TV News’ Original Sin

Edward R. Murrow

My mentor in the television business was Fred Friendly.

For those who never heard of him, he pretty much invented TV news. He was Edward R. Murrow’s producer for many years before he became President of CBS News.

For those who never heard of Murrow, you can find him covering the entire right wall when you go into the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street. He was the most powerful and most pre-eminent radio broadcast journalist in the world when radio was the only medium. Today, often without realizing it, TV news reporters and anchors imitate Murrow and the style he developed.

When television news was invented in the 1950’s, both Murrow and Friendly were dragged into the new medium kicking and screaming. Radio was their medium. Television was something new and rather alien. They didn’t really like it.

Coming into TV, Murrow and Friendly also brought their contingent of radio reporters — often referred to as Murrow’s Boys. People like Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, William L. Shirer and Bob Pierpoint. (I was Pierpoint’s producer at CBS News).

They were all great journalists, and they all cut their teeth in the wire services before they moved on to radio, where they made CBS News the gold standard for broadcast journalism. The problem was that when they moved to television, they brought all their radio skills with them.

Since there had been no model for television news before, it was a blank slate and Murrow and Friendly made television news as though it was radio, with the pictures added almost as an afterthought. They had come from a world of written scripts, interviews and sound bites. They never really thought about pictures. To them, pictures were an afterthought.

In those days, (and right to the present), the journalism work was bifurcated. The reporter or correspondent wrote and recorded the soundtrack, just like in radio; the camera person’s job was to provide ‘coverage’; that is, pictures that could be slapped on top of the written script, which drove the story.

And so television news as forever treated as radio with pictures added. the stories were and continue to be driven by the sound bites, the written narration and the interviews. Pictures were an afterthought. Editors would try as best they could to have picture match word — sometimes it worked, often it was just b-roll.

This was a tragedy because television is a visual medium. That’s its real strength and power, but it is a strength that is often relegated a secondary consideration. Don Hewitt, the founder and first Executive Producer of 60 Minutes (and a man who started his career as an assistant to Friendly), called his bio Tell Me a Story. He used to judge pieces for 60 Minutes (he wrote) by putting his head down and just listening to the track. Great for radio — but not really television.

TV news could have taken a different course, driven by the visuals as opposed to the written script. That, after all, is where the real power and potential of the medium lies, and continues to lie, largely untouched. Film director Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator and even the iconic 1984 Apple commercial) got his start at The BBC, but moved to making commercials for TV — reinvigorating the Chanel brand with TV ads driven almost entirely by stunning visuals, as all his films are.

Stanley Kubrick (Dr. Strangelove; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Full Metal Jacket; The Shining — among others), began his career as a staff photographer for Look Magazine. His whole basis of storytelling is visually driven (2001 is almost entirely a visual experience). He also shot and edited all of his films, pretty much on his own, and largely hand held. This is visual storytelling at its best.

It’s not too late for TV news. It too can be driven by visuals first and allow a degree of creativity in design. Do that, and you’ll attract a whole new young generation who are already making all their own videos on their phones. And that’s who you want.