What would Murrow do?

Published Oct 06 2008, 04:42 PM by Ian Donnis

A lot has changed in the 50 years since Edward R. Murrow made his now-famous speech challenging television news to live up to its potential. What's sad is how much is still the same. . . .

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire," he told the audience. "But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it's nothing but wires and lights in a box."

To bring it into the present:

"Ed always figured it was all right to look in Marilyn Monroe's closet if you were also willing to look in Robert Oppenheimer's laboratory," [60 Minutes' creator Don] Hewitt told a forum at the National Press Club in 2006. But that balance is gone. Today, it's all about celebrities' closets. A nuclear physicist would have to be found hiding in one to have a chance of getting on the air.

So where would Murrow fit in today's broadcast news world? He wouldn't, says XM Radio's Bob Edwards, who wrote "Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism." "I see him churning out podcasts and a lively blog."
"He would have abandoned the networks," says Marci Burdick, senior vice president of the media firm Schurz Communications. "He would have his own show on the History Channel or Discovery or PBS and a Web site for investigations."

Filed Under: Media, Broadcasting

Couldn't say it any better . . .

Barney Frank at Brown this afternoon

1 Comments

joe bernstein said:

The closetes of "celebrities"is a diversion to keep our minds off the real problems(like the derivatives market).

October 7, 2008 9:38 AM