On the air, and in the bunkers

Sincerely concerned for people, Edward R. Murrow served as a mentor and never got too big for his britches

by Bob Pierpoint

With a sense of idealism and a belief in the underdog, Edward R. Murrow saw the opportunity for radio to bring events unfolding in Europe right into America’s homes. Murrow not only wanted to make his viewers listen, he wanted to “Make ‘em itch.”

He was a trendsetter for journalists. He was one of the first correspondents to broadcast eyewitness reports as they were unfolding over the air. Murrow’s reports, along with the correspondents he hired, set a benchmark for future broadcasters to follow.

The incident that cemented my relationship with Edward R. Murrow came on May 16, 1951. It was my 26th birthday and my initiation to combat. The “Main Line of Resistance” — military jargon for the battle line in the Korean War — was relatively stable at that time. Both the Communists and the United Nations forces were sending out periodic patrols, probing each other’s defenses for weak spots. I was at the 24th Division headquarters. I drove a jeep that my boss had liberated from the Army and painted grey with CBS letters on the side. My boss bluntly said that if I was determined to go up to the line at night he really wouldn’t worry about what happened to me, but if the jeep was lost there would be hell to pay.

As we approached the area where the forward units of the 24th Division’s 19th Regiment were dug in an occasional flare lit the night sky along with sporadic rifle fire. We parked the jeep at the bottom of a hill and hiked up to a trench. Fox Company held the ground. Inside a small bunker were the forward observers for an artillery unit to the rear — a captain, the company commander and a young lieutenant. Infantrymen lay in foxholes with weapons ready (around and in front of the bunker.)

The rifle fire began picking up in both directions, indicating a communist probing attack was under way. Once in a while the chatter of machine guns erupted as tracers lit the night sky. It began to sound like some of that firing was coming from behind us, and I was worried about the jeep and my own line of retreat. The captain was worried about the oncoming Chinese, who were the enemy in that sector, so he and the lieutenant decided to call for artillery support. I walked out into the trench with the young officer, who was to direct the artillery shells over our heads toward the attacking Communist troops.

I was carrying a Japanese tape recorder made by an early postwar electronics genius. It had to be wound frequently. Its awkward dimensions, two feet by six inches wide and deep, made the 15-pound recorder hard to carry even with a strap. But it was reliable.

As the lieutenant began giving position reports to his artillery unit, I cranked up the tape recorder. A couple shells whistled overhead but beyond the advancing Chinese. By field telephone the lieutenant ordered new coordinates for the artillery. Suddenly, just as I was narrating into the tape recorder what was going on, he shouted “SHORT ROUND.” He dove into the trench, pulling me and the tape recorder with him. The recorder faithfully caught the sound of the shell exploding nearby and my nervous laugh as I tried to explain what had happened. Within minutes I was on my way back to the jeep, and within hours that taped report was on its way back to Murrow in New York.

At that time Murrow was doing a radio show called ‘Hear It Now,” and my first night on the line fit perfectly into its format. After he had listened to my tape, Murrow thoughtfully called my parents in California to tell them they would hear their son on his broadcast that night. In view of what they heard, I’m not sure how grateful they were for Murrow’s phone call.

Late in the summer of 1952, Murrow decided to do a similar program for television called “See It Now.” He scheduled several episodes from Korea for the program. As it continued into the following year, Murrow directed “Christmas in Korea,” which was the first time I ever worked directly with Murrow.

Murrow and several other CBS employees arrived in Seoul, along with five camera crews, a few days before Christmas of 1953. Each correspondent was assigned a cameraman and sound technician. Murrow quickly took charge. He asked for ideas from the CBS reporters covering the war about the best way to tell the story of Christmas for the hundreds of units of American troops serving in Korea. He eventually narrowed the suggestions down to the few we could successfully film in the short time available. The thousands of feet of film had to be airlifted to New York in time for editing and airing on December 28th. It was a monumental production job, which Murrow directed in Korea and his producer oversaw in New York.

That first night Murrow took me aside and said that I was to do the early part of his regular evening radio broadcast. It was the premier newscast of the radio network. I was surprised and flattered, but wanted to know why he chose me. Murrow explained that I was the reporter on the spot so I should do the hard news reporting. He would do the commentary during the second half of the 15-minute broadcast. It was the kind of gesture that both made sense and made his colleagues admire him. All of us would go the extra mile for this kind of treatment.

Famous anchors today don’t do it that way. Perhaps due in some part to the increasing power of show business in television news, anchors frequently “parachute” into news hot spots, spend a couple of hours getting briefed, work with producers on a script, then do the broadcast as if they knew what they were talking about. Those reporters who are shoved aside by the anchors call it “bigfooting”. It has become such common practice in the industry that the networks have now closed most overseas bureaus. The thinking is that reporters aren’t really needed in most parts of the world any more, and it saves money.

Fortunately saving money was not the priority in the days of “See It Now.” Murrow developed a new technique for telling the story of American GIs serving abroad. As the program put it, “Come with us to Korea. We are going to walk invisibly alongside some GIs. We will follow these men out of the bunkers where they sleep, watch them horsing around in the mess line, see them writing letters home, share with them the alternating tedium and terror of the ordinary combat infantryman.”

Correspondents learned the poignancy of young faces aged by combat and the power of television. We would sometimes line up the Gls, and have each one step in front of the camera to state his name, rank and hometown. It was simple but, when seen on the screens of millions of American homes, it had impact.

Murrow used the term “reporter” most often in describing what all of us did at CBS News. He might say “correspondent” on occasion, but never “journalist.” I once heard him say that a journalist was really an unemployed reporter. He was adamant about getting facts, as many and as accurately as possible. Once the facts were assembled, Murrow was perfectly willing to draw conclusions from them.

No one ever doubted where Murrow stood on the major issues of the times, but he tried to keep his personal opinions grounded in thoughtful analysis. That was in keeping with CBS News policy that barred broadcasters from expressing opinions on the air. The difference between analysis and opinion is often a fine line.

Murrow ultimately wearied of corporate meddling in the news and found it impossible to continue broadcasting. He accepted an offer from President Kennedy to join a new cabinet in 1961. Murrow went to Washington to head the United States Information Agency.

As America’s involvement in Vietnam increased, a Marine officer, who I had known in Korea, called me to set up a meeting. At the meeting he handed me a brown envelope, asked that I read its contents and then deliver it to Murrow. The document inside had a cover with a red slash across it and in large letters the word “SECRET.” The material related to a Pentagon project the officer was working on, and he wanted Murrow’s endorsement of it.

I took the document to Murrow. He was startled to see me carrying information of an important defense secret. I explained that this Marine had helped us do an effective frontline “See It Now,” in which he had criticized his own military leadership. For this he paid a price in his career. I added that we owed him something. All this was probably illegal for both of us.

I did not fully understand its importance, but Murrow did. He explained he had been arguing against the project within the Kennedy administration. The Pentagon was trying to develop a chemical that later came to be known as Agent Orange. The chemical was to be sprayed from the air so it would destroy vegetation and the food supply for civilians and communist forces.

Murrow said that both he and the assistant secretary of state for the Far East felt the project was a terrible mistake. Both of them opposed punishing civilians by destroying their food supply. Their argument prevailed much later when Agent Orange was used to defoliate areas suspected to be communist hiding places. Of course in the process the chemical also destroyed crops. Soldiers and civilians on both sides are still suffering from the effects.

The opposition Murrow expressed alerted me to the extent to which some in the military would go in wartime. It also taught me that officials like Murrow, who tried to maintain human values during a bitter conflict, could temper unbounded militarism for a time.

In autumn of 1963, Murrow was fighting a losing battle with cancer. It apparently stemmed from his long and public addiction to nicotine. Shortly after President Kennedy was assassinated Murrow wrote a letter to President Johnson explaining that he was too sick to continue at the USIA, and submitted his resignation.

In the spring of 1965, when he was only 57 years old, Murrow died. Many journalists remember this enormously influential man because he stood up for the obscure victims of bigotry and injustice. He did so, not just in polite parlor conversations, but on the air where it counted and where millions of Americans could listen, learn and act.