Hillel Italie, Canadian Press February 12, 2006 New York (AP) The Second World War radio broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow are now regarded as high points in the history of journalism, vivid examples of how the spoken word can bring home events of infinite horror and complexity from thousands of kilometres away.
But when it came to preserving Murrow's scripts and other papers from that time, few people had the foresight or the luck to think of history. Some materials were lost when the Germans bombed CBS offices in London, where Murrow was based during the war. Others were simply misplaced in the rush to meet the next deadline. But some, like a batch just donated to the Edward R. Murrow Center at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, have also turned up quite accidentally. Back in the 1980s, CBS TV's London bureau was cleaning out files when producer Mark H. Harrington III spotted an unmarked "old brown envelope tossed into a box of other old files," according to his widow, Kyle Good, a former CBS producer and now a publicist with Scholastic, Inc. "He was shocked when he opened it up," Good said in a recent interview. "When he first found them, he talked about where he might donate them, but I suspect he put them carefully away and just forgot about them. I suspect he thought about it from time to time, but just never got around to doing it." Harrington died of cancer in 1998 and Good had thought little about the Murrow documents until a colleague urged her to donate them. Both Anne Sauer, who directs the digital collections and archives at Tufts, nor Murrow's son, Casey, say they've never seen the papers before. Linda Mason, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the network has no original documents - although there are audio records - from Murrow's war years. "They're a fascinating glimpse of Murrow's early years, when he was just coming into prominence," Sauer says of the papers. Murrow, born in rural North Carolina in 1909, joined CBS in 1935 and two years later was transferred to London, where he served as chief of the network's European operations. When war came, he became famous for his detailed, emotional radio broadcasts from London during the German air raids, with bombs often exploding in the background. In 1950s, the dark-haired, chain-smoking Murrow went on to even greater fame as a television newsman, notably for his attacks against Sen. Joseph McCarthy - the subject of Good Night, and Good Luck, the George Clooney-directed film that has received six Academy Award nominations. Murrow died of cancer in 1965. The papers donated to Tufts include handmarked scripts of Murrow's London radio programs, reflections on life in the bomb shelters and other materials that reinforce his image as a journalist of grim passion and integrity. In an undated, six-page manuscript, headlined Notes on the Way, Murrow frets that people have "lost the ability to feel," that they prefer stories of bravery to those of horror. He recalls returning to London after a visit to Vienna, Austria, and trying to tell friends about what he had seen. http://www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/story.html?id=90b55b37-dcaa-4ef3-8921-ef94d301990b&k=7603 Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
