Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon

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Speaker 1: And we returned to our American Stories. Up next, the story of a broadcast legend, Edward R. Murrow, and how he took on one of the most powerful men in America during the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy. Here to tell the story is Kirk Higgins, the senior director of content at the Bill of Rights Institute. You can find their great curriculum on American history at mybri.org. That’s mybri.org. Let’s get into the story.

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Speaker 2: If there were no communists in our government, why did we delay for eighteen—

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Speaker 3: months delay our research on the hydrogen bombs? Let us not assassinate this last for ever, you know, stance of deson caster.

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Speaker 4: It was the evening of March 9, 1954, and veteran journalist Edward R. Murrow was about to make the most consequential television broadcast of his career. Murrow had served as a war course ponder covering the bombings of London and Nazi concentration camps during World War II, but that evening Murrow was engaging in a different type of battle. Through his See It Now television program, Murrow would challenge one of the most powerful men in the United States, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. It was a big risk for Murrow, but Murrow’s life was filled with instances of courage and integrity that are still remembered and celebrated by broadcasters and journalists to this day.

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Speaker 4: Egbert Roscoe Murrow, he didn’t change his name to Edward until college. In 1926, majored in speech and took a radio broadcasting course that required him to create a program for the campus station. Ironically, the man who became one of the greatest news broadcasters of all time only got a B for the course. But Murrow’s foray into journalism and broadcasting was just beginning.

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Speaker 3: To entertainment thrills. Lift time! We’re headed for Columbia’s Radio Playhouse.

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Speaker 4: In 1935, he joined CBS, a relationship that would last for the next 26 years. He started in the business booking guests for radio programs, but the young Murrow was mentored by veteran broadcaster Robert Trout, a legendary radio figure in his own right. On Christmas Eve, 1936, Murrow had the opportunity to read the news on air for the first but certainly not the last time, using Trout’s script. Murrow’s career was progressing in New York, but it was about to take a giantly forward. In 1937, he was sent to Europe to improve the quality of CBS broadcasts from the continent.

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Speaker 3: This will be warm between England and Germany. Affical statement, Hanado press conferences.

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Speaker 4: Soon war was brewing in Europe, and soon Murrow would be asked right into the thick of it. In March 1938, about a year after Murrow arrived in Europe, Adolf Hitler annexed Austria. Murrow was on the ground in Vienna and reported the news himself for the first time.

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Speaker 2: As I said, everything is quiet in Vienna, duni. There’s a certain Arab expectancy about the city.

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Speaker 3: Everyone waiting and wondering square, and at what time Herr Hitler will arrive tomorrow.

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Speaker 4: CBS executives approved of his reporting and presentation style, and from that moment forward, Murrow became a correspondent. CBS’s European operations were headquartered in London, where Murrow spent the bulk of World War II. This gave Murrow a front row seat for the Blitz, a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom. Murrow’s broadcast became known for his catchphrases.

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Speaker 3: I’m standing on a rooftop looking out over London. It’s compounder square. Noise a junior at the moment is the sound of the—

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Speaker 2: air range siren.

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Speaker 4: “This is London, and good night and good luck,” send-off many British listeners took to heart, as they often nervously awaited nighttime bombing rid. Despite spending most of his time in London, Murrow was able to occasionally venture into the field. He reported from Tunisia in North Africa in 1943 and helped expose the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany in 1945. Warning listeners that his report would not be pleasant listening, Murrow described the death, disease, and starvation he had personally witnessed during his visit to Buchenwald. “I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words.” After the war, Murrow returned to the United States as head of News and Public Affairs for CBS. He began presenting weekly digests of news on the radio called Hear It Now. Television gained popularity in the early 50s, and he moved his show to CBS-TV, renaming it See It Now.

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Speaker 2: Stand by now for the fifteenth edition of See It Now with Edward R. Murrow, which originates in the control room of Studio 41 in New York City.

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Speaker 4: All of this occurred against the backdrop of the rising popularity of Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy had been sworn in as a first-term senator from Wisconsin in 1947. In 1950, he began to tap into Americans’ growing fears about communism in the wake of several communist spy rings selling atomic secrets to the Soviets, who used the knowledge to explode an A-bomb in 1949. McCarthy claimed that the State Department was “riddled with Communists” and professed to have a list of 205 names. As time went on, his finger-pointing continued. At every opportunity, he blamed what he saw as the deteriorating morality of America on suspected Communists. As a journalist, Murrow fervently believed that the press ought to seek and uncover the truth. He thought it was the responsibility of a free press to hold public officials accountable. He also believed that communist threats abroad and at home could best be countered by free and open expression at home. In October 1953, Murrow aired the report that would signal the beginning of a public conflict with McCarthy. Murrow learned that the Air Force Reserve had dismissed a young Lieutenant Milo Radulovich because his father and sister were thought to hold “un-American views.” While no one accused Radulovich of having the same views, authorities recommended that he condemn his father and sister in order to save his possession. Radulovich refused, declaring that such an action was not what it meant to be an American. When Murrow aired the story on See It Now, he openly questioned the evidence for the charges, stating, “Was it hearsay, rumor, gossip, slander, or was it hard, ascertainable fact that could be backed by creditable witnesses? We do not know.” Radulovich’s commission was reinstated. Murrow had publicly and successfully challenged McCarthy, but the spat between the two men was far from over. Murrow learned that he too was on McCarthy’s attack list. The senator’s so-called evidence that Murrow was on the Soviets’ payroll was that he worked during the 1930s as an advisor to the Institute of International Education. That organization sponsored exchange seminars between American and Soviet professors. McCarthy may have harbored hopes of damaging Murrow’s reputation, but ultimately it was Murrow who helped bring an end to McCarthy and his wild accusations. As Murrow took to the air for his March 9, 1954 See It Now broadcast, he looked serious and composed. “Good evening,” he began.

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Speaker 3: “Mus not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and new process of law. We will not walk in fear one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. If we did deepen our history in our doctum, and remember that we are not descended from fearful man, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend the causes that were, for the moment unpopular.”

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Speaker 4: Following the broadcast, public opinion shifted sharply against McCarthy. Six days later, McCarthy demanded a chance to respond, and Murrow and CBS agreed to a second broadcast. In his rebuttal, McCarthy referred to Murrow, among other things, as “the leader of the jackal pack of his opponents.” The appearance did little to restore public confidence in McCarthy. The senator’s hold on the nation had ended. Nine months later, the United States Senate censored Joseph McCarthy. Murrow is not the only journalist who challenge McCarthy, but he is credited with skillfully using a new medium, television, so that the American people considered the validity of the Senator’s views, as Murrow later acknowledged, “the timing was right and the instrument was powerful. There was a great conspiracy of silence at the time. When there is such a conspiracy, somebody makes a loud noise. It attracts all the attention.” Upon Murrow’s passing, President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had once awarded Murrow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, called Murrow a gallant fighter who had “dedicated his life as a newsman and as a public official to the unrelenting search for truth.”

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Speaker 1: And a special thanks to Kirk Higgins, the senior director of Content at the Bill of Rights Institute. The story of Edward R. Murrow versus Senator McCarthy, here on our American Stories.