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GORDON GREB |
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WITH McCARTHYISM |
 EDWARD R. MURROW |
CBS needed a guiding light,
but was it really Murrow?
of TheColumnists.com
What is it that defines Edward R. Murrow? The answer given me by radio and television newsman Marvin Kalb, who heads a special communications program at Harvard, is hardly a surprise.
Writing Kalb about a serious issue of our
time I signed off my e-mail to him using the words "Good
Night and Good Luck," which we often heard from London during
the blitz of World War II. Kalb knew the point I was trying to
make, saying, "Thanks, for I shall remember those words
and ERM for as long as I live."
Now Hollywood has saluted Murrow in a well received new feature
film, 'Good Night and Good Luck,' a title taken from Murrow's
famous wartime radio signoff line. The film is nominated for
the Best Picture Academy Award and is on nearly everyone's 10
Best list.
Actor-writer George Clooney and the film's
other producers, writers, directors and actors did well to bring
Murrow to life for a new generation. We constantly need to be
reminded of the crises newsmen face. The public needs to know
that journalists want the truth, despite the chaos of the times
and the difficulties they face trying to achieve that. If the
film encourages more in the media to stand up to today's challenges
and take a stand for freedoms, we will be the better for it.
It was Murrow who revealed that broadcasting could be a real
service to society. I was as proud as a peacock working as a
newsman at CBS West Coast headquarters in Los Angeles in the
summer of l951. As Steve Allen, then one of my fellow staffers,
once put it, "This could be the start of something big."
We both were at the CBS flagship station KNX, Hollywood, and
he later became a shining light and national celebrity on television's
"Tonight Show."
This definitely was my place and time. CBS News was a powerful
force under the influence of Murrow. The network was building
one of the greatest news organizations in the world, and I was
part of it. Although Murrow worked out of Manhattan, he was the
broadcast journalist who had influenced me more than anyone else.
I sought to use his programs and scripts in my work as well as
my teaching, hoping his high standards would be those of our
entire profession.
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and one of the stars of "Good Night and Good Luck." |
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While colleagues in Los Angeles urged me to move to New York, News Director Jack Beck told me, "You're one of my best men in the newsroom and I want you to stay here." He further inflated my ego saying, "I've had writers here from The New Yorker not as good as you." With that praise, it's no wonder I felt a great career was at hand.
By good fortune, Sig Mickelson, who once had hired me to work for him at WCCO in Minneapolis, was now president of CBS News. Television was in its infancy, new positions were opening up, and I was on the ground floor with excellent prospects. But the one thing I hadn't expected was casting its shadow over the newsroom--the growing anxiety over communism and our country's decision on how best to fight it domestically. Soon McCarthyism would force me to choose.
There was good reason for concern. Peace and security was being threatened worldwide. The U.S.S.R had tried to isolate and seize West Berlin with a blockade in 1948 and President Truman broke it with a courageous airlift. China had been taken over by communists in l949 and would confront us in Korea. We went to war to save South Korea in 1950, but that conflict was still going on a year later. At home spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty of passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union and were now sentenced to death. U.S. courts were sending dozens of Communist Party leaders to prison for conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government by force and violence. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was leading a new alliance of free nations (NATO) in Europe against a militant eastern bloc of communists. The threat of communism was not illusionary.
But how should we deal with it here at home?
I had left a faculty position at the University of Oregon to start work at CBS that summer. But I had no idea that CBS owner-executive William S. Paley, afraid of losing sponsors, wanted everyone to sign an oath. So, a week after I arrived at Columbia Square, I was handed a lot of papers to sign.
It didn't surprise me that CBS wanted rights
to everything I invented or created on the job, but what astonished
me was the network's submission of the oath. After due deliberation,
I returned the oath statement unsigned, agreeing to pledge to
defend and protect the Constitution of the United State, etc.
as a proper replacement for their loyalty oath.
I told CBS that I would not sign its conformity oath, but only
an "Oath of Allegiance" which would be something equivalent
to what is required of the U.S. President and other office holders--an
oath swearing to support and defend the U.S. Constitution and
Bill of Rights. As someone who had served three years in the
U.S. Army during World War II, I thought that was sufficient
evidence of my loyalty.
Actually I had nothing to hide, politically or otherwise. But I seemed to be better informed about the legality of their oath than CBS. Besides requiring all employes of the network to swear, "I am not now and never have been a member of the communist party," CBS also wanted further proof of our clean health, listing organizations said to be subversive by the U.S. Attorney General.
Apparently top CBS executives did not know--or did not care--that a court had recently found that list unconstitutional. Also judges had ruled a person needed to "knowingly" belong to a subversive organization, a word missing from the CBS submission. Too many innocent people had unwittingly signed petitions or stumbled into suspect organizations because they appeared to be perfectly patriotic.
I easily could have signed the form handed me at CBS West Coast News HQ and continued as a CBS newsman at KNX, Columbia Square. But that would be deserting university faculty members I knew and respected who were opposing the oath as a violation of the Bill of Rights. To my mind it was a dangerous and ineffective move to suppress opinion, as anyone planning to subvert our society would sign a loyalty oath in order not to be exposed.
To my mind it was an oath the courts eventually would find unconstitutional. As I had little money in the bank and was only recently married (six months earlier), it was a daring or perhaps stupid thing for someone like me to do. However, my new bride Darlene (incidentally, a Republican) said she would support me--not only morally but also financially since she could return to teaching kindergarten--and I decided to take my stand and live by my convictions.
My father had taught me the ideals of democratic government as a child. In college I had professors who required us to read--in the original--the U.S. Constitution as well as Marx's Communist Manifesto. It then dawned on me that Americans had nothing to fear from communist ideology so long as they knew our own.
In the days and weeks that followed I met with numerous people. Gradually I worked my way up the chain of command as CBS endeavored to change my mind. While I did not know Edward R. Murrow had signed the CBS oath and urged others to follow his lead, I was told no one was fired who admitted some kind of previous political indiscretion. After the CBS Vice President in Los Angeles failed to convince me to change my mind, New York made the decision for him and let me go.
I had great support from my colleagues.
News Director Beck never doubted my loyalty. Before I left he
assigned me to cover a super-secret national defense program.
With engineer and a tape recorder, I attended a carefully guarded
press conference with General Albert E. Wedemeyer, recently made
head of a classified project called VISTA. It turned out that
his answer to my question became the "lead" for the
Los Angeles Times' coverage, the wire services, and the CBS
network for the next 24 hours.
One week before my dismissal I was promoted to CBS West Coast
News Editor and was told I could return anytime I was willing
to sign. Instead I left for Stanford University to begin a Ph.D.
program, which would let me study and confirm my understanding
of constitutional law. Among students who shared the law library
with me were Sandra Day (O'Connor) and William Rehnquist, both
of whom would be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
What finally ended McCarthyism was television--Murrow's shattering exposure of the senator, depicted in Clooney's new movie--and the Army-McCarthy hearings. The oath itself was tested in the American judicial system and found wanting.
CBS finally made its amends in l959. I had researched the origins of radio broadcasting and published proof the world's first radio station was owned by CBS in San Francisco. This impelled CBS radio network president Arthur Hull Hayes to fly out to California to help me celebrate the 50th anniversary of broadcasting, accompanied by network stars, and salute it worldwide on the network.
As I was being commended by CBS for all this, I wondered whether anyone from the network still remembered they had fired me.
I met Ed Murrow in Washington, D.C., a few years later and was glad to shake his hand. As Murrow helped defeat McCarthyism in his own way and mine was a different approach, I often wonder whether mine was the right way. Now it's for others to decide. The fact my wife, friends and family stuck by me through the whole experience is finally what counts.
©2006 by Gordon Greb. The photo
of George Clooney is courtesy of his personal website. This column
first posted Feb. 6, 2006.
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