Radio prototype: Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly's Hear It Now.

Feature Stories. A month into Hear It Now's run, Murrow ended the broadcast with a statement of purpose: "Just as we believe that often one picture is worth a thousand words, occasionally one word or one sound is worth a dozen pictures" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951c). That week's show provided vivid examples of their philosophy in action, including a piece on the national budget. "How do you translate the budget of the United States into sound?" asked Murrow. The answer was to record the roar of a federal printing press that made $1,000 bills at the rate of 180,000 per minute. Even at that speed, the press still would have to work 8 hours a day for 2 1/2 years to print enough bills to cover the entire budget, said Murrow. Then, to show how the budget was allocated, he took 100 pennies in hand and gradually dropped them before the microphone. Health and education, the census, and slum clearance received 4 cents of every dollar (plink, plink, plink, plink). In contrast, national defense received 58 cents, which Murrow underscored with a long, clattering fistful of coins (Murrow & Friendly, 1951c).

That same program featured a freewheeling treatise on the common cold, which Murrow said he was suffering from at that very moment. A montage of radio commercials promising cold relief was followed by another montage of people offering their pet home remedies. Humans and apes were the only two species that came down with colds, said Murrow--and then there was a gorilla sneeze. Natural sound from a vinegar factory was also heard; it happened that colds were relatively rare there, which a foreman credited to fumes killing the germs (Murrow & Friendly, 1951c).

Hear It Now continued airing features using ample sound and Murrow's spare narration. It followed boxer Sugar Ray Robinson Valentine's Day shopping before he headed to the ring to pound Jake LaMotta to a pulp (Murrow & Friendly, 1951g). Joe Wershba and Ed Scott visited the Blue Ridge Mountains to produce an "oral document" of "Moonshine, USA" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951q). There also was a playful if at times patronizing holiday story on women's hats: "Easter just isn't Easter without a new bonnet--at least that's what our wives have been telling us," said Murrow. From Paris, David Schoenbrun reported on a new hat design debuting on the fashion runway. That was followed by a recording from a New York store in which a salesperson sold a knockoff of the same design for $10.95. The salesperson assured her customer that she looked "chic," which she pronounced as "chick" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951k).

Domestic Issues. A major story during Hear It Now's run was the Kefauver Committee hearings on organized crime. The series presented excerpts of mobster Frank Costello parrying Senate queries ("I don't answer no trick questions"), followed by stories of how TV had turned the hearings into the "great new hit show in the land." A cinema owner lamented the decline in business, and a man complained that his wife was too engrossed in the telecasts to do housework (Murrow & Friendly, 1951j, k).

Just prior to the Kefauver hearings, a point-shaving scandal had rocked college basketball. "This occurred in a climate where consciences have become calloused, where the dollar is the big symbol," said Murrow. However, America's youth would meet their test "if they get the leadership they deserve" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951h). In a later report on juvenile delinquency, Murrow condemned those who persisted in "passing the buck," adding, "If we continue in our failure to enforce our laws, the responsibility for the degradation of our youth will be ours" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951v).

The domestic story receiving the most attention was the home front's response to the Korean War. There was a Christmas segment on how Peoria, Illinois, was reacting to the national emergency and a similar report on Detroit, the "heart of industrial might" (Murrow & Friendly, 1950b, 1951e). In response to war-related inflation, the series featured the "biography of a pound of steak," tracing it from a Montana ranch and an Iowa feed farm through the Chicago stockyards and finally to a New York City butcher, with all parties disavowing blame for higher meat prices (Murrow & Friendly, 1951d).

Murrow was especially keen that citizens assume responsibility regarding the war overseas. "Has any greatness been demanded of you recently?" he asked his listeners, adding that they should "as free men and women accept and welcome the demands" being made of them (Murrow & Friendly, 1950b). To mark the 40th anniversary of the Triangle factory fire, Hear It Now reported on the New York garment industry at a time when labor-management clashes threatened to disrupt wartime mobilization. Murrow said "compromise and reason" had dramatically improved working conditions while also demonstrating the importance of good labor relations: "The fabric of this country has been woven by all of us.... It's a good garment, not completely finished, needing constant attention, but still the envy of our neighbors" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951i).

Korea. The war itself was the dominant story. CBS's Korea correspondents included George Herman, John Jefferson, and Robert P. Martin; rather than voice stories themselves for Hear It Now, they usually sent raw tape to New York to be fashioned into pieces that Murrow narrated. Occasionally, though, they recorded on-scene reports for the series. Robert Pierpoint, then only 25 and new to the front, produced what Murrow called a "rare record of a human being's indoctrination to combat," highlighted by a "friendly" artillery round falling short of its target and exploding near where Pierpoint had hurriedly taken cover (Murrow & Friendly, 1951t; see also Persico, 1988, p. 318).

The coverage encompassed the grimmest stages of the war. By January 1951, the Chinese had overrun Seoul. Over sound of the mass flight ahead of the Chinese advance, Murrow described the scene: "The lonely, lost children looking vainly for their parents. The dead rotting on the roadside. The smell and the frozen dust of battle and retreat and disaster everywhere. And everyone heading south" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951b). Later, under General Matthew Ridgway, the tide was turned and Seoul was retaken. By Easter, after a period in which Murrow said "our faith in military leaders and in ourselves as a people was badly shaken," there was reason for optimism: "In addition to all the deep religious significance of Easter, it marks the beginning of good fighting weather. It is a season suitable not only for hope, but for courage" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951k).

Other than the oblique reference to shaken faith in military leaders, Murrow hid any reservations he may have carried over from his ill-fated report from Korea early in the war. He made no pretense at impartiality, discussing U.S. forces in "we" and "our" terms while describing the other side as "a fanatical enemy attacking and dying" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951r). Some of Hear It Now's references to the Chinese recalled those aimed at the Japanese during the previous war. Murrow summarized one U.S. battlefield communique: "'They're coming at us like fleas, [and] we're killing them like fleas'" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951g). Soldiers interviewed after a particularly bloody clash described counting the dead "chinks" piled before each gun emplacement so that proper credit could be given to those manning the guns (Murrow & Friendly, 1951q).

If the enemy was dehumanized, the American serviceman was lionized. Hear It Now's grandiose "profiles of the week" gave way to the "little picture" stories that See It Now later made famous (e.g., Murrow & Friendly, 1955, pp. 55-67). One program visited the Memphis parents of a young soldier who had won the Distinguished Service Cross: "He happened to be a Negro," said Murrow (Murrow & Friendly, 1951f). There also was a lengthy piece using what Murrow called the "smallest, most inconspicuous equipment we could get" to record the tenderly awkward reunion of a Korea veteran with his family, including the infant child he had never seen (Murrow & Friendly, 1951r).

The wounded received attention as well. Robert Pierpoint flew with a helicopter crew transporting casualties to a "MASH" field hospital (Murrow & Friendly, 1951v). Another segment began with the sound of sawing. "No, they're not cutting wood," said Murrow. "They're cutting off a soldier's arm at Walter Reed General Hospital. That's not a very pleasant sound. But then war isn't very pleasant, either." A report followed on how the hospital rehabilitated military casualties of the war (Murrow & Friendly, 1951m).

No Hear It Now piece generated more response than its "biography of a pint of blood." The story began with Murrow warning that it would "use sounds and voices franker and less temperate than those usually heard on the radio. We believe that too much is not eversaid on the radio." The story then followed a pint of blood from a donor's arm in America to an operating table in Korea, where it helped save a wounded corporal. Murrow concluded with a direct appeal to listeners: "What about your blood? Can you spare a pint?" The program prompted half a million donations across the country (Murrow & Friendly, 1951f; "Some Facts," 1951, pp. 621-622).