Edward R. Murrow (1908 – 1965)
American journalist; born Egbert Roscoe Murrow.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices — just recognize them.
We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them.
No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.
The politician is … trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him.
...if what I say is responsible, I alone am responsible for the saying of it...
He was a resolute and uncompromising man of truth.
The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.
All I can hope to teach my son is to tell the truth and fear no man.
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.
Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.
I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or in the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse.
During the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.
For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally.
American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.
A satellite has no conscience.
The politician in my country seeks votes, affection and respect, in that order…. With few notable exceptions, they are simply men who want to be loved.
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.
He set standards of excellence that remain unsurpassed.
One of those rare legendary figures who was as good as his myth.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.