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

It is easy to mythologize Murrow (Edgerton, 1992) or to wax nostalgic for the supposed golden age of radio. Murrow himself betrayed nostalgia in his 1958 speech to the Radio-Television News Directors Association when he said "that most satisfying and rewarding instrument" of radio ought to "go backward" to a time when it was unsullied by commercialism and was "proud [and] alert" (Murrow, 1967, p. 357). Such a time may never have existed, particularly not in 1950 and 1951. Still, Hear It Now deserves remembrance for representing a moment when notions of collective conscience and responsibility still could be taken seriously and radio still could be seen as a means of upholding such values. Not least, Murrow and Friendly's work for both radio and television should be recalled for its admonition that the fault for falling short of our noblest aspirations has never rested anywhere but with ourselves.

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