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Edward R. Murrow

I got interested in Murrow after seeing him portrayed in the movie Good Night and Good Luck. Here are a few excerpts from the wiki on him:

Edward R. Murrow (born Egbert Roscoe Murrow 1908-1965) was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada. Historians consider him among journalism's greatest figures, noting his honesty and integrity in delivering the news.
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Murrow's report from the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany provides an example of his uncompromising style of journalism, something that caused a great deal of controversy and won him a number of critics and enemies. He described the exhausted physical state of the concentration camp prisoners who had survived, mentioned "rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood" and he refused to apologize for the harsh tone of his words:

I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words. If I've offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry.
Here are a few other things that he said:

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices — just recognize them.

If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.

A satellite has no conscience.

Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice (and those thoughts we aren’t interested in), people don’t speak their beliefs easily, or publicly.

Anyone who isn't confused doesn't really understand the situation.

We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks — that's show business.

We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion — a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply.

Good night, and good luck. (Sign off line of his radio and TV broadcasts.)

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