Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly's See It Now has long been
saluted as a pioneering television news program (e.g., Leab, 1983).
Particularly renowned is the program's 1954 expose of Senator
Joseph McCarthy (e.g., Doherty, 2003, pp. 161-188; Murray, 1975;
Rosteck, 1994; Thornton, 2003), which drew renewed interest via the 2005
movie Good Night, and Good Luck. The film's portrayal of the
Murrow-McCarthy confrontation was praised as a reminder "that
government needs a vigorous, even oppositional press to find its best
nature" (Carr, 2005, p. 12).
In comparison, the radio series that was the prototype for See It
Now has received little attention. Hear It Now aired on CBS Radio only
between December 1950 and June 1951. Nevertheless, the series is a
unique record of a tumultuous moment in American history, ranging from
the darkest days of the Korean War and Douglas MacArthur's firing
to the Kefauver crime hearings and the debate over sending U.S. troops
to Europe.
Furthermore, Hear It Now illuminates an important but heretofore
obscure chapter in what has been called the "most productive, most
influential partnership" ever in broadcast journalism (Bliss, 1991,
p. 233). The series combined Friendly's innovative production
techniques with Murrow's take on the major events and figures of
the day. That take, rather than being "oppositional," stressed
collective responsibility and reason, much as See It Now later would.
Indeed, the radio series helped establish many of the themes that its
television successor would employ, including pointed commentary from
Murrow toward Joseph McCarthy. In brief, Hear It Now provided a capstone
to Murrow's career in his preferred medium of radio while building
the foundation for his and Friendly's work in television news.
Previous Research
Just as See It Now has received considerable attention, so too has
Murrow's radio journalism. However, the focus has been almost
entirely on his work immediately before and during World War II.
Historians have examined Murrow's role in establishing CBS's
news programming and team in Europe as the continent descended into war
(e.g., Cloud & Olson, 1996; Godfrey, 1990; Rudner, 1981), as well as
in mobilizing American support for Britain after the war began (e.g.,
Culbert, 1976; Seib, 2006). Murrow's celebrated broadcasts spanning
the Blitz to Buchenwald have been anthologized (Bernstein &
Lubertozzi, 2003; Murrow, 1967), analyzed by scholars (e.g., Barnouw,
1968; Douglas, 1999, pp. 161-198; Godfrey, 1993; Smith, 1978), and
discussed at length by biographers (Edwards, 2004; Kendrick, 1969;
Persico, 1988; Sperber, 1986).
Murrow's postwar radio work, in particular Hear It Now, has
received much less scrutiny. One anthology (Murrow, 1967) includes
several of his news commentaries from 1946-1961, whereas Murray (1994,
pp. 25-39) examines a 1958 documentary on juvenile delinquency called
"Who Killed Michael Farmer?" in the context of Murrow's
other radio journalism. Neither Murray nor the anthology discusses Hear
It Now, however. Fred Friendly (1967) himself gave the series only
passing mention in his memoir, as also was the case with a 1965 history
of broadcast documentary (Bluem, 1965). Murrow's biographers (e.g.,
Kendrick, 1969, pp. 314-319, 329-330; Persico, 1988, pp. 284-298;
Sperber, 1986, pp. 320-322, 351-354) provide accounts of how the
Murrow-Friendly partnership and Hear It Now came to be, but offer little
on the actual content of the series itself. One (Persico, 1988, p. 467)
refers to it as a "now-forgotten" program.
In his broadcast journalism history, Bliss (1991, p. 234) does
credit Hear It Now for "setting the pattern for radio news specials
forever after," echoing the approbation of Murrow biographer
Alexander Kendrick (1969, p. 330). Similarly, a radio encyclopedia
declares that Hear It Now "was more important tha[n] its mere
six-month run" might suggest in that it was the model for See It
Now (Sterling, 2004, p. 696). Again, however, there has yet to be any
detailed discussion of the radio series' content or evolution. In
contrast to Murrow's wartime broadcasts and See It Now, scripts and
recordings of Hear It Now have not been widely available. Consequently,
questions have gone largely unaddressed regarding what stories the radio
series covered or how it covered them, how it dovetailed with or
differed from Murrow's other work, or how it served as the
prototype for its television successor.
The present study aims at answering those questions. Its primary
source material consists of transcription discs of all 27 hour-long Hear
It Now programs that were recorded from the original 1950-1951
broadcasts and subsequently stored in a university archive. The author
listened to each of the discs with an ear toward common themes and
storytelling devices. In addition, the author drew upon documents from
the microfilm edition of Murrow's collected papers. Those contain
correspondence, publicity, and clippings related to Hear It Now's
production as well as a script of a pilot of sorts for the series,
although they do not include scripts of the series itself. The papers
also do not contain much in the way of correspondence between Murrow and
Friendly or CBS executives concerning the birth of the series. For that
part of the story, the present study relies upon Murrow's
biographers (who knew or interviewed some of the principals); it also
draws upon news accounts from the day's trade and popular press.
Origins of Hear It Now
In 1947, Edward R. Murrow concluded a brief stint as a CBS
vice-president. "I was going to revolutionize radio from the
inside--make it adult and intelligent," he later said (Wertenbaker,
1953, p. 36). However, he disliked administration, and he returned to
the air with a nightly newscast and a vow "not to use this
microphone as a privileged platform from which to advocate action"
(Murrow, 1967, p. 115).
Before resigning his managerial post, Murrow did help create the
CBS Radio Documentary Unit, described as "more ambitious,
comprehensive and vital than any other effort in print or sound" in
aiming to provoke citizen response to social problems (Heller, 1947, p.
X11). An example was 1947's The Eagle's Brood, reported and
written by Robert Lewis Shayon. It explored the causes of juvenile
delinquency and called for the creation of neighborhood councils. Like
other radio documentaries of the time, it used actors and dramatizations
instead of recorded actualities (Shayon, 2001, pp. 101-109).
In fact, CBS and NBC had long banned recordings. Soon after the
war, however, the networks started using them to rebroadcast programs to
different time zones ("Disks Catch On," 1947). Norman Corwin
also had taken a wire recorder around the world for his 1947 CBS
documentary series One World Flight (Ehrlich, 2006; Lawrence, 1947).
Plastic audiotape came into common use by the following year; it proved
a vast improvement in terms of cost efficiency, audio quality, and ease
of editing ("Tape for the Networks," 1948).
Recordings underlay the original pairing of Murrow and Friendly.
Friendly wanted to produce a phonograph album history of the Depression
and war years featuring newsmakers' actual voices. He took his idea
to agent J. G. Gude, who introduced Friendly to Murrow. The CBS
journalist narrated the album, and I Can Hear It Now became a surprise
hit for Columbia Records in late 1948, taking advantage of a musicians
union recording ban and the resulting demand for fresh material. A pair
of sequels followed ("Runaway," 1949; see also Friendly, 1967,
pp. xvii-xviii; Kendrick, 1969, pp. 314-317; Persico, 1988, pp. 284-288;
Sperber, 1986, pp. 320-322).
Subsequent to the first I Can Hear It Now album, Murrow recorded a
1949 pilot for a CBS radio magazine that included his commentary on
"how to control Communism without endangering the right of
dissent" ("Sunday with Murrow," pp. 541-542). The pilot
never aired; according to one account, CBS executives and potential
sponsors believed that there already were "'too many'
news documentaries on the air" (Kendrick, 1969, p. 319). The next
year, Murrow traveled to Korea after war erupted there, and he filed a
bleak report asking whether "serious mistakes" had been made
and whether the war would only drive Korea further toward communism. CBS
incensed Murrow by not airing his report on the grounds that it could
hurt the war effort (Murrow, 1967, pp. 166-169; Persico, 1988, pp.
289-293; Sperber, 1986, pp. 340-349).
Meanwhile, Friendly had gone to NBC, where he produced the
four-part radio series The Quick and the Dead shortly after the Korean
War's outbreak. The series traced the development of nuclear
weaponry and examined the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Actors played
figures such as Einstein, and the first atomic bomb test was recreated
with mallets pounding a huge drumhead and 16 turntables all playing
thunder at once. There also were numerous actualities from doctors,
scientists, and others (Jacobi, 1950).
The series prompted CBS to recruit Friendly while Murrow was still
in Korea. According to CBS public affairs director Sig Mickelson,
executives William Paley and Frank Stanton had grown dissatisfied with
dramatized documentaries. Mickelson suggested using more taped
actualities and (at J. G. Gude's suggestion, according to Gude)
recommended hiring Friendly, to which Stanton agreed (Persico, 1988, pp.
288-289; Sperber, 1986, pp. 352-353). Competition may have played a role
in CBS's interest in rejuvenating its documentaries after not
airing Murrow's pilot the previous year; apart from The Quick and
the Dead, NBC had already begun its series Voices and Events, built
around actualities from each week's news (e.g., "Record on
Vogeler," 1950). In addition, the Korean War had made news more of
an audience draw (Bliss, 1991, p. 233).
CBS's move also extended the Murrow-Friendly partnership that
had been so lucrative for the network's record division and that
would prove a turning point in Murrow's career. Mickelson and
Stanton's key role was ironic given Murrow's antipathy toward
both men (Persico, 1988, pp. 288-289). Still, when Murrow and
Friendly's new radio series was announced, Variety said it was
William Paley who had "conceived" the program and
"practically committed [CBS] to an open budget" ("CBS to
'Hear It Now,'" 1950, p. 29). Paley often claimed credit
not due him, but he did regularly help shape CBS's programming, and
he enjoyed a warm relationship with Murrow in marked contrast to that
between Murrow and other CBS executives (Smith, 1990). One account says
Paley insisted on allotting a full hour for the new series instead of
the half-hour that Murrow and Friendly had proposed (Kendrick, 1969, p.
329). It was scheduled on 173 affiliates as a sustaining or
non-sponsored program and given what one critic called "an
excellent and highly salable time" on Friday nights "at no
little sacrifice" for CBS (Crosby, 1950, p. 21).
Network publicity said the series would employ all of CBS's
resources and keep "four recorders going day and night" in a
tape room "for exhaustive coverage of the news" ("Never
Did So Many," 1950, p. 125). The working title was A Report to the
Nation, which had been borrowed from an earlier CBS newsmagazine and
which also had served as the title of a special that Murrow and Friendly
had produced following the 1950 midterm elections (Bliss, 1991, pp.
280-281; Lichty, 2004, p. 476). By its debut on December 15, 1950, the
series had a new name explicitly linking it to the record album that had
inspired it: Hear It Now.
Debut and Critical Response
CBS compared Hear It Now to "a weekly news magazine"
devoted to "every facet of today's living" ("Never
Did So Many," 1950, p. 125). It would have regular contributors:
Don Hollenbeck presenting media criticism along the lines of his former
program CBS Views the Press, Red Barber covering sports, Abe Burrows
reviewing theater, and so forth. The series also was to offer an
original musical score each week by an eminent composer. Finally, it
would profile a prominent figure in that week's news.
The debut began with an audio montage of newsmakers interlaced with
a David Diamond musical theme that later would be reused on See It Now.
An announcer stressed that "all the voices and sounds you will hear
are real and are presented as they were spoken in the heat and confusion
of a world in crisis," with the hope that "the collection of
these scraps of sound into a weekly recorded history may add another
dimension to our understanding in the difficult days ahead" (Murrow
& Friendly, 1950a).
Indeed, Hear It Now premiered at a particularly difficult and
crisis-laden moment. A Chinese counteroffensive in Korea was threatening
to force U.S. forces off the peninsula. The program featured sounds of
the battle combined with Murrow's narration ("That explosion
was incoming mail!") and an actuality from a wounded marine:
"The Chinese were around us like bees. There was a million of them
at least. How I got out ... I'll never know" (Murrow &
Friendly, 1950a).
The profile of the week highlighted General Douglas MacArthur, whom
Murrow called "one of the most dominant and controversial"
figures of his time (Murrow & Friendly, 1950a). CBS had cabled
MacArthur and his press chief in an unsuccessful attempt to have the
general record a statement for the program (Murrow, 1950). As it
developed, the profile of MacArthur relied mostly on archival
recordings. Murrow took no clear stand on the general, but did point to
MacArthur's promises that his military strategy would produce
peace, which obviously was far from being realized.
Alongside news of Korea and domestic reaction to it (including a
Montana draft board that was on strike because the atom bomb had not
been used), Red Barber reported on the ouster of the baseball
commissioner, Abe Burrows critiqued a Broadway revue, Bill Leonard
(later to become CBS News president) praised the film Born Yesterday,
and Don Hollenbeck tweaked President Truman for his "astonishingly
indiscreet" letter blasting newspaper critic Paul Hume after Hume
panned Truman's daughter's voice recital. The program also
featured Carl Sandburg reciting from The People, Yes. Murrow said the
poet was asked to read "because this is a time for great oratory or
great wisdom, and we seem to have little oratory to brace us these
days" (Murrow & Friendly, 1950a).
Hear It Now's premiere received a 10.5 Nielsen rating, which
Murrow seemed to find mildly disappointing but which CBS trumpeted as
representing 10,000,000 listeners (Murrow, 1951a; "Some
Facts," 1951, p. 620). Billboard praised the show as
"alternately stirring, grave, humorous and provocative," and a
riposte to "the sad sacks who have been holding their own private
wake over the still warm body of radio" (Morse, 1950, p. 8). Others
had reservations. The New York Times's Jack Gould (1950, p. 51)
charged that the debut had been "abominably organized," adding
that "when Hear It Now learns to relax it should be a vastly
improved program." For John Crosby (1950, p. 21) of The New York
Herald-Tribune, the series was "one of the finest ideas to come up
in a long time." However, it needed to be more critical and
"take off its gloves and swing."
Sentiments similar to Crosby's came from ex-CBS documentarian
Robert Lewis Shayon, now a Saturday Review critic. "It is a good
thing to be using actuality tapes," wrote Shayon (1951, p. 30), but
they should be coupled with an "honest, creative, responsible, and
courageous" editorial viewpoint. Implicit in Shayon's critique
was that Hear It Now ought to be more like his own CBS documentary The
Eagle's Brood, which had not used actualities but which had
vigorously sought to mobilize listeners.
Murrow took such comments mostly in stride, saying it was necessary
to "make your mistakes and get some informed criticism"
("Hear It Now," 1950b, p. 44). On the air, he said Hear It Now
was "still experimenting" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951a). In a
letter to a sympathetic listener, though, he took issue with arguments
that the show should be more outspoken: "It may be that at times we
do nothing more than contribute to the confusion of our fellow
countrymen, but at least we give them their confusion raw" (Murrow,
1951b, p. 640). In that he echoed Friendly, who said they sought to use
tape creatively and "let people listen to the raw stuff"
("Hear It Now," 1950a, p. 44).
In fact, Hear It Now in succeeding weeks would grow ever more
adventuresome in its sound experiments, while Hollenbeck, Leonard,
Burrows, and Barber all would be quietly dropped. Aspirations of
presenting an original musical score each week also were abandoned;
Diamond's theme would be heard at the start and close as well as
during a station break, but all other music in the series would be
indigenous to the stories being presented. At the same time, a cautious
but distinctive editorial stance would emerge.
Techniques and Themes
Hear It Now's staff included Joe Wershba and Ed Scott (who
would both also work on See It Now), John Aaron and Jesse Zousmer (who
would coproduce Murrow's TV show Person to Person), and Irving
Gitlin (who would become a top documentarian for both CBS and NBC). They
worked all week to prepare each Friday program. CBS reporters sent tape
to New York via plane or closed circuit. Friendly shaped the various
stories into a rough cut while Murrow worked on his narration tying
together the elements. The final program was then taped to be played
back on the air shortly afterward, with a backup copy ready in case the
master tape went haywire (Twitty, 1951).
According to one observer, "Murrow made the principal
decisions as to contents and order of precedence" while
"Friendly was responsible for the close, meticulous editing of the
program"; although Murrow restrained Friendly's more
extravagant impulses, there still was plenty of room for irony and
invention (Kendrick, 1969, pp. 329-330). That was true of Hear It
Now's stories across several categories of coverage.
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).
MacArthur's Dismissal. If the Korean War was the biggest story
of its time, the firing of the man who had directed the war was a close
second. President Truman relieved Douglas MacArthur of his duties on
April 11, 1951. Hear It Now dedicated more than half of that week's
program to the "supercharged atmosphere of pressure and
conflict" in Washington and the outrage among Republicans and much
of the nation's press. Murrow observed that all the "heat and
passion appear to have caused some to forget that the war also goes
on," adding, "If we are to do our duty over the long haul, we
may need more stability and less hysteria and blind partisanship than we
have displayed during the past three days" (Murrow & Friendly,
1951m).
MacArthur delivered his famous speech to Congress the following
week. Again, Hear It Now spent the majority of its airtime on the
general. Murrow said MacArthur was to "Congress and the nation a
symbol of their own dissidence and disunity" (Murrow &
Friendly, 1951n). The week after that, Murrow reported that
"invective and accusations [still] ran heavy" even though the
nation confronted "decisions as important as any we have ever had
to face" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951o).
Hear It Now responded with what Murrow described as an attempt
"to present the issues in this very serious debate": a long,
sober overview of Truman and MacArthur's contrasting positions
regarding Korea and the Far East (Murrow & Friendly, 1951q).
Meanwhile, Congressional testimony highlighted the substantial concerns
about MacArthur's views. By the end of May, Hear It Now noted that
interest in MacArthur seemed to be waning, and partisan passions were
displaced into the annual Congressional baseball game (Murrow &
Friendly, 1951q, r, s).
The "Great Debate" over Europe. The MacArthur controversy
in many ways paralleled what was termed the "Great Debate"
over committing U.S. forces to Europe under Dwight Eisenhower's
command (Murrow & Friendly, 1951g). President Truman asserted he had
the authority to make that commitment; Republicans said he required
Congressional approval. The debate also pitted isolationist Republicans
such as Herbert Hoover and Robert Taft against the party's
internationalists such as Thomas Dewey.
Hear It Now devoted substantial coverage to the controversy, and
again Murrow lamented the angry divisions that had resulted. "No
one can say how much damage the months of debate and confusion have
caused in Europe among our allies, 3,000 miles nearer the threat of
Russia," he said after the Senate finally reached a compromise
(Murrow & Friendly, 1951l). He had been an internationalist from at
least the time he covered the London Blitz (Seib, 2006), but he muted
those sympathies on Hear It Now.
The closest thing to an exception came in Murrow's comments
upon the death of Senator Arthur Vandenberg, a onetime Republican
isolationist who had become an eloquent advocate of a bipartisan,
internationalist foreign policy. Vandenberg died at the peak of the
MacArthur firestorm. "We are now divided--bitterly,
hysterically," said Murrow. Vandenberg, however, "would have
gloried in this controversy, and he would have steadied it,"
confident that "the little men of loud voice and small faith, those
who consult partisan rather than national destiny, will yield to the
collective changing judgment of the American people" (Murrow &
Friendly, 1951n).
The Nuclear Age and the Cold War. Foreign policy debates played out
against the specter of nuclear warfare. Hear It Now reported on atom
bomb tests in Nevada (Murrow & Friendly, 1951e, f) and on a new
bomber, the B-36, that could drop the bomb if necessary. The program
recorded a B-36 crew's exultation upon successfully completing an
arduous practice mission. The following week, Murrow somberly announced
that most of the crew had been killed during a follow-up exercise
(Murrow & Friendly, 1951o, p).
Hear It Now also reported on unmanned weaponry. In what was billed
as "one of the most unusual recordings ever broadcast," the
program aired a V-2 rocket test. The rocket's radio signal rose in
pitch as the V-2 ascended into space, and then dropped as the rocket
decelerated and plummeted back to earth (Murrow and Friendly, 1951s).
Two weeks later, the program featured sounds of another test. "We
believe you are listening to the prototype of a deadly weapon ... the
most modern military music," said Murrow. The eerie electronic
drone of the weapon's sensors was heard as Murrow described it
creating "its own type of glorious crescendo ... and perhaps
producing as its supreme triumph in its explosion the agonized cry of
the hurt human being." The drone then broke up into static before
abruptly ending in silence (Murrow & Friendly, 1951u).
Despite that story's ominous tone, Murrow was no Cold War
pacifist, which the future head of the United States Information Agency
made clear in a Hear It Now report on the Voice of America. Murrow said
more "boldness and imagination" was needed to counter the
"ridiculous lies" of Soviet propaganda and win the fight
"to capture, or rather to liberate, men's minds."
Otherwise there was "the prospect of inevitable collision, with all
its consequences" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951g).
McCarthyism. Eventually, Murrow himself would collide with a
senator accusing him of having "consciously served the communist
cause" (Sperber, 1986, p. 447). The impending confrontation with
Joseph McCarthy was foreshadowed on Hear It Now. The series premiere
reported on subversion charges aimed at Anna Rosenberg, in line for a
top Pentagon post. Her successful defense prompted Murrow to say
"the character assassin had missed" (Murrow & Friendly,
1950a). The following week, Don Hollenbeck in his next-to-last
appearance on the series reported on a physical altercation between
McCarthy and columnist Drew Pearson. Hollenbeck later fell victim to
redbaiting and suicide, but here he only observed mildly that the
McCarthy-Pearson brawl had done little to address the nation's
problems (Murrow & Friendly, 1950b).
As for McCarthy himself, he was heard excoriating the
"crimson, motley crowd that has been selling our nation out all
over the world to international communism" (Murrow & Friendly,
1951g). He called the MacArthur firing "high treason" and the
Democrats "the party of betrayal" (Murrow & Friendly,
1951m), adding that the Truman administration was "preparing for
another planned Pearl Harbor" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951q).
Finally, he launched a highly publicized attack on defense secretary
George Marshall, architect of the Marshall Plan and symbol of the
bipartisan internationalism of the prior decade. That prompted a Murrow
response the next day on Hear It Now.
"In Washington, the cause of truth and free men who will not
be divided was being served on the floor of the Senate by Joseph
McCarthy of Wisconsin," Murrow began. "It wasn't until
late Thursday afternoon that Senator McCarthy's colleagues gave him
the floor and heard his expose." Excerpts of McCarthy's Senate
speech followed: Marshall was Stalin's stooge, was to blame for
Yalta and China and Korea, and so forth. "These are merely a few of
the highlights from Senator McCarthy's 60,000 word story of George
Catlett Marshall," Murrow continued. "Compiled, as he calls
it, from the pens and lips of sources friendly to [Marshall]. There is
much more that these sources have written and spoken that is not in the
record compiled by the senator from Wisconsin."
Then, "to keep the record straight," Murrow quoted
effusive praise for Marshall from Winston Churchill among several others
before concluding:
It is the same George Catlett Marshall of whom the great Republican
statesman, the late Henry L. Stimson, said, ... "The destiny of
America at the most critical time of its national existence has
been in the hands of a great and good citizen. Let no man forget
it." Great and good citizen--or arch-conspirator--Secretary of
Defense Marshall is still in harness as a servant of his
government. (Murrow & Friendly, 1951v)
Murrow's comments on Marshall aired on June 15, 1951. That
same broadcast, Murrow announced that Hear It Now was going on summer
hiatus. Before ending (for the only time during the series) with his
signature, "Good night, and good luck," he promised that they
would return "fortified by travel, research, and study"
(Murrow & Friendly, 1951v). In fact, arrangements already were being
made for Hear It Now's demise.
Transition to Television
In a June 20 memo, CBS program director Hubbell Robinson wrote to
William Paley and Frank Stanton that he had been "discussing the
termination of Hear It Now" with Murrow and Friendly, who had told
him that "they wanted to spend the next six weeks studying and
researching the best way to handle television news" (Robinson,
1951, p. 318). Robinson attached a note that Friendly had sent him the
previous day. "Ed and I have begun spending many long hours on
TV," wrote Friendly:
The more we talk the more convinced I am that television news can
never be just a translation of radio news into a medium of
pictures. I think we must concern ourselves with an entirely new
concept.... I think we are in the position newspapers were in before
there were newspapers. I think we are where radio was before there
were radio programs. We cannot merely copy or translate. We have to
create. With a medium to challenge the imagination, it is time we
started to stagger it. (Friendly, 1951, p. 318)
Sig Mickelson later said "Fred was getting ready to produce
the television version" of Hear It Now all along (Sperber, 1986, p.
353). Murrow, however, was ambivalent. In 1949, he had raised fears
about attractive personalities drawing "huge television audiences
regardless of the violence that may be done to truth or
objectivity" and coverage consisting of "bathing girls on surf
boards" (Persico, 1988, p. 294; Price, 1949, p. 152). As Hear It
Now began airing the next year, Murrow wrote to a CBS correspondent that
he hoped "neither one of us has to try to make a living in
television" (Sperber, 1986, p. 350). As late as September, 1951--a
month after Billboard reported that See It Now would debut that fall and
the "radio counterpart of the video show will be
killed"--Murrow was still telling affiliates that "management
hasn't yet decided whether Hear It Now is coming back"
("CBS Plans Hour," 1951, p. 1 ; Murrow, 1951c, p. 593).
Meanwhile, he reiterated his concerns about TV to the press along with
his belief (if not hope) that "the premiere of 'See It
Now' is still a long way off" (Mishkin, 1951, p. 2).
Regardless, See It Now debuted that November with the iconic image
of the Golden Gate Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge appearing live side by
side. If that reflected Friendly's "entirely new
concept," he and Murrow also would recycle ideas from Hear It Now,
including profiles of the troops in Korea, the biography of a pint of
blood, and Carl Sandburg reading from The People, Yes. Later there would
be the classic reports on redbaiting targets Milo Radulovich and Annie
Lee Moss as well as the climactic showdown with McCarthy. Finally would
come the loss of sponsors, the clashes with CBS management, and the
speech from Murrow lambasting TV's masters for using it to
"distract, delude, amuse and insulate." By 1961, he would be
gone from CBS (Murrow, 1967, p. 363; see also Doherty, 2003, pp.
161-188; Friendly, 1967; Kendrick, 1969; Murrow & Friendly, 1955;
Persico, 1988; Sperber, 1986).
"There are new and great possibilities in TV, but I still have
the feeling I'm its prisoner and am getting pushed around by
it," said Murrow at the time of See It Now's premiere.
"In radio I have control" ("Top of the News," 1951,
p. 58).
Discussion
One might view Hear It Now as little more than a trial run for the
television series or as an anachronism even in its own
time--"rather like building the best gas lamp at the turn of the
century when most people were rewiring their homes for
electricity," as one observer has put it (Persico, 1988, p. 301).
In fact, by the time the series left the air, ratings for network radio
programs were plummeting as the networks shifted the brunt of their
energies toward TV (Barnouw, 1968, pp. 284-290).
Even so, evening radio audiences remained sizable (as shown by Hear
It Now's debut reaching 10,000,000 listeners on 173 stations); as
of 1950, they still were larger than those for television (Bliss, 1991,
p. 233). Hear It Now's impact was big enough not only to mobilize
mass blood donations but also to win a Peabody Award ("Peabody
Awards," 1951). Whereas Murrow and Friendly's initial
collaboration on the record album I Can Hear It Now had used old radio
clips and sounded "like a valedictory tribute for a medium on the
road to second-class status" (Doherty, 2003, p. 164), their radio
series was marked by a rich eclecticism and innovativeness that
represented the most creative use of the medium that Murrow would ever
achieve.
Murrow did continue his nightly radio newscast and used it to
launch what a biographer has called "trial balloons for
television," trying out controversial ideas before putting them on
See It Now (Sperber, 1986, pp. 402-403). He also lent his voice to CBS
radio documentaries such as "Who Killed Michael Farmer?"
(Murray, 1994, pp. 32-38). However, the newscasts did not employ the
elaborate production techniques that Friendly brought to Hear It Now,
and Murrow did not write or report the documentaries, which would
embarrass him when a program on prostitution that he had narrated
provoked angry controversy (Kendrick, 1969, pp. 418-420; Sperber, 1986,
pp. 546-548). With Hear It Now, Murrow in fact did "have
control," allowing him to expand the voices and sounds on radio and
realize his desire to make the medium more "adult and
intelligent" ("Top of the News," 1951, p. 58;
Wertenbaker, 1953, p. 36). If TV's See it Now would exemplify
"a rare excitement, an appetite to tackle every subject of interest
under the sun" (Bliss, 1991, p. 237), it was following in the
footsteps of its radio predecessor.
Hear It Now also foreshadowed the future of long-form radio
journalism. In the 1970s, developers of the new public radio
newsmagazine All Things Considered would consciously avoid replicating
the "steady, authoritative, [and] a bit pompous" style of
Murrow's news commentaries. Instead, they would feature highly
produced stories that would be "the radio equivalent of a
television news report, in which 'sound' assumed the function
of 'pictures'" (Mitchell, 2005, pp. 62-63). Thanks
largely to Friendly, Hear It Now had helped pioneer that form 2 decades
previously--a form in which "the real reporter was the tape
recorder gathering reality sound, to which narration as needed could be
added" (Lichty, 2004, p. 476).
If in some ways the radio series was a departure for Murrow, his
editorial stance on the program hewed to that for which he was already
known. "He is at heart a moralist, troubled by the series of dull
thuds which pass for civilization nowadays," wrote one observer
before Hear It Now began airing. "Still, he won't preach,
because he has