Foreign Correspondents, Electronic

Radio Correspondents

By the late 1930s a new breed of network foreign correspondents helped to transform radio into a pervasive news influence in American life. David Hosley (1984, xi) describes the summer of 1940 as a time when journalists, medium, and moment made a perfect combination. American radio commentators broke rules, innovated, and competed for exclusivity. There was little precedent, so they had room to create tradition.

While the major radio networks began experimenting with broadcasts from abroad in the 1930s, the few items aired usually consisted of musical programs or cultural curiosities, almost never breaking news.

NBC's correspondent in Europe, Max Jordan (1895–1977), let his sources believe that his network was the “national” network, which made them more eager to work with it. This gave it an early edge. CBS, however, soon caught up. Its correspondent Hans von Kaltenborn (1878–1965) won a prestigious award for his live broadcasts during the Spanish Civil War and then for translating and analyzing broadcasts from Europe during the month-long Munich crisis of late 1938. When Edward R. Murrow (1908–65) was sent to Europe as the new “European director” of CBS in 1937, he lacked any journalism experience. At the time, the networks thought of radio more as an entertainment than a news medium. The August 1940 German bombing of London prompted Murrow's series of “This is London” broadcasts, in which he showed his narrative genius. Murrow became a legend. His understated and steady live broadcasts, even in the midst of chaos, used human interest to get people involved in the tragic stories of war. Similar salutations—“This is Berlin,” “This is Rome,” “This is Paris”—were soon uttered by the talented correspondents Murrow recruited and molded for CBS. Overall, the CBS News staff grew from 4 in 1939 to more than 60 by 1941.

The first journalist recruited by Murrow was out-of-work reporter William L. Shirer (1904–93). While the Spanish Civil War and the 1936 abdication of King Edward VIII of Great Britain were the first European events to receive elaborate coverage from the three American networks, it was the reporting of the March 1938 Anschluss, Hitler's annexing of Austria, that altered the character of radio foreign correspondence. Shirer was in Vienna when German troops rolled in on March 12, 1938. German soldiers occupied his studio before he had a chance to contact CBS. So he flew to London and delivered his chilling story of the events he had just witnessed. CBS news director Paul White developed a new broadcasting technique, the “European News Roundup.” Correspondents (many of them part-time print journalists) stood by microphones in several European capitals to provide their live perspective on changing events from their vantage points. Newsman Bob Trout in the New York CBS studio coordinated 16 such roundups during the Anschluss period, being in simultaneous telephone contact with Pierre Huss in Berlin, Edgar Mowrer in Paris, William Shirer or Edward R. Murrow in London, and Frank Gervassi in Rome. The Anschluss broadcasts were possible because seasoned newspaper correspondents helped with the coverage and shortwave radio made possible the live transmissions over such a distance.

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