Talk:Edward R. Murrow

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Nonsensical Sentence[edit]

Can someone who knows what this is supposed to say clean it up. It is the lead sentence of the second paragraph under the USIA Director heading: "His transfer to a governmental position Murrow was a member of the National Security Council, a position for life did lead to an embarrassing incident shortly after taking the job, when he asked the BBC not to show his documentary Harvest of Shame, in order to not damage the European view of the USA, however the BBC refused as they had bought the programme in good faith." QuantumOfHistory (talk) 15:03, 11 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Murrow and Harriman[edit]

Any place in this article for a discussion of Murrow's relationship with the teenage Pamela Hariman (then Pamela Churchill)? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.80.248.67 (talk • contribs) .

Presumably, if it's verifiable. matt kane's brain 20:04, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Small World as influence?[edit]

From the article: Beginning in 1958, Murrow hosted a talk show entitled Small World that brought together political figures for one-to-one debates. As a further example of Murrow's effect on TV journalism, this form of TV debate continues today with Sunday morning political talk shows such as Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and Meet the Press with Tim Russert.

Actually, Meet the Press had already been on the air for 11 years before Small World debuted, and Face the Nation had been on the air for 4 years. So I don't think Murrow can be considered the pioneer in this area. --Metropolitan90 02:29, 16 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • I cut the second sentence, per your comment. If someone has something useful to say here besides the first sentence, which I left, please do. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:28, 18 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wobblie connection?[edit]

Asking for clarification: The article on the Industrial Workers of the World links to Murrow. Wasn't that a baseless accusation by Joe McCarthy made to paint him as a radical? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.240.182.32 (talk • contribs) 25 Nov 2005.

Not sure, but we should remove it pending citation. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:35, 25 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It appears he had connections to the IWW. It's not clear whether or not he was a member. NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1872668) states:

Throughout the time Ed was growing up, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), "the Wobblies," were organizing in the Pacific Northwest, pursuing their dream of "one big union." The powerful forces of industry and government were determined to snuff that dream. IWW organizers and members were jailed, beaten, lynched, and gunned down. A lumber strike during World War I was considered treason, and the IWW was labeled Bolshevik. Ed Murrow knew about red-baiting long before he took on Joe McCarthy. There was also background for a future broadcast in the deportations of the migrant workers the IWW was trying to organize. Near the end of his broadcasting career, Murrow's documentary "Harvest of Shame" was a powerful statement on conditions endured by migrant farm workers.

For the rest of his life, Ed Murrow recounted the stories and retold the jokes he'd heard from millhands and lumberjacks. He also sang their songs, especially after several rounds of refreshments with fellow journalists.

Voyager640 00:01, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My dad sang Wobbly songs, too, but he certainly wasn't a Wob. They had good songs, what else can I say? -- Jmabel | Talk 07:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Abolitionists?[edit]

Does it to make sense to describe Murrow's parents as being abolitionists in 1908? --Tar Heel 08:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not unless his dad was really old and his mom a biological miracle. Should probably say something like "descendant of Quaker abolitionists". -- Jmabel | Talk 06:19, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Inconsistency[edit]

See It Now states "The broadcast provoked tens of thousands of letters, telegrams and phone calls to CBS headquarters, running 15 to 1 in favor of Murrow." however this article states "The broadcast provoked tens of thousands of letters, telegrams and phone calls to CBS headquarters, running 10 to 1 in favor of Murrow." Which one is correct? Cacophony 09:18, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

KBE[edit]

Since Murrow was an American citizen and an unpretentious man, I doubt he ever styled himself, "Edward R. Murrow, KBE", so why do we begin the article by calling him that? -- Jmabel | Talk 02:17, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Having allowed about 24 hours and receiving no response, I am removing. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:48, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt anyone styles themselves that way, but it is done on all other Wikipedia biography articles because it is part of the facts about the person. Ben davison 12:05, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you are a Commonwealth citizen, it would be reasonably common to use such a title, or to use Sir, but in the U.S. this simply isn't done. UK honors like this certainly carry a cachet in the U.S., but a national sense of republicanism tends to prevent the actual use of titles. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:25, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While it might be an entirely appropriate and customary for a British subject to be styled in a formal reference using academic, honorary, professional, and social name suffixes, references to U. S. citizens generally exclude these. I agree that the "KBE" is out of place for Murrow. Of course the honor itself is a fact pertinent to Murrow and should be (and is) noted elsewhere in the article. — JonRoma 07:04, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sources[edit]

Can someone explain the weird "Sources" section, which appears to be nothing but a dead intenal link? I'm inclined to remove this, but thought I'd give a day or so in case there is something salvageable here that I am failing to understand. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:13, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where did the following info come from? Does this mean he government forced him to back off from the information in the report? Was he actually compelled?

Murrow's celebrity gave the agency a higher profile and may have helped it earn more funds from Congress. His transfer to a governmental position did lead to an embarrassing incident shortly after taking the job, when he was compelled to ask the BBC not to show "Harvest of Shame," [...] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.232.40.130 (talk • contribs) December 1, 2006.

Murrow and McCarthy[edit]

Considering that Murrow only began critical reporting about McCarthy in 1954, well into the fall of McCarthy, wasn't he just jumping on an already rolling bandwagon, and has he been given too much credit for his part in the censure of McCarthy? DTC 17:32, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article doesn't really give him all that much credit. It says McCarthy contributed to his own downfall as much as anyone else including Murrow.--Alhutch 17:35, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, perhaps this is more a criticism of "Good Nite and Good Luck". DTC 17:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know about how realistic it was but I thought it was a good movie. The guy who played Murrow should win an Oscar.--Alhutch 17:48, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
McCarty had been criticized by Print media for some time, Murrow was the first to do so using Television, I think an admittedly much more powerful medium. not only that but he showed McCarthy himself, who when seen in those hearings comes across rather unsympathetically.4.161.214.111 07:02, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ashes pun[edit]

From the article: "His ashes (from his cremation, not his cigarettes) were scattered on the site of his upstate home, Glen Arden Farm."

This seems wholly inappropriate and unencyclopedic to me and I think it should be removed. Any thoughts?--Alhutch 09:13, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

10-to-1, 15-to-1[edit]

Is there any basis for this edit] that changed a longstanding "10 to 1 in favor of Murrow" to "15 to 1 in favor of Murrow"? - Jmabel | Talk 05:15, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

see "inconsistancy" above. It makes sense that this article and See It Now should agree with each other, but I can't see a source for either figure. Blufive 22:27, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

USIA?[edit]

There needs to be more clarification on what the USIA is. The place in the article where it's mentioned doesn't even tell what USIA stands for, or when he was appointed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Michaelshull (talk • contribs) 21 April 2006.

Looks like this has been dealt with. - Jmabel | Talk 05:41, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"So long, and good luck?"[edit]

The article says, "with every night's German bombing raid, Londoners who might not necessarily see each other the next morning often closed their conversations not just with "so long," but with "so long, and good luck."" This doesn't make sense - a Londoner would never say, "So long." It's an Americanism. They almost certainly would've said, "Good night, and good luck," just as Murrow himself did. If nobody has any objections I'll change the article to reflect that. -- Hux 17:50, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A previous version noted that the host of an MSNBC show was echoing the phrase. The trouble is, Murrow took great pains to report objectively from London. The MSNBC show that was cited, is mostly liberal commentary and is not considered a "News" show. The citation amounts to a plug for a network show that is unrelated to Murrow. Therefore, I deleted the line. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.242.15.219 (talk) 22:38, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Murrow School of Communications at Washington State University?[edit]

Wouldn't be a good idea to include a mention of the communication school at Washington State University, Murrow's alma mater?--Msr69er 02:48, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Apparent vandalism[edit]

This page should be deleted. Someone put a redirect from Edward R. Murrow to this page, and changed Murrow's name to "Steven Masson (born Stupid Idiot)".

Don't quite get the joke. . .

These things happen - bored school kids get into the system and put in stuff they think is funny. Happens all the time at the pages on moon flights.. Just clean it up like you would puppy poop and go on. DrBear 17:11, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cats[edit]

How does Murrow qualify as being from Mount Vernon, Washington? The article doesn't mention him being from there.

A mcmurray 21:37, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Military rank?[edit]

Did Murrow have military rank in WWII? If so, what was it? Are war correspondents given a particular military rank? (Zencato 01:20, 9 December 2006 (UTC))[reply]

I'm pretty certain that Murrow remained in a civilian capacity throughout. Normally that is the status of American war correspondents, even now in these days of "embedding". - Jmabel | Talk 01:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Several recent dubious edits[edit]

I'm not going to try to sort through this, but I'm noting it here for the benefit of anyone actively working on this article. In the past three weeks [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edward_R._Murrow&diff=96347344&oldid=91816977 There have been quite a few changes with no explanation or citation, none of which strike me as obviously beneficial to the article. (I also corrected some changes that I know were wrong, which does not give me a lot of faith in the carefulness of the recent editors of the article.)

  • Birthday was changed from April 8 to April 9. If this is a matter of disagreement, someone should cite.
  • Date of speech before the Radio and Television News Directors Association in Chicago was changed from October 25 to October 15. Again, if this is a matter of disagreement, someone should cite.
  • Quite a bit of material was simply removed without comment. Perhaps not all of this belongs, but it certainly exceeds what should be removed without comment. The removal of the Buchenwald material seems to me particularly suspect as to the editor's intent:

Their coverage only heightened the American appetite for radio news, with listeners waiting regularly for Murrow's shortwave reports as analyst H. V. Kaltenborn in New York would announce, "Calling Ed Murrow; come in Ed Murrow."

When war broke out Murrow stayed in London and provided live radio broadcasts during the height of the London Blitz. Those broadcasts electrified radio audiences as news programming never had before. Previously, war coverage had mostly been provided by newspaper reports and earlier radio news programs simply featured an announcer reading wire-service reports in a studio.

Murrow's report from the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany provides an example of his uncompromising style of journalism, something that caused a great deal of controversy and won him a number of critics and enemies. He described the exhausted physical state of the concentration camp prisoners who had survived, mentioned "rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood" and he refused to apologize for the harsh tone of his words:


Murrow and his See It Now co-producer, Fred Friendly, paid for their own newspaper advertisement for the program; they were not allowed to use CBS' money for the publicity campaign or even use the CBS logo. Nonetheless, this 30-minute TV episode contributed to a nationwide backlash against McCarthy and against the Red Scare in general, and it is seen as a turning point in the history of television.

- Jmabel | Talk 00:13, 25 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, "dubious" is an understatement. Thanks for bring that to our attention, Jmabel -- I can't believe those deletions had gone unnnoticed. (I only watchlisted the page recently.) After seeing your note, I took a close look at all of those edits. Some were clearly experimental nonsense edits by one anon. editor, including the date change on the photo. The large deletions were all done by another anon. editor -- obvious vandalism. I've restored all of those deletions and reverted the date. Cgingold 11:13, 25 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. This is one of the many articles that I normally check every month or so, which puts me in a position to flag this sort of thing, but not to follow things closely. - Jmabel | Talk 05:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Advertising for Koch Vision - "Person to Person"[edit]

"The Best of Person to Person is currently being distributed under the Koch Vision label."

This sounds like guerilla advertising. Not directly related to Ed Murrow. It should be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ozsasin (talk • contribs) 23:54, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:Gngl.jpg[edit]

Image:Gngl.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 17:26, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Excessive number of images[edit]

This article contains an excessive number of images.
One image here wouldn't be "inadequate". Four would be perfectly sufficient. Six would be "a lot". Article currently contains fourteen. (Marilyn Monroe currently contains ten. :-) )
-- 201.37.229.117 (talk) 17:17, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image copyrights[edit]

I'm afraid that I've just tagged the majority of the images on this page as copyright violations. They were taken from a U.S. State Department website [1], but were not works of the U.S. Government. All of them are clearly marked on the source pages as copyrighted by AP, Tufts University, or others. Just being reprinted by a government agency does not make them PD. Some could perhaps be kept as fair use images, but probably not all of them. --dave pape (talk) 20:58, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adding sources[edit]

Having made changes to just about every part of this article, I think it's of great quality except for one thing: 95% of claims don't provide any citation! The content all makes good sense and I don't think there's a problem in accuracy, only verifiability.

It looks to me like whoever wrote the majority of the text in the first place was doing so from a small number of biographical sources. It would be a good idea to identify them and add a brief section to the top of the article (adding umpteen ref tags all leading to the same source is pointless) citing each as a major source. --Tom Edwards (talk) 17:15, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When?[edit]

Someone put a [when?] tag next to the text about Murrow developing cancer. Is this appropriate? Do we know that the cancer appeared in, say, 1957? 1961? There unfortunately was no way to know that Murrow had cancer until he developed symptoms and was diagnosed. The important fact here is he did develop cancer, which killed him in 1965. Therefore, the tag goes. Radiopathy (talk) 03:24, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously it is impossible to know when anyone first developed cancer; it is rarely diagnosed on the day a person contracts it. What is relevant is when the person was diagnosed. Nietzsche 2 (talk) 02:01, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Death[edit]

A recent IP edit claims he died in Pawling, New York, whereas the infobox gives the place of death as Brooklyn, New York. Can someone with access to the sources clarify if possible which is correct? Thanks. Artie P.S. (talk) 15:54, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dunno if I can help except to point out that he died on his farm, which I heard was in New York. It is here: [2]76.195.82.187 (talk) 18:47, 10 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Murrow died - and had his ashes scattered - at his farm called Glen Arden in Pawling, New York, which is in Dutchess County (about 1 hour 45 minutes from Brooklyn). But for some reason he is listed on Wikipedia as being buried in Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery. I'm going to remove any such references. It's possible - but HIGHLY unlikely - he was only cremated in Brooklyn. (If he died in Pawling, why would his body be moved to Brooklyn for cremation, then his ashes returned to Pawling for disposal?) Elsquared (talk) 07:49, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Curiousity[edit]

Spanish presidentiable José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero quoted Murrow's "Good night, Good luck" in the first presidential debate (Monday, February 25th, 2008) that would ultimately decide his re-election against conservative candidate Mariano Rajoy. you have an excellent report in the Spanish Wikipedia (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_debate_Rajoy-Zapatero) that includes Zapatero's explanation, days later, of Murrow's iconic phrase. ¿Should it be included? Greetings, (and good luck) JAWS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.155.152.5 (talk) 15:36, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that's worth including in Murrow's English article. --Tom Edwards (talk) 17:36, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

700 Cigarettes Per Day?[edit]

Seriously? Even if you assume that the man only slept 4 hours per night and outside of that was consistently smoking throughout the day, that would require him to smoke 35 cigarettes per hour, or roughly 1 cigarette every 1 minute and 40 seconds. It would be impossible for him to have smoked 700 cigarettes per day, unless he was only smoking only 1/4 of each cigarette before lighting up a new one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.73.47.9 (talk) 22:37, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Another Popular Culture Item[edit]

In the 2009 Smallville episode "Stiletto" the name of the convention Lois cannot enter is called the "Edward R. Murrow Press Society". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.111.182.12 (talk) 15:31, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"I doubt I could spend a half hour without a cigarette with any comfort or ease."[edit]

The quote, cited in the death section ("I doubt I could spend a half hour without a cigarette with any comfort or ease.") is unsourced and does not appear in the original transcript from 1955. See http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/sxe62c00 http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/wfo47a00/ Since pretty much everyone seems to be copy-pasting from wikipedia, it's almost impossible to actually trace the seemingly apocryphal origin of the quote.

It is true, though, that he smoked during the show. (I could look up a newspaper source for that). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.7.98.250 (talk) 19:15, 17 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Add "This is London" sound-bite?[edit]

I went to this page looking to listen to the famous "This is London" phrase from Murrow, but it isn't found on this page. I think a sound-bite clip of that phrase should be included in the WWII section. Here is a link to a youtube that contains the famous phrase. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZfxBXQAxzQ&list=PLUWV7YeicjR1V-NqBfCYM5XW_f0xN2Spc&index=1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.22.75.238 (talk) 20:05, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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