During World War Two, Edward R. Murrow flew twenty-five combat missions as a broadcast journalist. His first combat mission involved 500 planes, of which 50 were lost, but the novelty of his reporting won him even more fame and respect than his rooftop reporting during the London Blitz. He had become so valuable to CBS that they didn’t want him doing any more missions. His bosses told him that he’d already experienced the terror of combat and gotten the story that he’d set out to produce. Murrow responded that he’d only experienced the terror once, but the airmen were experiencing it over and over again. The real story, he said, was in living through this recurrent dance with death. So, he did another twenty-four missions.
I mention this because I can’t imagine today’s broadcast journalists doing anything of the kind. I do not completely dismiss the courage of today’s breed of journalist. Many took risks and some even lost their lives reporting the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Journalists have been kidnapped in Afghanistan, and Daniel Pearl was beheaded in Pakistan. But I cannot picture Brian Williams or Charlie Gibson or David Gregory or George Stephanopoulos or Chris Matthews playing Russian Roulette with their lives twenty-five times.
But more than a lack of courage, I notice a lack of any sense of public service. If today’s broadcast journalist did take such risks, I sense that they’d do it strictly for ratings. Maybe part of the problem is we fight wars we don’t need to fight. If the cause is at all controversial, a reporter feels no obligation to report with the same reckless abandon as our soldiers use in fighting the enemy. In fact, they feel it’s suspect to identify with our soldiers at all. We feel it, too.
I don’t know whether it’s a deterioration of our media or, more likely, the fallout from 40 years of fighting wars that need not have been fought. The whole spectacle has really taken a toll.
If they reported every night from the war zones .. especially these 2 wars .. the clamor would grow louder from the American people to get the hell out .. but it is a lack of courage as well .. they go out once .. and figure that’s it .. besides .. I am sure now .. they look at Bob Woodruff .. and figure .. not me!!
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Went into Iraq embedded with US forces to provide propaganda for the homefront. The glory of the First Gulf War to be repeated, see also lessons of Gaza War.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."It’s when news ceased to be part of the public affairs requirement for an FCC license and started being a profit center. And that happened when cable became the dominant medium in television. Cable, you see is not regulated by the FCC the way that broadcast is. Broadcast licenses are in exchange for a monopoly grant locally on a range of frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. Cable’s grants of monopoly are with the local governments that sought cable service. But that is only the wire. The programming can be on as many channels as can be multiplexed on the wire. So there is the illusion of a competitive market for information. And no Constitutional basis to regulate it.
yes but more than this…”we” (meaning us capitalists) turned a public service institution into a profit motivated corporation whose existence( and ability to keep producing profits) is insured….its the insurance companies who would never let top journalists, who are considered profit makers because “we” made them that way, go into really dangerous situations where they could be lost. i dont think we can blame the individual journalists. would you blame Booman for taking a job doing “journalism” for big bucks? my question is why did “we” allow our media servants to become media stars? is this just human nature? can we change it? how can “we” reward the journalism “we” find more meaningful and valuable?
Who do you mean “we”, kemosabe?
When regulations are removed, the market kills itself and brings down political and cultural institutions with it. Having a medium that because of its technological nature needed not to be regulated at the programming level and legally couldn’t be regulated because of the Constitution meant an end run around FCC public interest regulations.
“We” can’t reward journalism “we” find more meaningful and valuable because “we” cannot match dollar for dollar the advertising revenues of the media. And doing primary reporting (which “we” are back to depending on a compromised AP, Reuters, the New York Times, a sold-out Washington Post, and foreign news services for) costs a lot of money to do aside from the salaries. And the primary reporting was what Edward R. Murrow and other war correspondence were offering during World War II.
War is always a bad thing, it’s just that occasionally it is a necessary thing. The problem is that WWII was the perfect story of war (from our POV) and we have appropriated that story as the archetype for all wars, but it was without question the exception and not the rule – a villainous enemy with clear and stated intentions to eliminate everyone else and who even turns on his allies, a fully-mobilized society takes a few losses at first but comes back and utterly defeats the enemy, a time of prosperity follows for decades.
That’s not the norm.
The norm is the pain and suffering felt during and after the crusades and the Spanish wars against the Moors and the Mongol invasion of China and the Greco-Persian wars and the thirty years war and, of course, the hundred years war that lasted 116 years. Lots of bloodshed, little accomplished.
Genghis Khan and his Mongols being another notable exception.
Point being, it should surprise nobody that war is messy and unfulfilling – that’s the norm. Most wars are unnecessary and can not achieve the limited objectives that are set out for them. Either you set out for the utter annihilation of your enemy or you stick to diplomacy – everything else is pretty much guaranteed to fail.
Maybe they’re not really journalists, but play one on TV.
Personally I can’t imagine having the courage to be on television every day. Fame will eat you alive.
What do you think of Christiane Amanpour?
So are Richard Engel and Lara Logan.
Although everyone now about his WWII reporting from London, and his later confrontation of Joe McCarthy, I remember Murrow most for his documentary, Harvest of Shame, which appeared in 1960. It related to the exploitation of farm workers and the conditions under which they lived. He seemed to be a “champion of the oppressed,” as someone called him.
I guess we can single out a few other journalists who later followed his path, giving voice to injustice and poverty on occasion, but he seems to have set a standard for the Fourth Estate, before journalism was brought up by corporations, and Rupert Murdoch.
Serious question. If you are a progressive and you are sitting across the table from Roger Ailes (on a Sunday morning political tv show) for the first time and maybe only time ever, would you use the few minutes you have to take on Ailes who is the general of your enemy or would you continue to attack the President?
Take on Ailes, with out question.
WWII, for better or worse, was a cause essentially all Americans agreed on. It really did seem like a historic struggle over ultimate visions of what the world would be. It was heroic in the classical sense of the word, so it called for heroic telling.
Wars and invasions since then have more and more come to seem like just another piece in media/politics strategy games. Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam or Grenada are reported as plays in the political horse race, equals among other markers like taxes, gay rights, healthcare, marital escapades, climate change, or the name of the presidential doggy. We lack heroic war reporting for the same reason we lack heroic reporting of the daily stock averages — the subject just doesn’t warrant it.
I suppose, even hope, that there are still people who feel a chill of tribal pride and gratitude when we’re told of the sacrifices being made to “protect our freedom”, much as Cronkite, et al, did. The rest of us, including our reporters, find that feeling blocked by the agonizing reality that it just ain’t so.
And even Edward R. Murrow caved when faced with the murder of one his proteges, George Polk, whose murder by right-wing elements was covered up by not just American and British intelligence operatives, but by CBS, Murrow’s employer.
There’s an excellent book on that case by Kati Marton, a journalist, foreign correspondent, and former wife of Peter Jennings.
There’s also a not-so-good book written specifically to attempt to refute Marton’s findings. I’ve read them both – Marton’s is better.
I’ve long wanted to write about how Polk’s death presented a loud and clear message to the media, one from which they’ve never quite recovered: If you dare to tell the full truth, you may meet the same fate.
I find it ironic in the extreme that journalism’s highest award for investigative reporting is named after the guy whose own death was shamefully misreported or ignored by his former comrades, including, and in my mind, especially, Edward R. Murrow.