"We cannot make good news out of bad practice"
About this Quote
Murrow’s line lands like a newsroom memo sharpened into a moral verdict: you can’t launder reality with rhetoric. “Good news” isn’t just a headline or a ratings-friendly segment; it’s a public claim that things are working. “Bad practice” is the quiet machinery underneath - sloppy reporting, cozy access, propaganda-by-omission, the commercial incentives that reward heat over light. Murrow’s intent is bluntly disciplinary: if the process is corrupt, the product is counterfeit, no matter how polished the delivery.
The subtext is an indictment of the perennial temptation in journalism to treat presentation as salvation. Producers can sweeten tone, shorten context, book a more telegenic guest, or frame a narrative as “balanced” to avoid angering power. Murrow calls that out as a category error. He’s saying ethics are not an optional aesthetic; they are the technology that makes truth transmissible. Without them, “good news” becomes branding - reassurance sold as information.
Context matters: Murrow’s career sat at the hinge between radio’s authority and television’s spectacle. He helped invent broadcast credibility during WWII and later warned, famously, that TV could become “mere wires and lights in a box” if it served only to entertain. This quote fits that arc: it’s less nostalgia than a refusal to confuse performance with accountability. In an age when institutions try to manage perception and media outlets chase engagement, Murrow’s warning reads as both critique and challenge: fix the practice, or stop pretending the result is news.
The subtext is an indictment of the perennial temptation in journalism to treat presentation as salvation. Producers can sweeten tone, shorten context, book a more telegenic guest, or frame a narrative as “balanced” to avoid angering power. Murrow calls that out as a category error. He’s saying ethics are not an optional aesthetic; they are the technology that makes truth transmissible. Without them, “good news” becomes branding - reassurance sold as information.
Context matters: Murrow’s career sat at the hinge between radio’s authority and television’s spectacle. He helped invent broadcast credibility during WWII and later warned, famously, that TV could become “mere wires and lights in a box” if it served only to entertain. This quote fits that arc: it’s less nostalgia than a refusal to confuse performance with accountability. In an age when institutions try to manage perception and media outlets chase engagement, Murrow’s warning reads as both critique and challenge: fix the practice, or stop pretending the result is news.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
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