Former "Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel will visit Tufts on Monday to moderate a unique panel focusing on Edward R. Murrow, one of Koppel's standout predecessors in the field of broadcast journalism and an influence on the development of Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
A recent CBS tribute described Murrow as the third-most-recognizable voice in the English-speaking world during the Second World War after Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Over the next 20 years he remained one of America's most prominent journalists.
But in the intervening years, Murrow slipped into obscurity, his status as a television and radio fixture fading with the passage of time.
Of late, interest in Murrow has surged, chiefly due to last year's major motion picture, "Good Night, and Good Luck," which was nominated for six Academy Awards.
Tufts will be drawing upon that resurgence of interest, when the University will hold a panel entitled, "What Would Murrow See Now? The U.S. Press and the World."
A number of high-profile figures in the communications field will be present at the panel. They include Deputy Director of Johns Hopkins University's International Reporting Project Louise Lief, Washington Post Foreign Editor Keith Richburg and former President of NBC News Neal Shapiro.
Crocker Snow, director of the Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy at the Fletcher School, will also sit on the panel.
The panelists will analyze Sept. 11's impact on world news coverage and the economic and social constraints reporters face when covering international issues.
"Clearly, the publicity about Murrow is coming at a very opportune time," Snow said. "There's a crying need for more and better public diplomacy programs in our country today given the low ebb with the U.S. image [abroad]."
"Tufts is uniquely suited to do this because of the strengths we have," said Julie Dobrow, director of Tufts' Communications and Media Studies program.
"At Tufts," she explained, "we have [a] focus on international issues, on how the world fits together, as well as civic engagement and the role of media in a democracy."
According to Snow, Murrow exemplified "the best in western journalism."
"He was a reporter first and foremost, with a hard-earned reputation of credibility and integrity," Snow said.
The Oscar-winning "Good Night, and Good Luck" centers on reporting Murrow completed later in his career. His CBS reporting - and one broadcast in particular -confronted the tactics of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in his infamous crusade against perceived communists.
This broadcast, which aired Mar. 9, 1954, won a Peabody Award and an Emmy, and it has been credited with helping to turn the tide against McCarthy.
Prior to his emergence in U.S. television reporting with CBS, however, Murrow also issued some of the first international radio broadcasts in history as the director of the CBS European Bureau in London, bringing a never-before-seen intimacy and immediacy to the coverage of war.
"One of the things that made him so special was his ability to incredibly articulate broadcasts," Dobrow said. "The imagery used is inspiring, chilling, even today." (See page-one sidebar for excerpts from some of Murrow's best-known broadcasts.)
Murrow, Dobrow said, had "the ability to draw pictures for people with words, and to understand the role of international relations ... and report it back to the American people."
According to Snow, part of Murrow's professionalism was influenced by his very first job at the Institute for International Education. The institute, which is still in existence, is best-known today as the organization that administers the Fulbright Scholarship program.
"It's a very empathetic organization," Snow said. "It influenced the way in which he began to see the world. He wasn't seeing it through a strictly American lens."
Murrow continued to report on diverse international issues such as the Suez canal and apartheid in South Africa throughout his CBS broadcasts.
Following his time with CBS, Murrow's journalistic credibility led to his 1961 appointment to the United States Information Agency (USIA), formed to communicate U.S. interests and foreign policy issues abroad.
Upon his appointment as the director of the USIA, Murrow also insisted upon an appointment to the National Security Council.
"He didn't want to be picking up the pieces of their policy without some inside view of how policy was being created," Snow said, adding that Murrow would say, "'I don't want to be involved in the crash-landings unless I'm going to be involved in the takeoffs.'"
Murrow's blend of journalistic credibility and the dissemination of U.S. interests led then-Dean of the Fletcher School Edmund A. Guillion to coin the term "public diplomacy."
His wish for it to become part of the diplomacy discourse taking place at Tufts' Fletcher School sowed the seeds of a special bond between Murrow and the University.
Guillion hoped that Murrow would sponsor a center for Public Diplomacy at Fletcher, but Murrow passed away in April 1965.
Following Murrow's death, the Edward R. Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy was established in his memory. Since then, the Center has sponsored research and dialogue on public diplomacy.
Additionally, many of Murrow's papers and personal documents are contained in the University Archives.
A little-known wood-paneled reading room dedicated to Murrow's memory houses numerous medals, awards, books and trophies. Multiple photographs showcase Murrow's characteristic piercing gaze and cocked cigarette.
According to Snow, Murrow's example holds some important lessons, especially at a time when worldwide positive opinion of the U.S. is at an ebb.
In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, the USIA was dissolved in the early 90s. Its brand of concerted "efforts at fostering goodwill around the world were no longer seen as necessary," in Snow's view.
The unilateral actions the United States has taken - namely, its invasion of Iraq and its failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol - haven't helped its image abroad either, Snow said.
"We seem to feel we didn't need to play along with others," he added. "We must demonstrate our willingness to listen and not so much to preach. The key word is empathy, and seeing things from the other guy's point of view."
What would Murrow see today?
"He would be very troubled by the loss of and lack of credibility of the U.S. government's public diplomacy-related programs," Snow said.
Murrow would likely also be "troubled by the growing power and influence of entertainment in TV" and the rise of "celebrity journalism," Snow said.
Though Murrow became a celebrity himself through his work, Snow emphasized that "he was a reporter first and foremost."
The Murrow panel is sponsored by the Communications and Media Studies Program, the Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy at the Fletcher School and the University College of Citizenship and Public Service. It will be Webcast live on http://enews.tufts.edu.
