The Murrow Doctrine
The New Yorker
Issue of 2006-01-23
Posted 2006-01-16
There is a memorable entry in William Shirer’s “Berlin Diary” in which he describes—as, in effect, something that happened at work one day—the birth of broadcast journalism. It was Sunday, March 13, 1938, the day after Nazi troops entered Austria. Shirer, in London, got a call from CBS headquarters, in New York, asking him to put together a broadcast in which radio correspondents in the major capitals of Europe, led by Shirer’s boss, Edward R. Murrow, who was on the scene in Vienna, would offer a series of live reports on Hitler’s move and the reaction to it.
Shirer had to overcome two problems: CBS had no staff in Europe except Murrow and himself, so he had to find newspaper reporters in Berlin, Paris, and Rome; and then he had to line up shortwave transmitters that could carry the reporters’ voices to the United States. Somehow, he and Murrow pulled it off. “One a.m. came,” Shirer writes, “and through my earphones I could hear on our transatlantic ‘feedback’ the smooth voice of Bob Trout announcing the broadcast from our New York studio. Our part went off all right, I think. . . . New York said on the ‘feedback’ afterwards that it was a success. They want another one tonight.”
THE MURROW DOCTRINE
by NICHOLAS LEMANN
Why the life and times of the broadcast pioneer still matter.
by NICHOLAS LEMANN
Why the life and times of the broadcast pioneer still matter.
Issue of 2006-01-23
Posted 2006-01-16
There is a memorable entry in William Shirer’s “Berlin Diary” in which he describes—as, in effect, something that happened at work one day—the birth of broadcast journalism. It was Sunday, March 13, 1938, the day after Nazi troops entered Austria. Shirer, in London, got a call from CBS headquarters, in New York, asking him to put together a broadcast in which radio correspondents in the major capitals of Europe, led by Shirer’s boss, Edward R. Murrow, who was on the scene in Vienna, would offer a series of live reports on Hitler’s move and the reaction to it.
Shirer had to overcome two problems: CBS had no staff in Europe except Murrow and himself, so he had to find newspaper reporters in Berlin, Paris, and Rome; and then he had to line up shortwave transmitters that could carry the reporters’ voices to the United States. Somehow, he and Murrow pulled it off. “One a.m. came,” Shirer writes, “and through my earphones I could hear on our transatlantic ‘feedback’ the smooth voice of Bob Trout announcing the broadcast from our New York studio. Our part went off all right, I think. . . . New York said on the ‘feedback’ afterwards that it was a success. They want another one tonight.”
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