Look Now, Pay Later

For a time and  time and time and time and time and time of fear, he already had a few brave words:

Perhaps we should warn you that there is one thing you won’t read, and that is a pat answer for the problems of life. We don’t pretend to make this a spiritual or psychological patent-medicine chest where one can come and get a pill of wisdom, to be swallowed like an aspirin, to banish the headaches of our times.

* Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.

    * During the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.
      For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally.

    * If radio news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, then I don't care what you call it— I say it isn't news.

    * One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the coporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this.

    * I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse.

    * I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation.

    * Do not be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their networks. They all have better taste. All are responsible to stockholders, and in my experience all are honorable men. But they must schedule what they can sell in the public market.

    * The sponsor of an hour's television program is not buying merely the six minutes devoted to commercial message. He is determining, within broad limits, the sum total of the impact of the entire hour. If he always, invariably, reaches for the largest possible audience, then this process of insulation, of escape from reality, will continue to be massively financed, and its apologist will continue to make winsome speeches about giving the public what it wants, or "letting the public decide."

    * If we go on as we are, we are protecting the mind of the American public from any real contact with the menacing world that squeezes in upon us. We are engaged in a great experiment to discover whether a free public opinion can devise and direct methods of managing the affairs of the nation. We may fail. But we are handicapping ourselves needlessly.

    * Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

    * We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

    * We are to a large extent an imitative society.

    * This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.
      Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, "When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men— not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it— and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Good Night, and Good Luck

Tom Mascaro provides some interesting history:

The genesis of the American TV documentary tradition is attributed to the CBS series See It Now, started in 1951 by the legendary team of Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly. See It Now set the model for future documentary series. Producers shot their own film rather than cannibalize other material, worked without a prepared script and allowed a story to emerge, avoided using actors, and produced unrehearsed interviews. This independence contributed to the credibility of See It Now's voice, as did Murrow and Friendly's courage in confronting controversy.

The most notable of the See It Now programs include several reports on McCarthyism, an episode that illustrates the uneasy association that exists between controversial documentaries, politics, and industry economics. The Aluminum Company of America, Alcoa, sought to sponsor See It Now, which featured the esteemed Murrow, to improve its image following antimonopoly decisions by the courts.

As McCarthyism increasingly damaged innocent reputations, Murrow and Friendly used their series to expose the groundless attacks. "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy" in 1954 employed the Senator's own words to discredit his false claims. Such programs made CBS and Alcoa uneasy. Alcoa refused to publicize or pay for some of the productions. Changing market conditions forced the company to withdraw sponsorship at the end of the 1955 season, and the program lost its weekly time period.

In June 1955, CBS began airing The $64,000 Question, which greatly increased revenues for its time slot, as well as for adjacent periods. In a climate that included political pressure on the network and its sponsor, coupled with economic pressures that favored revenues over prestige, support for See It Now waned and the program was scaled back to occasional broadcasts that lasted until summer 1958...

Strangely enough, Murrow's career was marked both in its inception, and its legacy, by Sundays.  He got his major boost in London as the first "radio foreign correspondent:"

Events pressed the new medium into a new role. On March 12, 1938, Shirer traveled to Vienna -- coincidentally, the same day the Germans were marching in, adding Hitler's native country to his Nazi state. The day's top story had landed in Shirer's lap, but he could not report it. German officials refused to let him broadcast and escorted him out of the radio station.
At Murrow's suggestion, Shirer flew to London to report his story on air from there. Murrow then headed for Vienna to cover subsequent events. From New York, CBS news director Paul White called Shirer to say he wanted reports from London, Vienna, Paris, Berlin and Rome, using American newspaper correspondents: "A half-hour show, and I'll telephone you the exact time for each capital in about an hour. Can you and Murrow do it?" "I said yes," Shirer recorded in his diary, "and we hung up. The truth is I didn't have the faintest idea."

In eight hours, and on a Sunday, Murrow and Shirer lined up newsmen to make reports, found the needed shortwave facilities and went on the air -- live. The broadcast, a great success, soon became a standard feature. Shortly thereafter, Shirer recorded in his diary: "The [Austrian] crisis has done one thing for us. Birth of the 'radio foreign correspondent' so to speak.

Although often hailed as the author of "the grestest moment in television history" for his See It Now series, the one that resulted in a congressional investigation of Joe McCarthy himself, Murrow would go on, beyond the inevitable backlash, to several projects.  The Small World debates would inspire a new format, a sort of parenthesis at the end of the week for the television to aspire to be more than "merely wires and lights in a box:"

See It Now was indeed cancelled, with CBS founder Paley complaining the program "gave me a stomachache."  But Murrow felt that the show had run its course. Now freed from the rigors of having to produce a 30-minute TV show every week, he produced a series of occasional TV special news reports that defined documentary news coverage. Beginning in 1958, he also hosted a talk show entitled Small World that brought together political figures for one-on-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.

Murrow's reporting brought him into repeated conflicts with CBS and founder Paley, which Fred Friendly summarized in his book Due to Circumstances Beyond our Control. After his last documentary Harvest of Shame, a report on the plight of migrant farm workers in the United States, he resigned to accept a position as head of the United States Information Agency in 1961. President John F. Kennedy offered Murrow the position, which he viewed as "a timely gift".

Murrow was a heavy smoker all his life, and he was rarely seen without a cigarette. His chain smoking resulted in his developing lung cancer, and he died at his home in 1965.

Comments

[Alain]

Matt, a very timely post. It is quite remarkable that Murrow was given the room to accomplish as much as he did. Can one imagine a major network reporter launching an investigation into any of the major issues we face today (torture, false intelligence, 9/11)? What strikes me is that the questioning of power today is widespread and takes place in the "alternative media," like the blogosphere, or foreign news outlets. But in terms of major news outlets, Murrow's fears of financial concerns displacing journalistic integrity have clearly become fact. It is rather disheartening. But perhaps it is in alternative outlets like the web that we can look for glimmers of hope. Thanks.

[Matt]

You know, that was my response as well, Alain. But there's a flip-side to appreciate too, some might say. Back then, what he dared to do--to directly confront a senator, to pit against a senator the word of a mere newsman--well it was unheard of. And he paid the inevitable price.

Also, everyone sure smoked a lot. I recommend the Clooney film; artfully done, full of sincerity, humor and suspense. Also, it's short (almost like a gesture of respect to the audience's intelligence, the abruptness of the ending).

The education of seeing the old TV cigarette commercials is worth the price of a ticket alone. Things have, after all, not changed so much, but from that distance the driving advertising motive especially is exposed as so much misfitting, shameless banality. We can't imagine that it's somehow integrated into the lifeworld of these critical, fearless newsmen, but there they are, smoking non-stop, on air, etc. (No offense to modern-day smokers, of course, but these guys seemed so much less irritable, really...they must have been more conscience-free.)

[Alain]

Matt, thanks. The smoking is an interesting angle. I know it was condsidered a major "first amendment issue" at the time the smoking adds were banned in the 1970's. Clearly there is a disconnect between the perception of an "independent" media and the reality. What comes to mind was the Rather controversey on the 60 minutes piece regarding Bush's military service. Rather was villified by the right wing bloggers for his bias when the substance of the charges were never disputed. It was an example where "alternative media" worked against the truth - but I suppose that does not preclude it being an instrument for something more productive.

[Matt]

One wonders what R. Murrow would make of the state of affairs today...I suspect he would be profoundly disappointed in his self-declared scion, Dan Rather. He might be excited about blogs, after a period of severe cynicism over declining seriousness and (investigative) journalistic standards, and if won over, but probably not, you know, euphoric--and not only because blogs dissolve the traditional authority and cultural standards of integrity on which the classic news anchor and his paradigm were founded--including something of an old-school leftism with real balls (from which we could still learn a great deal, I tend to think.) They're also just plain easy to ignore, and largely ineffective (a real opposition party wouldn't hurt either, of course). At the same time, too much hand-wringing and navel-gazing over "paradigm shifts" tends to gloss over the more basic problem today, one of echo-chamber 24-hour-corporate-driven-news channels with neither courage, originality nor intelligence. And to large degree this is the entirely predictable result of corporate mergers, yes. You are of course right, some things have really changed. Sorry to ramble on after the somewhat obvious, though. I appreciate the comments; thanks.

By the way, those first two 'timely' links are simply infuriating, aren't they?

[Alain]

Matt, thanks. Your rambling is very cogent. It was that second link that is particularly disturbing. What Kind of freakin threat does a college Gay and Lesbian organization pose to the safety of the United States. I can not even think of a response to this sort of behavior. Where is the outrage? Where is the liberal media? Can someone wake up Brian Williams from his catatonic state? I appreciate you linking to these reports because it is something that I have not paid enough attention to. With the Republicans in controll of all branches of the government, how can we get President Bush and Vice President Strangle Love impeached? I wish I knew. Thanks.

[anon]

Apparently breaking the law explicitly 17 times and playing despot with our democracy is not enough. Someone has to stand the fuck up. Democracy is fragile, folks!

[Matt]

Call me crazy but I think the NYTimes is finally trying (an impressionistic act, at least) though granted about two years too late. There does seem a gathering storm in the air (it would of course be nice if this sort of storm amounted to more than an opportunistic ritual hand-wringing, long after the fact--though it does bear sometimes, in fleeting moments, a vague resemblance to something like a democracy).

[Matt]

Anyway...the ACLU has a blog up here discussing the movie, as well as modern-day McCarthyism.

Amazon is apparently now selling a four-disk collection of Murrow's broadcasts, including the program on McCarthy.

got Olbermann?