Wires And Lights

This year marks the 50th anniversary of a speech given by Edward R. Murrow to the Radio and Television News Directors’ Association (RTNDA). Murrow’s speech is sometimes called the “Wires and Lights” speech but is generally simply known as “the RTNDA speech”. Already in a precarious position with CBS for having caused so much controversy with his broadcasts about Joseph McCarthy the year before, Murrow did not hesitate in the slightest to generate entirely new waves of controversy with his remarks. Murrow openly chastised his fellow television reporters and editors for neglecting their role as watchdog of the halls of power at a very troubled time, and upbraided the entire television industry for its unwillingness to deliver the hard messages of truth in favor of insipid entertainment. His words have echoed for half a century but are as true or truer now than that day:

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.

It may be that the present system, with no modifications and no experiments, can survive. Perhaps the money-making machine has some kind of built-in perpetual motion, but I do not think so. To a very considerable extent the media of mass communications in a given country reflect the political, economic and social climate in which they flourish. That is the reason ours differ from the British and French, or the Russian and Chinese. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

Murrow, like so many other critics of television then and now, had a somewhat idealistic view of what television should be — a source of genuine information and serious debate. In his mind there was indeed room for entertainment, but not at the expense of mature, informed, realistic discourse. He felt obligated, he said, to make his concerns about the seductive and sensational side of television known because he felt there would come a time when the public’s ability to engage in an open an intelligent forum about the issues that would face them might be totally corroded by the meaninglessness of constant entertainment. Television, he concluded, would be little more than “wires and lights in a box”.

Keith Olbermann’s regular homages to Murrow notwithstanding, Murrow’s Cassandra-like words came true a hundred times over. I’m sure his body is spinning in the grave so fast that it makes an audible hum that can be heard clear into outer space. This week just happens to be the annual RTNDA meeting, held in conjunction with the convention for the National Association of Broadcasters and the Broadcast Education Association (the academic organization affiliated with the NAB). TVNewser reports that after the big Correspondents’ Dinner last night, which featured Dick Cheney as the keynote speaker, there was a panel discussion to commemorate Murrow’s speech and to consider whether or not broadcast journalism still has a vital role. According to TVNewser, the panel went to great pains not to focus on the current state of broadcast journalism — a wise decision to be sure, since if they had I have little doubt the Ghost Of Murrow himself would have haunted the hall and melted the plastic-perfect faces off of every anchormonster and blowdried reporterchick in the room.

While Murrow would have given an arm and a leg for the sheer volume of news coverage that presently fills the endless hours of cable channels, local news blocks, and broadcast network news programming, he could be nothing short of appalled at the self-referential echo chamber that it has devolved into. Countless hours wasted arguing about flag lapel pins, the “War On Christmas”, “elitism”, haircuts, cleavage, recipes, and dozens of other utter inanities. Last night a “debate” that seemed to consist only of Charlie Gibson insulting the intelligence of Barack Obama AND Hillary Clinton with questions about being a “regular person”. An entire cable news network that exists only as a mouthpiece for one political party and makes no bones about their distortions, lies or slants. Local news that consists of rehashed corporate PR videos, fear-mongering features, and overblown animated graphics. And, most of all, a slavish devotion on the part of each and every person to maintaining the fabricated idea that Everything Is Perfect As Long As We Keep Shopping.

Murrow brilliantly reused the words of William Shakespeare to hit home the idea that it was our own complacency that created a monster like Joseph McCarthy: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” To this I would add a few lines from Macbeth:

Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Murrow’s own true legacy is half a century of prophecy I am sure he would have wished would never come to pass.