Good Night, and Good Luck. Five words that began to be spoken nightly in the early 40s. Five words that would linger forever, in the legacy of the man who spoke them, and five words which people across the world would never forget.
The year is 1940, and Nazi Germany is on the move. By the time July had rolled around that year, Axis powers had conquered France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark, all in a matter of just three months. What was prompted after was the battle of Britain, in which England’s people would be forced to fight for their lives against an onslaught invasion of Naval and Airborne German-Nazi, and Italian-Fascist soldiers. Referring to the fight by this title was ultimately short-lived, because what followed could hardly be called two sided.
September 7th, 1940 marked the beginning of the London Blitz, taking place towards the end of the Battle of Britain. Fifty Seven Days, with Fifty Seven Nights to accompany them. The start of eight months of almost nightly bombs raining from axis powers onto London streets, killing some 43,000 civilians in the process, along with thousands of soldiers.
Through it all, one voice commentated each and every event, cataloguing each tragedy as it happened right before his very eyes. He didn’t just report on these events, he brought them to living rooms and households across the pond in America. As stated to him by America’s former Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs, Archibald MacLeish, “You burned the city of London in our homes, and we felt the flames.” In his Murrow’s own words:
“This is London. You can have little understanding of the life in London these days. There are no words to describe the thing that is happening. The courage of the people, the flash and roar of the guns rolling down the streets, the stench of the air-raid shelters. In three or four hours, people must get up and go to work, just as though they had a full night’s rest, free from the rumble of guns, and the wonder that comes when they wake and listen in the dead hours of the night.” - Edward R. Murrow.
Edward R. Murrow was the best known voice in radio broadcasting during WWII, and was the face of American Broadcasting well after. Originally, Murrow had no intention of becoming a wartime reporter, nor did he wish to be involved in the political space at all as he would soon be. In 1937, nobody knew who Edward R. Murrow was, and he lived a simple life in the beautiful streets of London, as the Columbia Broadcasting System’s European Director. He was originally just a planner, not even a voice on the air, arranging cultural radio programs for CBS.
However, by 1939, war was on the horizon of the European front, and culture would begin to lose its spotlight to fascism. As WWII broke out, Murrow was the only network representative on Europe’s side of the Atlantic, and so it was that he would be the best choice to become a broadcaster during the war effort.
Murrow would inevitably depart from Britain and his role in wartime reporting at the end of WWII, after broadcasting live at the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp on April 15, 1945. He was one of the first reporters to enter the camp post liberation, and delivered a powerful speech on how the war was won, not of power, but of dedication to morality.
Upon returning to the US after the war, having been originally born right here in North Carolina, Murrow would be moved to an administrative job within CBS. Although, as Murrow would find out, he was no administrator, but a journalist through and through. Fortunately, his boss and personal friend, whose name you’ve likely heard, William S Paley, recognized that Murrow simply didn’t belong at a desk, but on the frontlines, wherever that may entail.
Paley assigned Murrow to a new type of medium for broadcasting that was said to be the future, and with that, Edward R. Murrow became one of the earliest and most famous hosts of a news show, utilizing the new medium of television broadcast across America. He would come to rebrand his show from "hear it now,” to "see it now,” marking a new era of news. Murrow, ever the critical thinker, created “see it now” as a space to tackle and grasp to understand the big-picture problems of the nation at the time. It was “ahead of the news” at the time, and created a dedicated fanbase who sought to hear big issues brought into the daylight.
Of course, one of the biggest issues on the rise as the decade moved into the fifties, was communism, particularly pushed by a name synonymous with hatred for the ideology, US Senator Joseph McCarthy. Tackling some of the more prominent lies and injustices in America at the time on his show, Murrow would eventually work his way up the deceit that was being pushed by this newfound hatred for the communist party. Murrow would start with a smaller story that only partially involved McCarthy.
However, upon doing more investigative research on McCarthy, and his persistence of using fearmongering tactics to attack opposing politicians of the democratic party under the guise of communism, Murrow made a choice that would be high risk, high reward; to call out one of the most influential people in the US at the time.
This broadcast is not what made Murrow famous, because he was already very famous before it. Yet, this broadcast was what left Murrow’s legacy, as a man who wasn’t afraid of people in power. As a man who would face internal threats head on, and be not afraid of questioning those around him through investigative journalism. McCarthy ultimately of course, didn’t take well to Murrow’s words, but the same cannot be said for the public. Upon hearing this broadcast where he calls out McCarthy, you’d find that Murrow isn’t just the face of American Broadcasting, but the face of truth and understanding for people. He served on the frontlines, even if not a soldier himself, and spent his life aiding our country, holding us to our morals through thick and thin.
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