Edward R. Murrow Biography Quotes 22 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Edward R. Murrow, born Egbert Roscoe Murrow in 1908 in North Carolina, grew up to become one of the most influential American broadcast journalists of the twentieth century. He was raised in a family that moved west to Washington state during his childhood, part of a migration seeking better opportunities. Two older brothers, Lacey and Dewey, figured prominently in his early life; the siblings worked on farms and in logging camps, and the rhythms of labor and plainspoken conversation would later inform his sense of ordinary American life. He adopted the name Edward as a young adult, a change that signaled his entry into public life and professional communication.

Murrow attended Washington State College (now Washington State University), where he studied speech and became active in debate. Those years were foundational: he developed a meticulous approach to language, a commanding voice, and a conviction that clarity and fairness mattered in public discourse. He graduated during the difficult economic climate of the early 1930s, but his skill in organizing, speaking, and building networks quickly brought him to national attention in the world of student and international exchange programs.

From International Education to CBS
Before broadcasting, Murrow worked with the National Student Federation of America and then the Institute of International Education. In those roles he helped facilitate international exchanges and learned how ideas traveled across borders. In 1935 he married Janet Brewster, a partnership that would remain central to his personal and professional steadiness; friends and colleagues frequently noted Janet's insight and resilience. That same year, he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), initially handling educational and cultural programming.

At CBS, Murrow proved adept at organizing complex broadcasts and cultivating talent. William S. Paley, the head of CBS, recognized his promise and supported the expansion of the network's news operations. By 1937 Murrow was posted to Europe as CBS's director of European operations, based in London. In that pivotal setting he began to redefine what radio news could do.

London and the War Years
From London, Murrow helped create the news roundup format, coordinating reporters across European capitals as political crises unfolded. Early collaborations with William L. Shirer demonstrated that real-time reporting, interlinked by shortwave, could give listeners a living map of events. When war came, Murrow's broadcasts from London during the Blitz set a new standard for eyewitness journalism. Standing on rooftops amid air raids, he delivered reports marked by restraint, detail, and moral clarity, punctuating many with the steady cadence of, "This... is London".

Murrow assembled a team that became known as the Murrow Boys, including Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, Richard C. Hottelet, Winston Burdett, Larry LeSueur, and Bill Downs. Together they established a style of reporting that relied on vivid observation, thorough verification, and a sense of responsibility to listeners. Murrow joined Allied forces at times to report from the front and later gave a searing account of the Buchenwald concentration camp after its liberation, an unmistakable testament to the atrocities of the war. His wartime work earned trust across the United States and abroad, and it helped solidify radio news as a vital public service.

Radio to Television: New Forms of Reporting
After the war, Murrow returned to the United States and broadened his work at CBS. With producer Fred W. Friendly he launched Hear It Now on radio in 1950, an ambitious program that curated voices, sounds, and on-the-ground reporting from across the country and the world. The project soon moved to television as See It Now in 1951, retaining the core idea that a program could bring listeners and viewers unvarnished reporting without sacrificing depth.

Television added images to the authority of Murrow's voice, and he approached the new medium with both excitement and skepticism. He could host a hard-edged documentary on politics one night and the lighter Person to Person the next, interviewing public figures and entertainers from their homes. The range strengthened CBS's schedule and introduced Murrow to millions who knew him only from wartime radio, but it also sharpened his internal debate about the proper role of journalism in a commercial medium.

Challenging McCarthyism
In 1954, See It Now aired a landmark program on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. Drawing on McCarthy's own statements and actions, Murrow and Friendly constructed an episode that used the senator's record to question his methods and claims. Murrow's closing editorial warned against abandoning civil liberties in the name of security, asserting that fear could not be the basis of a free society. McCarthy responded on the air with attacks on Murrow, but the broadcast is widely credited with helping turn public opinion against the excesses of McCarthyism.

The controversy demonstrated Murrow's belief that journalism should not only inform but also illuminate the ethical stakes of public life. It also underscored his reliance on a strong collaborative team: Friendly's rigor in research and production, Sevareid's and other colleagues' commentary, and the institutional backing of Paley's CBS. Yet even as the program raised the bar for accountability reporting, it intensified tensions between the news division's public mission and the network's commercial pressures.

Documentaries and Debates About Television
As the 1950s progressed, Murrow confronted the realities of sponsor-driven programming and the competitive demands of prime-time television. See It Now evolved into documentary specials under the umbrella of CBS Reports, where Murrow and Friendly continued to push for substantive journalism. One of the most celebrated of these projects was Harvest of Shame in 1960, a stark examination of the conditions faced by migrant farm workers in the United States. The film's interviews and on-the-scene coverage brought audiences face to face with poverty and inequity, a hallmark of Murrow's method: let the subjects speak for themselves and let the images and facts do the persuading.

Murrow also became a prominent critic of television's drift toward entertainment at the expense of public interest. In a widely remembered 1958 speech to a gathering of broadcast news leaders, he warned that television risked becoming little more than "wires and lights in a box" unless it embraced its civic obligations. His words resonated with figures across journalism and government and sharpened the national conversation about the responsibilities of mass media.

Public Service and Final Years
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy asked Murrow to lead the United States Information Agency (USIA). The appointment placed a journalist known for independence at the helm of the government's public diplomacy arm. Murrow accepted on the condition that the agency's output, including the Voice of America, would be accurate and credible. He strengthened the professional standards of USIA, emphasizing that America's story could only be told persuasively if it was told truthfully. During crises of the early 1960s, including tensions surrounding Cuba and Berlin, he worked closely with administration figures while maintaining the ethic he had championed at CBS.

Murrow's health began to decline in the mid-1960s. A lifelong heavy smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and stepped down from USIA in 1964. He died in 1965 in New York, leaving behind his wife, Janet, and their son. Tributes came from former colleagues such as Friendly and Sevareid, from government leaders including Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, and from countless listeners and viewers who felt they had known him through the radio and television he helped define.

Legacy
Edward R. Murrow's legacy rests on the standards he set and the people he inspired. The Murrow Boys became leading journalists in their own right, carrying his methods into the next generation of broadcast reporting. His wartime dispatches demonstrated the power of firsthand observation; his investigative work showed how careful documentation and fair presentation could challenge demagoguery; his documentaries insisted that the lives of workers and the poor belonged on the national agenda.

Awards and honors recognized his influence during his lifetime and after, and journalism schools and professional organizations established awards bearing his name. His alma mater later named its communication college in his honor, encouraging students to pursue the craft with the integrity he championed. Within CBS, memories of spirited arguments with William S. Paley over commercial pressures became part of the lore about the eternal tug between public service and profitability in news.

Perhaps the most enduring measure of Murrow's impact is the vocabulary and tone of modern broadcast journalism. The calm opening line from London, the precise phrasing, the absence of ornament, and the insistence on letting evidence stand on its own remain touchstones for correspondents and anchors. Colleagues like William L. Shirer and Eric Sevareid often emphasized that Murrow's strength lay as much in character as in talent: a willingness to face the microphone or camera only after the facts were in hand, and a readiness to accept the consequences of speaking plainly. In an era of shifting media forms, the example of Edward R. Murrow continues to mark the path for work that aims to be both timely and true.

Our collection contains 22 quotes who is written by Edward, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Truth - Overcoming Obstacles.

Other people realated to Edward: George Clooney (Actor), Jonas Salk (Scientist), Walter Cronkite (Journalist), David Strathairn (Actor), Fred W. Friendly (Producer), Daniel Schorr (Journalist), Robert Trout (Journalist), Edward P. Morgan (Journalist), Don Hewitt (Producer), Norman Corwin (Writer)

• 1958 Wires and Lights in a Box (Essay)
• 1954 See It Now , McCarthy episode (Non-fiction)
• 1951 See It Now (Non-fiction)
• 1951 This I Believe (Collection)
• 1950 I Can Hear It Now (Collection)
• 1950 Hear It Now (Non-fiction)
• 1941 This Is London (Book)