his audience, wake them up."
This hardly detracts from Murrow's heroism in standing up to McCarthy. But it does raise important questions about journalistic ethics and the limits of advocacy journalism.
Jesse Lemisch
Professor Emeritus of History, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY
Early in World War II, Edward R. Murrow was deeply and emotionally committed to American support of the embattled British. This influenced his dramatic CBS rooftop broadcasts from London during the Nazi bombing. As Neal Gabler writes ["Good Night, and the Good Fight," Op-Ed, October 9], Murrow "[held] out his microphone so that listeners could hear the explosions during the London Blitz."
There is more to this than Gabler reports. In his landmark study, Documentary Expression and Thirties America [Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1986 (1973), p 89], William Stott writes of Murrow:
"He told his wife in a later note that he had broken network rules and run the transcribed sound of a bomb falling nearly on mike, because he wanted 'pretty strong meat' to 'take the heart out of a few people' listening; he wanted to shake his audience, wake them up."
This hardly detracts from Murrow's heroism in standing up to McCarthy. But it does raise important questions about journalistic ethics and the limits of advocacy journalism.
Jesse Lemisch
Professor Emeritus of History, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY