NOTES
- David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 35.
- William S. Paley, As It Happened, A Memoir (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979), p. 120.
- Brown, letter to the author, Los Angeles, Calif., September 14, 1978.
- See for example Alexander Kendrick, Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow (Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1969) pp. 264–66.; Irving E. Fang, Those Radio Commentators (Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State University Press, 1977), pp. 9–10. White has given us his version of the dispute in his News On The Air (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1947), pp. 199–207. Erik Barnouw in The Golden Web, A History of Broadcasting in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 135–37, does not mention the Brown-White dispute directly, but does treat on the general problems of editorializing on the air. Halberstam, op. cit., pp. 35–6, does not mention White or Brown directly (neither's name is in the book's index) but deals with the role of Edward Klauber in establishing standards of objectivity at CBS in the late 1930s. Paley, op. cit., p. 120, treats the dispute in much the same way. Robert Metz, in CBS, Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye (New York: The New American Library, Signet Books, 1975), p. 93, gives a brief but inaccurate account. Gary Paul Gates makes no mention of the dispute in his Air Time — The Inside Story of CBS News (New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978). Nor does Edward Jay Epstein in News From Nowhere — Television and the News (New York: Random House, 1973) mention the White-Brown dispute.
- Reported in the New York Times, Sept. 14, 1943, p. 25. See also Quincy Howe, “Policing the Commentator,” Atlantic Monthly, November, 1943, p. 46.
- Since there is no collection of White papers and CBS refused to make other than its publicity files available, the investigation of necessity draws chiefly on the daily and trade presses, and on the recollection of leading and still-living CBS newsmen of that period. In reply to written questions submitted by the author, Robert Trout recorded answers in Madrid, Spain. The answers were received fn late December, 1977. Recordings of the Trout statements and all personal interviews are in the author's possession.
- In the matter of the Mayflower Broadcasting Corporation and The Yankee Network, Inc., 8FCC 333,338, January, 1941.
- Editor & Publisher, September 25, 1943, p. 70.
- White, letter to Brown, Aug. 27, 1943. A copy of the letter is in the White file in the CBS Library, New York.
- Ibid.
- CBS news release of Sept. 23, 1943.
- Edward Klauber, “CBS European War Coverage; Memorandum Governing General Operations,” Sept. 5, 1939, CBS files. Paley, op. cit., p. 139, maintains the Klauber directive was issued on his orders.
- Ibid.
- Radio Daily, Oct. 8, 1943, pp. 7–8.
- The battles are recounted in Brown's Suez to Singapore (New York: Random House, 1942).
- Ibid., p. 5.
- Ibid., p. 113.
- Ibid., pp. 397–401.
- Ibid., p. 440.
- Ibid., p. 500.
- Paul White, “Columbia's War Coverage: A Memorandum to the CBS News Organization.” CBS Files for Sept. 4, 1942.
- Brown, Suez to Singapore, op. cit., p. 530.
- CBS news releases of Feb. 27, 1942; April 10, 1942; June 19, 1942. In Brown file, CBS Library, New York.
- Editor & Publisher, Sept. 25, 1943, p. 3. Brown, in a 1978 interview with the author, confirmed the amounts calling them “an enormous figure” for the time.
- The rumors were reported in Variety, Sept. 29, 1943, p. 30. The Life magazine review of the film (May 10, 1943, p. 39) said the film's mission was “to sell Soviet Russia to suspicious American citizens.” New Republic, (May 10, 1943), p. 636, said, “To a democratic intelligence it is repulsive and insulting.”
- Trout's statement to the author, December, 1977. Trout did not get the job, chiefly, he believes, because he refused to disclose his own political philosophy to the Johns-Mansville interviewer.
- Robert G. Hummerstone, CBS director of corporate information, letter to the author, Feb. 9, 1978. Brown, in his interview with the author, recorded in Los Angeles, Aug. 17, 1978, maintained that he was unaware of Johns-Mansville objections to his endorsement of the film.
- White, letter to Brown, Aug. 27, 1943.
- Ibid.
- Douglas Edwards, statement to author, New York City, Jan. 2, 1978.
- Brown, statement to the author, Aug. 17, 1978.
- William L. Shirer, statement to the author, Lenox, Mass., May 23, 1978.
- Everett Holies, statement to author, La Jolla, Calif., Aug. 25, 1976.
- Edwards, op. cit.
- Brown, statement to author, Aug. 17, 1978.
- There is some question whether the network's stand on inserting opinion in news broadcasts was known by all CBS news broadcasters. Shirer, op. cit., says of the Klauber order: “Never heard of it. At least I don't remember it.” He adds that he and Edward R. Murrow had talked over White's follow-up to the Klauber edict “and just simply said, ‘Well, it's a silly order,’ and we told Paley that, and we told White, and we went on working.” Sevareid, on the other hand, in his Not So Wild A Dream (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p. 132, noted: “New York had warned us often enough about foisting opinion upon listeners in the guise of news.”
- Brown, statement to author, Aug. 17, 1978.
- Radio Daily, Sept. 23, 1943, p. 6.
- Brown, letter to the author, Sept. 14, 1978.
- White, memo “To CBS News Analysts,” Sept. 7, 1943, CBS files.
- Ibid.
- Radio Daily, Sept. 16, 1943, p. 7.
- The Kaltenborn talk was widely reported in the trade press. The most complete account (and from which this report is taken) was in Ibid.
- Ibid.
- New York Times, Sept. 20, 1943, p. 40; New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 20, 1943, p. 8; Washington Post, Sept. 20, 1943, p. 16.
- New York P.M., Sept. 22, 1943, p. 5. White also was quoted as saying Brown had decided to resign five or six weeks before, which would have been well before the Aug. 25 broadcast.
- P.M., Sept. 23, 1943, p. 6.
- Edwards, op. cit.
- Trout, op. cit.
- Holles, op. cit.
- Quoted in Paul W. White, News on the Air, op. cit., p. 205; Variety, Sept. 29, 1943, p. 32.
- Variety, Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Dorothy Thompson, “On the Record,” New York Post, Sept. 27, 1943, p. 21.
- Max Lerner, “Controversy on the Air,” P.M., Sept. 22, 1943, p. 2.
- Arthur Robb, “Shop Talk at Thirty,” Editor & Publisher, Sept. 25, 1943, p. 96.
- New York Daily Mirror, Sept. 24, 1943, p. 10.
- Ibid., Sept. 30, 1943, p. 10.
- Ibid.,Oct. 17, 1943, p. 10.
- Variety, Sept. 29, 1943, p. 30. D-Day was still eight months away.
- Brown letter to the author, July 26, 1979.
- Brown, statement to the author, Aug. 17, 1978. The book, which was to contain the interviews, was never published, although some of the interviews were used in a magazine article, “Do You Know What You're Fighting?” Colliers, Dec. 11, 1943, p. 14.
- See “Around the U.S.A.: Whitecaps on San Diego Airwaves,” The Nation, Oct. 10, 1953.
- Newsweek, April 12, 1954, pp. 14–15.