Edward R. Murrow

February 15, 2006 Blue Plaque Dedication

Ask any broadcast journalist who have been the most important members of our tribe and the name of Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) will probably be heard first. We regularly invoke it when we talk about what the profession should be -- "Well, Murrow wouldn't want us pandering to the lowest common denominator" or "Murrow understood that news has to be fair and balanced" or even "Murrow would be spinning in his grave if he could see how low broadcasting has sunk".

We call on him in troubled journalistic times as some might call on Saint Christopher during a rough plane ride.

I don't know how Murrow would feel about this. I never met him - he died when I was eight. I didn't even know much about his personal life until relatively late in my broadcasting career. But I do remember, at an early age, hearing recordings of his reports from London during World War II. He told stories about German planes and burning buildings and people scurrying underground in the middle of the night to seek shelter. Unlike some other broadcasters of the time who could have been declaiming from the pulpit, Murrow's reports were, all at once, authoritative, intimate, conversational, informative -- and you couldn't take your ears off them. He and the small group of reporters who came to be known as "The Murrow Boys" -- William Shirer, Eric Sevareid, Larry LeSeuer, Howard K. Smith, Winston Burdett, Charles Collingwood, Cecil Brown, Mary Marvin Breckinridge (the Murrow Boy who was a girl) and the last of them still with us, Richard C. Hottelet -- were the creators of modern broadcast journalism. They were reporters who witnessed world-changing events and then told us about them to the best of their abilities. As luck would have it, their abilities were remarkable.

When I moved to London for CBS News in 2000, I hadn't planned on doing anything special about Ed Murrow. I thought it would be interesting to see some of the places he'd seen during the war, maybe imagine myself on the roof of the BBC's Broadcasting House, looking up as he did at the night sky as it filled with planes ("Just overhead now, the burst of the anti-aircraft fire... and the searchlights now are feeling almost directly overhead. Now you'll hear two bursts a little nearer in a moment... (BOOM, BOOM). There they are..." Real Audio courtesy Old Time Radio). I remember walking by Murrow's home at 84 Hallam Street (I'd learned the address from some of the books I'd read about him over the years) and thinking "So this is where he lived!" The last time I walked by the house, just a few weeks before I was to return to the States, I thought, "You know, there should be a marker or something here...".

So I applied for a Blue Plaque. That's a historical marker for buildings in Britain in which famous or interesting people lived. The people who administer the plaque program agreed that Murrow was both. On February 15th, 2006, a few of us are gathering in London to dedicate the Edward R. Murrow Blue Plaque. It's an excuse for me to meet some of his colleagues, friends and family members and pay my respects to a man they knew and whom I admire.

The next time you're in London, I hope you'll stop by the house on Hallam Street and tell Ed's ghost he fought the good fight for good journalism. Tell him it's still being fought.

And tell him I wish he were still around to lead it.