- Born
- Died
- Birth nameEgbert Roscoe Murrow
- Nicknames
- Ed
- Blow
- Egg
- Pioneering radio and TV reporter who was the dominant figure in American broadcast journalism during its early years. His dramatic, in-person coverage of the Anschluss (German union with Austria), the 1939 German-Soviet invasion of Poland, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, brought him widespread renown among the public and eternal esteem among his fellow journalists.- IMDb mini biography by: Bill Takacs <kinephile@aol.com>
- SpouseJanet Murrow(October 27, 1934 - April 27, 1965) (his death, 1 child)
- Children
- ParentsIsla Ethel LambRoscoe Conklin Murrow
- RelativesLacey Van Buren Murrow(Sibling)Dewey Joshua Murrow(Sibling)
- Signed off every radio show with "Good Night, and Good Luck"
- Murrow's public attacks on Senator Joseph McCarthy were prompted by the suicide of Murrow's friend, former State Department official Laurence Duggan, whom had been accused of being a spy for the Soviet Union. Responding to Murrow, McCarthy challenged him to debate William F. Buckley about Communists within the U.S. Government; Murrow refused. Decrypted cables and archived documents later confirmed that Duggan was, in fact, a Soviet agent.
- A chain smoker who by his own admission could not go for thirty minutes without lighting up, he died from lung cancer two years after an operation to remove his left lung, at the age of 57.
- He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson as he left his post as director of the US Information Agency in 1964, and he also received an honorary knighthood by the British government in 1965.
- His program See It Now (1951), a television version of his radio program "Hear It Now," was the first television news program to use the technique of taking its viewers away from the main studio to remote locations.
- Keith Olbermann uses his signature sign-off, "And so good night, and good luck," in tribute to Murrow's work.
- "Dear Sir or Madam: You may be right." This was Murrow's standard postcard reply to any and all critics who wrote to him.
- [about television] The instrument can teach, it can illuminate. Yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely lights and wires in a box.
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