Abstract
It’s safe to say that all students of journalism are aware of Edward R. Murrow and the standards he set for broadcasting through his on-the-scene reporting of the London Blitz, to the reporting on Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations of purported communists in the government, to groundbreaking documentaries like “Harvest of Shame.” Less known is Murrow’s 3-year tenure as director of the United States Information Agency (USIA) during the administration of John F. Kennedy (JFK). Gregory Tomlin, formerly an assistant professor of history at West Point, sets out to correct that sparsely documented part of Murrow’s career. The result is a detailed look at the workings and politics of the USIA, and Murrow’s personal stamp on the agency.
The USIA spreads America’s image abroad by seven modes of communication: radio, TV, motion pictures, the printed press, book publishing, exhibits, and personal contact. During the Cold War, it was viewed as our propaganda ministry. The term “propaganda” fell out of favor in the mid-1960s, and was replaced by “public diplomacy,” which involves our engagement with foreign publics. But Murrow didn’t worry about terms.
“I don’t mind being called a propagandist,” he said, “so long as the propaganda is based on the truth.” (p. 40)
He took charge of the USIA in March, 1961, after his career at CBS appeared to be over. Many were surprised that someone of his prominence would take a job that included a pay cut from the US$300,000 he was making at CBS to US$21,000. He earned the money. Murrow traveled extensively, both in the United States and overseas, during his time as director. He routinely worked 15-hr days, 6 days a week. Tomlin speculates that Murrow was happy to do it, because he felt he would be able to shape the direction of the agency.
Murrow’s first challenge was the Bay of Pigs invasion, which came after he’d been on the job for only a month. The USIA was out of the loop, and the Voice of America (VOA) had no accurate information to report. But later that year, Murrow happened to be in Berlin when the Berlin Wall went up. Kennedy and his Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, responded too slowly for Murrow’s taste, and he worried that a lack of action could dash the hopes of those trapped behind the wall.
Murrow convinced the German publishing house, Axel Springer, to print 3 million copies of a color magazine in 11 languages that documented the impact of the wall—and to do it at their own expense. It was one way to get around the budget restrictions Congress had imposed. Tomlin notes that by the end of 1961, Kennedy was considered stronger in foreign policy than domestic, and Murrow was credited with helping the president appear more resolute.
The Cuban Missile Crisis presented another problem: Murrow was ill. He had collapsed on a trip to Iran, and was convalescing at his farm in Pawling, New York, when the Soviet missiles were discovered. His deputy director, Donald Wilson, handled the USIA’s response, with emphasis on VOA broadcasts to Cuba, even enlisting commercial radio stations in South Florida to carry VOA programs that could be received in Cuba.
Both Berlin and Cuba were USIA successes, because it followed Murrow’s policy of staying on message, and keeping the message clear, focused, and truthful. Tomlin writes that the USIA’s foreign audience held Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev responsible for both crises.
By the time of Kennedy’s assassination in November, 1963, the lung cancer that would take Murrow’s life was wearing him out. He resigned in January, 1964, and left the agency in March, after spending 3 years at its helm. Murrow died in April, 1965.
Tomlin assesses Murrow’s stewardship of the USIA a success. Rather than engage in a simplistic good versus evil stream of propaganda, Murrow required the agency’s media services to take a conversational approach to their international audiences, and to treat each country as a separate entity, not as part of a monolithic foreign group. When JFK died, Tomlin says the world mourned him because they knew him through the USIA’s work.
Tomlin’s account of Murrow’s directorship of USIA is not all laudatory. He notes that Murrow considered his constant battles with Congress over funding for the agency to be the bane of his term. “We are a first-rate power. We must speak with a first-rate voice abroad” (p. 250), Murrow said, but he had little success convincing a reluctant Congress to increase his budget by a meaningful amount, and complained that one bomber cost more than the entire USIA. On top of that, he inherited a substandard staff too comfortable with the bureaucratic routines of Washington, and as the Vietnam War escalated, the clear messages of the agency were confused by different messages from the State Department and the Department of Defense.
Undergraduate students would likely find this slice of Murrow’s life to be too detailed, and not as interesting as his work at CBS. Murrow would disagree—he said it was the “most rewarding” (p. 255) experience of his life. Tomlin’s careful sourcing and documentation would make the book more suitable for graduate students across several disciplines, such as history, political science, political communication, and journalism. The book’s value is in accomplishing Tomlin’s purpose of providing a detailed account of Murrow’s direction of the USIA.