WWII War Correspondent Predicted the Dangers That Threaten America Today
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Famed newsman Edward R. Murrow warned, "If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us." Was he right?
Edward R. Murrow (April 25, 1908-April 27, 1965) was a stalwart member of that great generation that brought us through the perils of World War II. When Nazi Germany attacked Poland in September of 1939, he was stationed in London as director of CBS European Operations. During the height of the Blitz (the Nazi bombing of London in 1940) Ed Murrow remained in London to provide Americans with electrifying radio broadcasts that described its horrors. A nation came to attention when hearing his famous signature opening: "This is London..."
Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish commented on his powerful war-time dispatches from London: "You laid the dead at our doors and we knew the dead were our dead."
Eventually this long-time CBS reporter moved from radio broadcasting into television. At a time when TV programming was still rather tame in comparison to the often embarrassing standards that afflict us today, Ed Murrow saw the sobering handwriting on the wall well in advance of his contemporaries.
Pivotal speech
Back in 1958 he stated in a Chicago speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association: "Our history will be what we make it... I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic references to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger...
"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 will 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."
Later in this pivotal speech he said: "But this nation is now in competition with malignant forces of evil who are using every instrument at their command to empty the minds of their subjects."
"History will take its revenge"
Then Ed Murrow concluded with these sobering words of warning to those then responsible for the direction of TV news reporting. "I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us" (Richard D. Heffner, A Documentary History of the United States, eighth edition, 2002, pp. 500-501, 506-507, emphasis added).
Mr. Murrow's words are proving far truer today than when he originally uttered them back in 1958. Thankfully, there now exists a TV program called Beyond Today that is frankly warning our citizenry of the acute global and domestic dangers that presently confront the American nation. The TV log of broadcast and cable stations is available online and is also published in The Good News magazine .
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