In the Future, Everyone will Be Edward R. Murrow for 15 Minutes
“In ‘Daily Show’ Role on 9/11 Bill, Echoes of Murrow,” our pop culture-obsessed self-described paper of record claims:
Did the bill pledging federal funds for the health care of 9/11 responders become law in the waning hours of the 111th Congress only because a comedian took it up as a personal cause?
And does that make that comedian, Jon Stewart — despite all his protestations that what he does has nothing to do with journalism — the modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow?”
Of course — because everyone’s the modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow:
- The Nation magazine, Sept. 2007: “Is Keith Olbermann the Next Edward R. Murrow?”
- New York magazine, June 2008: “Dan Rather Has His Edward R. Murrow Moment.”
- About.com, July 2008: “Edward R. Murrow Smiles on Award-Winner Katie Couric.”
- Frank Rich of the New York Times, September 2008: “In our news culture, [Joy] Behar, a stand-up comic by profession, looms as the new Edward R. Murrow.”
- Mediaite.com, September, 2009: “Glenn Beck, The New Edward R. Murrow Of Fox News: Who’s The Next Target?”
- Business Insider, October 2009: “Is Shep Smith the new Edward R. Murrow of Fox?”
- Current.org, May, 2010: “Writer David Halberstam declared Bill [Moyer] the new Edward R. Murrow” in 1977.
Good night and good luck — and much like Time magazine declared you (yes, you!) to be “Person of the Year” in 2006, maybe you’ll also cop this nearly ubiquitous prize as well.
Update: We interviewed W. Joseph Campbell, the author of Getting It Wrong, the book that busts a century of self-serving journalistic hyperbole, back in October for PJM Political. In a new post on his blog, Campbell describes the Times’ comparison as, needless to say, quite a stretch — and “a double-myth story, a rare article that incorporates two prominent media-driven myths.”
Actually, I think all of them are closer to that other initialed icon from the days of television news in the 1950s. Especially Olbermann.
We’ve never had so much hyperbole. (Snort).
I have seen Jon Stewart and I really don’t see what the hype is all about. He is not witty at all. In that sense, he isn’t unique (Letterman has only rare moments, as does SNL). What is it that someone who is willing to get on TV and try to be humorous is deemed “talented”?
I agree with willyrob; I do not and have never found either Jon Stewart or David Letterman to be funny. To be fair I think that Stewart is thoughtful and even self-deprecating while Letterman is just arrognat, angry and smarmy. Edward R. Murrow was courageous and physically brave. It is a sad commentary on American society that we now nominate the self-righteous as successors to the self-reliant.
Jack, bravissimo for hitting the right note in describing the recent flurry of Letterman-type self-righteous narcissists who include Olbermann, Maddow, and the rest of MessNBC as well as a few on CNN [Amanpout, Zakaria] in foreign affairs, and the occasional Fox News exaggeraters. I too watch Stewart as he does give a cursory bow to the GOP more than the agitpreppies, but Edward R. Murrow was physically courageous and these specimens seem to be hothouse phenomena.
Oh it has to be Joy Behar. She has a nose for news.
I love how Olbermann, Rather, Couric, Behar and Moyers are all declared the next Edward R. Murrow in modified fashion. Beck and Smith, however, are merely the next Murrow “of Fox.”
* I meant to say “unmodified fashion.”
Shows you how far the main stream media has fallen when a comedian is considered to be an “Edward R. Murrow.” I’m sure we’ll soon have a new reality show on Bravo with ten jerks off the street, all vying to be the next “Edward R. Murrow.” They have one week to come up with a news story. The losers get voted off the “newspaper” they are working on. The winner of the contest gets a job at the New York Times, for as long as it still stays in business. Yep, we sure are doomed, aren’t we?
“‘[And does that make that comedian, Jon Stewart — despite all his protestations that what he does has nothing to do with journalism — the modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow?’”
I bet Murrow, who did such brilliant pieces of JOURNALISM, is spinning in his grave at being compared with Letterman, Stewart and Behar who aren’t even very good comedians, let alone “journalists.”
I think Edward R. Murrow is best known for his televised broadside on “See It Now” against McCarthy which basically defamed, demoralized, and eventually helped to dismantled the anti-communist movement in America. Was that a good thing? Murrow began his seminal “report” with these words:
“Tonight “See It Now” devotes its entire half hour to a report on Senator Joe McCarthy, told mainly in his own words and pictures. His main accomplishment so far has been in confusing the public mind on the dangers of internal versus external communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.”
Perhaps more than any other single event, this half-hour televised show reformed the debate in America over the genuine threat of communism to the American Project, and anti-communism has been waging a losing rear-guard action ever since. Communist sympathizers in the US press effectively stigmatized anti-communists as the true radicals and anti-Americans, and this really began with Murrow’s pious hit job on “See It Now”. Afterward it became common to scoff at the idea that American communists were under the thrall of Soviet handlers, the notion that American communists were a threat was afterward scoffed at. Murrow sets out in his exposition that there was a vast difference between “external” and “internal” communism, something we know today as a blatant lie. But it was brilliant for Murrow to equate the deeply flawed McCarthy with anti-communism itself. Once Murrow assassinated McCarthy’s character, marginalizing the movement to purge communism from America was easy.
One man noticed how effective this tactic was and later wrote a book:
‘Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It and Polarize It.’
- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals.
Another man noticed, and became President of the United States of America:
Behold Barack Hussein Obama.
Yes, as a teenage boy in my native Wisconsin and somewhat of a fan of Joseph McCarthy, I can remember the Murrow ‘See it Now’ program and in my uninformed way, being angry at the time. Now I understand why I was angry, and despite the elaborate justifications for turning McCarthy into the original anti-Communist ogre, the Hollywood 10 and guys like Clifford Odets were working hard behind the scenes to prevent, for example, a movie being made of Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon.” McCarthy’s downfall unleashed the Alinskys of the left to plot how, a decade and a half later, they would try to turn revolution into a trendy and plausible option, and the descent of the American public into drugs, porn, etc. was just a symptom of the national loss of purpose. It wasn’t until Reagan [and Thatcher] that counter-reformation was even possible.
Was Ed Murrow all that great anyhow? Yes, he reported from London as the bombs were falling. But the danger was no greater than to any of the others living in what was then the world’s biggest city. Tens of thousands of people went out on the roof like Ed to watch the fireworks. And, like today’s journalists, Murrow had an unstated agenda. His was to get the U.S. into the war. He worked hand-in-glove with the British government toward this end. And remember that show he did where he visited the homes of celebrities and did fan boy interviews? It was an embarrassing early version of the brown-nosing shows Larry King specialized in. He smoked a lot and had a voice as deep as a grave; otherwise just another talking head.
for sometime our media has been so busy trying to find and/or create the next murrow that, in their myopia, they disregard the very fundamentals and tradecraft that would have made them important in a free society.
our current generation, in many fields, are so obsessed with being historically relevant that they deem everything as the greatest without examination of any merit
It just hit me, I know what kind of television comedy / reality show that could become #1, let’s have Jon Stewert interview Barry Barak Hussen Soetoro Obama, Karzai, Karza’s brother, and the Taliban while their picking the poppys in the fields for the heroin that they ship to America. What do ya think people? Since Jon and Comedy Central have proven that nothing is sacred for satire and that they will even give in to the threat by a group of radical muslims (like the press likes to call them) or just “the un-named” (like Barry “the Anointed One” likes to call them) or toilet paper (like Americans over the ages of twelve like to call them), it could be a hit. Hollyweird would go wild. One additional thought, to make it hit #1 internationally over the globe, let’s have the United Nations thrown in to be interviewed. Well, come to think of it, maybe that’s not such a good idea, if the U.N. is involved, they will steal everything and then say the the US took it. As far as the “Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear” is concerned, the only crowd estimate that really matters takes place on November 2nd. November 3rd will be the only time I will watch Comedy Central just to see how Jon covers so many losses in the Democratic Party on Tuesday. I also wonder how amused he will be when he finds out that the last laugh is on him. And calling it a rally? It was a rock concert. Who’s laughing now?
Karl Marx, of all people, supposedly remarked that “History repeats itself…The first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.” If Mr. Stewart truly is the second coming of Ed Murrow then the NYT certainly has gotten the farce bit right.
Besides do we really need another Edward R. Murrow? I mean that down-at-the-mouth faux gravitas that he embodied has become the template for every pompous j-school bore of the last forty years.