Edward R. Murrow

His parents named him Egbert. They were Quakers farming corn and hay on a few hundred dollars a year in Guilford County, North Carolina, in a log cabin with no electricity and no plumbing. When he was six the family moved across the continent to homestead in Skagit County, Washington, near the Canadian line. He was student body president at the high school in Edison, majored in speech at Washington State College, and in his second year swapped Egbert for Edward. His speech teacher there, Ida Lou Anderson, kept working on his delivery for years afterward. Before he had anything to do with broadcasting he spent three years finding American posts for German scholars the Nazis had stripped of their jobs.

CBS hired him in 1935 to book talks, and there was barely a news operation to join. He went to London in 1937, hired William L. Shirer, and on March 13, 1938, days after Hitler took Austria, the two stitched together a live roundup from correspondents in several European cities, a format nobody had tried. During the Blitz he opened with This is London — Ida Lou Anderson's suggested phrasing — and flew on 25 Allied combat missions. On April 12, 1945, he was among the first reporters into Buchenwald, and three days later told listeners he had reported only part of what he saw. See It Now moved to television in November 1951, took Joseph McCarthy apart with McCarthy's own footage on March 9, 1954, and in 1960 turned to migrant farm workers in Harvest of Shame.

He also did the firing. As vice president of CBS News from December 1945, he presided over the end of William L. Shirer's program in 1947 — Shirer said he had resigned, but he was terminated — and they never got the friendship back. Alcoa dropped See It Now in 1955, and in 1958 William Paley finished it, telling Murrow he did not want a stomach ache every time the program picked a subject. Murrow answered in Chicago that October, calling television a box of wires and lights that insulated Americans from the world they lived in. Fred Friendly thought it cost him more with Paley than McCarthy had. Then, three years later and running the United States Information Agency, Murrow asked the BBC not to broadcast Harvest of Shame. The BBC had bought it in good faith and refused.

He smoked 60 to 65 Camels a day. Surgeons took out his left lung, he lived two more years, and he died at his farm in Pawling, New York, on April 27, 1965, two days past his 57th birthday. Eric Sevareid called him a shooting star whose afterglow would last a long time. The name became a standard rather than a memory: the Murrow Awards from 1971, a college of communication at Washington State, George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck in 2005 and again on Broadway in 2025. When the CBS News Radio network shut down on May 22, 2026, its final bulletin ended with archival audio of Murrow signing off.

Edward R. Murrow's life against the full span of the corpus.

• European News Roundup other
  March 13, 1938 — live correspondents in several cities at once, a format nobody had used 1938
• This I Believe other
  Five radio minutes a night for ordinary people, hosted through 1955 1951
• See It Now television
  Made with Fred W. Friendly out of the radio program Hear It Now 1951
• A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy television
  March 9, 1954 — built largely from McCarthy's own speeches 1954
• Wires and Lights in a Box speech
  To the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Chicago, October 15, 1958 1958
• Harvest of Shame television
  On migrant farm labor, broadcast the day after Thanksgiving 1960

• April 25, 1908 aged 0 Born Egbert Roscoe Murrow in a log cabin at Polecat Creek The family moved to Washington state when he was six.
• 1932 aged ~24 Begins placing scholars driven out of German universities Assistant secretary of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars.
• 1935 aged ~27 Joins CBS as director of talks, not as a reporter
• March 13, 1938 aged 29 Assembles the first live multi-city news roundup, from Vienna It is now nearly 2.30 in the morning, he said, and Herr Hitler has not yet arrived.
• December 2, 1941 aged 33 Honored at a Waldorf-Astoria dinner for 1,100 people Archibald MacLeish told him he had burned the city of London in American houses.
• April 12, 1945 aged 36 Walks into Buchenwald with Bill Shadel His broadcast three days later asked listeners to believe him and said it was only part of it.
• March 9, 1954 aged 45 See It Now takes apart Joseph McCarthy Murrow and Fred Friendly paid for the newspaper advertisement themselves.
• January 1961 aged 52 Leaves CBS to run the United States Information Agency for John F. Kennedy If you want me in on the landings, he told Kennedy, I had better be there for the takeoffs.
• April 27, 1965 aged 57 Dies at Pawling, New York, two days after his 57th birthday

• Joseph McCarthy 1908–1957
  Senator whose unsupported accusations and investigations gave “McCarthyism” its name and damaged civil liberties. exposed on television
• John F. Kennedy 1917–1963
  35th President whose brief tenure included the Cuban Missile Crisis and the launch of the Apollo program. appointed by
• Walter Cronkite 1916–2009
  CBS Evening News anchor known as the most trusted man in America during a pivotal era of broadcast journalism. newsroom rival
• Harry S. Truman 1884–1972
  33rd President who authorized the atomic bomb and implemented the Marshall Plan. advised him against the Senate
• Lyndon B. Johnson 1908–1973
  36th President who signed the Civil Rights Act and launched the Great Society programs. resigned from his administration