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Showing posts with the label edward murrow speech

I Can Hear It Now

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Over the course of his career, Murrow was never content just to sit back and report the news. He was aware that the news is also history. In the late 1940s, he recorded a series of records called I Can Hear It Now . The records were produced by Fred Friendly from a Rhode Island radio station. The records combined speeches and historical events with narration provided by Murrow. The series was so popular that CBS took notice, and since Murrow worked for CBS, they were able to strike a deal and bring the premise to radio. It was a little different for the time. They brought the stories to life by using recorded sounds like guns when presenting a story about war or aircraft when talking about aviation. I Can Hear It Now was presented in a magazine format which means that the show is divided into segments, and each story is presented in a dedicated segment. (You might be familiar with the format from television shows like 60 Minutes .) The  I Can Hear It Now  

Edward Murrow Speech

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On Oct. 15, 1958, Murrow gave a controversial speech that would live on in history for its candid nature, and for its success in dressing down the broadcast journalism industry. It is sometimes called the “wires and lights in a box speech.” Murrow was asked to give the keynote address at the ‘58 Radio-Television News Directors Association convention. He reluctantly agreed, mounted the dais, and proceeded to breath fire, dismantling the industry as lacking in values, not standing up to corporate interests, and betraying the trust of the American people with their watered-down reporting. Early in the speech, Murrow intoned, “If there are any historians about 50 or 100 years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will find there recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from the world in which we live.” He later said “I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than t