What If Murrow Could Comment?

I was sitting in my office heeding someone’s advice to take a deep breath, chill out and mull recent events in a calm, organized manner, when I seem to have dozed off. Then the phone rang.

It was the spirit of Edward R. Murrow.

Murrow, who virtually invented broadcast news in a radio and television career at CBS spanning the New Deal and Tonkin Gulf. Murrow, who innovatively broadcast from London rooftops in World War II, and in the 1950s took on Commie-hunting bully Joe McCarthy and made fearless documentaries. Murrow, who forged standards against which journalists measured themselves for years.

I was overwhelmed.

“The keeper of the flame calling me?”

“The flame is now barely flickering,” he said wearily. “Keeping it going is getting to be increasingly difficult. I’d like a replacement, perhaps someone a bit more contemporary.”

“What about Charles Kuralt?” I asked. “He’s there now, isn’t he?”

“Sure. And a good man he is. But you know Charlie. He’s on the road all the time.”

“So it’s hard finding a successor up there?”

“Well, it has to be a journalist of high standards and impeccable integrity, someone everyone respects. I do have someone in mind for the job, though. It’s time for a change.”

“You sound really down,” I said. “Why so glum?”

“I think you know. Things are really grim.”

“Up there?”

“No, down there.”

“Oh, you mean the way the media are handling the Clinton-Lewinsky messiness.”

“It’s all everyone up here is talking about.”

“There, too, huh? But should any of this be surprising given the way much of the press has behaved in recent years? And besides, it was you yourself who warned in a speech to your fellow news broadcasters back in 1958 that ‘if we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge.’ ”

*

The spirit of Ed sighed. “I didn’t know how much revenge, though. Look, I’ve been watching and trying to be understanding. I saw the O.J. Simpson fiasco. I saw the Richard Jewell fiasco. I saw it all, and I remembered what my old pal, Fred Friendly, said: ‘Television can make so much money doing its worst, it often cannot afford to do its best.’ But I was thinking maybe it was just a phase the media were going through, like an adolescent awkwardly growing into adulthood. After all, I wasn’t perfect. I made compromises, made some mediocre television myself. And didn’t I have my own problems at CBS fighting commercial pressures to cut corners? So even though I was repelled by what was happening in recent years, I held my tongue. But this! But this! I’m now certain that the entire culture of journalism has irrevocably changed.”

“I hear your pain, man. But is this an anonymous leak, or can I attribute it to you?”

“You’d better name me,” the spirit of Ed growled, “or this conversation is over. The gratuitous hemorrhaging of leaks and anonymous sources are a big part of the problem. As are the unconfirmed reports, the rumors and the smears advanced by both sides in this story that are then passed on to the public under a mantle of truth. What has happened to standards and ethics? What has happened to restraint? What has happened to careful, responsible reporting?”

“But surely,” I argued, “you must be pleased by some of the advancements since your death in 1965. We have so many more newscasts and news outlets now, for example. We have newsmagazines galore. And three 24-hour all-news channels. Why, compared with your era, just the sheer diversity is boggling.”

“Diversity?” he replied. “If there’s so much diversity, then why are they all doing essentially the same story?”

“Be fair, now,” I said. “You have to envy and be impressed with the technological advances that allow today’s TV reporters to follow news across the globe instantaneously.”

“That is, if they were interested in the rest of the globe,” he said. “But you and I know most are not. And the reporting is instantaneous, all right--with material, however suspect or salacious, being rushed onto the air in the Clinton-Lewinsky story, as good judgment gives way to adrenalin and the competitive urge. No, what I’ve been observing through the years is not true achievement, but a squandering of opportunity. It’s news technology advancing much faster than the ability of journalists to master it.”

“Are you able to talk about this with anyone up there?” I wondered.

“Funny you should ask,” the spirit of Ed replied. “I was just hashing it over with someone who just arrived. Her name is Carole Kent Kneeland.”

“Get outta here,” I replied. “The Carole Kent Kneeland who was news director and then vice president of news at KVUE-TV in Austin, Texas?”

“The same,” he replied. “She’s here now.”

I told the spirit of Ed how saddened I’d been to learn of Carole’s death last Monday night after an eight-year battle with breast cancer, that a throng of 1,000 had jammed into the University United Methodist Church in Austin for her funeral, the first time anyone could recall it being filled for such an occasion.

I told him that I had met Carole in June 1996, when I went to Austin to do a story on KVUE’s noble experiment with local newscasts that went against the pervasive trend toward a blitzkrieg of gratuitous crime stories, that under Carole’s leadership the ABC affiliate established rigid criteria that she insisted be met before it would air a crime story.

I told him that policy still exists, and how rare it was for any station--but especially one that didn’t need a gimmick because its newscasts already topped the ratings--to do something so daring, just on principle.

I told him about Carole wondering why newscasts assign separate values to ways of dying, why they routinely report violent deaths while ignoring ordinary people who die from heart disease, diabetes, AIDS and cancer.

*

I told him that Carole was a tireless mentor for young journalists, how one of her former reporters told me that she always stressed to her staff that “she would rather be right than first.”

I told him how much I respected Carole and liked her personally. I told him about Carole’s many, many awards, including being named 1997 broadcaster of the year by the Texas Assn. of Broadcasters. I told him about the tax-deductible contributions coming in to the newly established Carole Kneeland Endowment for Television Journalism, 1907 N. Lamar, Austin, TX 78705, and that it was designed for training experienced journalists hoping to become newsroom leaders like Carole.

The spirit of Ed chided me for slipping a commercial into this newspaper column, but said if it had been him, he would have bent the same rule. “And one more thing,” he added. “There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”

It was the spirit of Carole.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“I’m keeping busy,” she said. “And Ed says he has something very important lined up for me.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Something about keeping the flame,” she said.