Murrow's Legacy and Modern Journalism

Will individuals who assaulted Capitol Hill police officers be eligible for this fund Anybody in this country is eligible to apply President Trump's attempt to create a one point eight billion dollars fund for those quote, targeted by the Biden administration is raising eyebrows of friends and foes alike. People can see the obvious self dealing. From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Michael Linger Also on this week's show, CBS News radio is no more. And while OIits for the Network celebrate nearly a century of broadcasting, back in nineteen twenty eight, the launch was less than promising. CBS is this upstart company formed by a stock promoter and a talent agent. The early reviews of the first performances don't make you want to tune in again It's all coming up After this WNYC Studios is supported by proof on Broadway Only six weeks left to see the Pulitzer and Tony winning play, the Chicago Tribune says, is one of the best American dramas of the twentieth century, brought thrillingly back to life. Deadline declares. Iowa Debie is utterly captivating in her roaring Broadway debut, leading one of the best casts on Broadway right now. and Etertertainment Weekly raves, Don Cheetles's portrayal is filled with sparks of genius on Broadway through july nineteenth Tickets available at proofbroadway. com. WNYC stududios is supported by Mohaunk Mountain House. Celebrate summer at Mohaunk Mountain House, the Hudson Valley's most iconic resort A family owned and operated national historic landmark Rort since eighteen sixty nine, featuring breathtaking views, guided nature hikes, tennis and pickleball, golf, sumptuous dining and evening entertainment, all included in your overnight stay. Experience for yourself why Mohonk Mountain House is voted the most iconic resort in the Hudson Valley. Reserve your next getaway at moohonunk. com and feel your stresses melt away. WNYC Studios is supported by Wise. Wise, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world With a wise account, you can send, spend and receive in up to forty currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get wise downownload the Wise app today. Terms and conditions apply rom WNYC in New York, This is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Michael Loinger. Last week, President Donald Trump and his own Jice Department reached a settlement on the president's ten billion dollars lawsuit against the IRS, with the creation of a so called anti weaponization fund. The DOJ says the one point eight billion dollars fund will support those who claim they were a victim of lawfare at the hands of the Biden administration. On Friday, a federal judge temporarily froze the slush fund ahead of a june twelfth court date there were already other efforts to kill it, including a challenge from two officers who defended the Citol on january sixth. Capitol police officer Harry Dunn and metropolitan police officer Daniel Hodges are bringing the lawsuit because the fund could be used to compensate the Citol rioters who attack them and put their lives at risk. In this takepe, you hear officer Hodges as he's pinned against a door by the mob. Will individuals who assaulted Capitol Hill police officers be eligible for this fund? Democratic Senator Chris Van Holland, questioning acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Why not make that a rule? I expect that Well, because I'm not one of the commissioners setting up the rules I expect That doesn't sound like a no. The fund has divided the GOP, with some Senate Republicans refusing to vote on a spending bill over concerns that taxpayer dollars could go to insurrectionists. Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said it would be, quote, utterly stupid, morally wrong to award money to pardon january sixth rioters. Unsurprisingly, the MAGA Faithful have fallen in line. This is about compensating Americans for the lawfare that we saw under the last administration. JD Vance at a press briefing last week. You previously told me that anyone who assaulted a police officer on january sixth should go to prison. So why not rule out giving them taxpayer funded money Well,aitlin, what I said is we're going to look at everything case by case. There are becausecause Caitlin, there are people to I don't know their individual circumstances. The origins of this contentious slush fund go back to an even more contentious lawsuit. So the story of the president who sued himself really begins actually in twenty nineteen. Anna Bower is a senior editor at laaw Fair. She recently wrote about how in twenty nineteen An IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn leaked tax returns for a number of wealthy Americans, and those leaks were later published by the New York Times and Pro Publica Trump sued the IRS for the leak earlier this year, which Bower says makes sense. He was legitimately wronged There were a couple of things that should have turned his case into a nothing burger. Chief among them is that Trump filed this suit well after the two year statute of limitations. His workaround of the statute of limitations is that he didn't know that his information had been leaked and therefore he was basically filing within two years of his learning Yeah, his claim is that he didn't know until he received a letter in January of twenty twenty four from the IRS saying Little John leaked your tax return information. But before that, his lawyer was speaking about harm done to him in court. Yeah, a year before that, his lawyer, Alina Haba, had gone to federal court on the record and spoke on his behalf at a public hearing about L John leaking his tax returns But then there's also this separate issue of whether the government would have been liable because Little John was a contractor, not an employee. And there's different rules of liability around what the government can actually be held culpable for when it's a contractor versus an employee. And in other cases the government had raised this issue as a defense, including the Trump administration itself this year filing briefs to that effect. And then if you look at the one case that was also related to Little John's conduct. That was a case brought by the billionaire, Ken Griffin, whose tax return information was also leaked case the Justice Department did enter a settlement, but that only resulted in a public apology. So no money. No ten billion dollars. Yeah The point is just there's no reason in Trump's case to believe that this would have resulted in anything substantial, much less a settlement to the tune of one point seven seven six billion dollars Trump seems to be getting some preferential treatment here Does that have anything to do with the fact that he effectively controls both sides of the courtroom And that's the other thing that is completely unusual and unprecedented about this case. He controls the government that he is suing and he controls the lawyers who are litigating on the other side of the case Keep in mind Under Trump's theory of executive control of the Justice Department, he has been very clear that you know, whatever he says goes And to point out the obvious that Justice Department is not supposed to be the president's personal lawyer or act in any way like that. And in fact, the judge for this case, Kathleen Williams of the U. S. District courourt for the Southern District of Florida said that she thought this all smelled pretty funny. It raised the question for her as to whether or not she actually even had jurisdiction to oversee the case And the reason why has to do with a constitutional issue because federal courts are only allowed to oversee cases where there's a real genuine dispute. We call it adverseness or adversity she wanted to hear from the parties on this because There's no real dispute, she could dismiss the case. But We never got around hearing what Trump and the Justice Department thought about all this because before the judge could ever even hold a hearing on the matter There was this announcement that a settlement had been reached Trump's settlement with himself was for a cool one point seven billion dollars, one billion seven hundred seventy six million dollars, to be exact He said that this money would go to charity Actually that money is set to go to a newly minted anti weaponization fund to compensate people who quote suffered weaponization and lawfare So Where exactly is that money coming from and where do we think it's going? The one point seven seven six billion dollars for this anti weaponization fund is coming from a permanent appropriation called the Judgment Fund. That was an appropriation that Congress set up because it didn't want to basically have to do a new appropriation every time that the Justice Department settles a case, right? And the assumption up until now has been that the Justice Department will pay out settlements in a responsible way. But what happened here is that there's really no normal type of congressional oversight that you would have If you as the executive, just wanted to create this fund outside the context of litigation, right throughrough the guise of a settlement that they could go through the judgment fund that kind of acted as an essentially like a blank check and this anti weaponization fund, which it's painful to even read those words because it feels like It's obvious that a weaponization of the Justice Department is what is creating this font It does seem like some of this money is intended to go to january sixth rioters and other political allies who attempted to interfere with the twenty twenty election has long talked about compensation for the January sixixers. and we've already seen reports of Jan Sixers who are applying for compensation from the fund. The Trump administration has dismissed multiple cases for members of the Oathkeepers and the proud boys with prejudice, right? Meaning they can't be tried again. They've taken press releases of their convictions off government websites. It really feels like they're just kind of setting the table here The seditious conspiracy cases that you just mentioned that the Justice Department sought to dismiss, those are people who were adjudicated guilty and sentenced to like decades in prison for their conduct I actually in the Oathkeeper's case, I covered some of that trial. You know Stuart Rhodes, the evidence at trial involved stockpiling weapons to bring to Virginia to be able to ferry them across the river on january sixth. It involved recorded statements that he made in which he said There only regret was that people who were at the Capitol that day didn't bring rifles because they could have fixed it right then and there. You know, the Oathkeeepers' trial hits kind of close to home because I was actually a federal witness in that trial. Oh, wow The government used some of my reporting into the Zello Walkie talkie app. as evidence, and I authenticated The evidence and you know, I was pretty ambivalent about it at the time. I felt like I didn't really have a choice. I was subpoenaed It was complicated, but now just like I don't know. What was it like seeing that news about the oathkeeper's case and this sorry to turn the tables on you interviewer, but like, I'm just curious. I mean, honestly, I find it really upsetting because it just feels like such an obvious subversion of justice You don't have to have sat in that courtroom to take offense to this. I mean, we all watch january sixth unfold on TV. There's a lifetime of footage on the internet So the idea that we shouldn't believe our lying eyes and that you know, the sort of obvious thing that happened that day didn't happen that day. It just feels like a profound FU to like All of us Right. I am so in the details on these things. that I agree with you What I wonder is does the average kind of not really tuned in news consumer feel the same way. And I don't know the answer to that. I'm not sure I know the answer to that either. I was going to ask you that I do fear that The idea that the Biden administration weaponized its DOJ against innocent MGa supporters, this framing has become just a kind of basic fact in right wing media, and that that's kind of what is allowing this parade to take place. I'm from rural Georgia And I hear that sentiment from people a lot But I also think that when I've talked to people back home about this settlement fund in particular People can see the obvious self dealing that's happening. in a way that maybe they can't when it's just in the context of government dismissing some of these january sixth cases or rewriting history and deleting press releases and that kind of thing. Do you think that the press the coverage that you're reading and watching hearing is making it clear How upside down all of this, how baldly corrupt it all seems I always just wonder like, is it that the media is not expressing these things in a concrete way? or is it just that general audiences don't have the attention span or the desire to really get into the legal weeds on some of this stuff. I appreciate that, but I also feel like we can't blame lay people for not understanding the maneuvers taking place here. Like isn't it our job to make this clear and make people care? Maybe we do need the headlines to be administration attempts to steal money from the federal government to pay out political allies. Is that your view or is that just a suggestion?? Is it my view that kind of language should be used by mainstream outlets I don't know. you know, it's easy for me to preach this because I don't work in a newsroom And I don't have to deal with standards editors at the New York Times. this kind of stuff. I'm just afraid that Journalists in their effort to not seem biased will hide their own analysis behind explanations of boring mechanisms. and it's like The stakes are a little bit too high for this stuff. I think if there's any chance people won't understand what's happening It's our job to translate it for them. Yeah, and I also wonder too, how much coverage are you giving to the IRS settlement fund like Are you doing multiple stories like wall to wall coverage of it because it's really terrible and seems like people should know about it? or are you doing, you know, one story and then kind of moving on? Yeah. becausecause things just don't break through. Yeah, no exactly. This has been great. I want to try I'm going try to I'm sorry. I feel like we got derailed on me asking you questions. Yes, absolutely. No, thank you. And thanks for your curiosity There have been some reports that at least some Republicans are skeptical. of this slush fund Is there any hope that Congress will intervene here I have kind of given up on thinking that Congress will exercise its oversight powers in the way that it ought to or at least the way that I think it ought to. But keep in mind, you know, there's the midterms And so we could very well see some changes there depending on the outcome of the election. If you have a change of party in the House of Representatives, you may very well see an effort in the House to bring litigation to challenge this. could actually be one avenue in which standing might be successful But it's unclear because the case law on that issue is a little bit unclear Okay, I guess we'll cross that bridge if we get there Yeah, we will see there's a lot of just unprecedented things going on with this settlement. So unfortunately, a lot of my answers to you are, it's unclear I'll take whatever hope I can get. Anna, thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for having me Anna Baer is a senior editor at laaw Fair and co author of the recent article, The President Wh sued himself Coming up, the true story of the glorious launch and legacy of CBS News It began in a prison fire. This is on the media WNYC Studios is supported by proof on Broadway Only six weeks left to see the Pulitzer and Tony winning play, the Chicago Tribune says, is one of the best American dramas of the twentieth century, brought thrillingly back to life. Deadline declares. Iowa Debie is utterly captivating in a roaring Broadway debut, leading one of the best casts on Broadway right now. and Eterertainment Weekly raves, Don Cheetle's portrayal is filled with sparks of genius On Broadway through july nineteenth Tickets available at proofbroadway. comot W NYC Studios is supported by Mohonk Mountain House Celebrate summer at Moak Mountain House, the Hudson Valley's most iconic resort. A family owned and operated National historic landmark Rort since eighteen sixty nine, featuring breathtaking views, guided nature hikes, tennis and pickleball, golf, sumptuous dining and evening entertainment, all included in your overnight stay. Experience for yourself why Mohak Mountain House is voted the most iconic resort in the Hudson Valley Reserve your next getaway at mohonunk. com and feel your stresses melt away. On the Media is supported by Eagless Crest Advisors. Eagles Crest Advisors works to take a holistic approach to financial planning, helping you create a comprehensive strategy that aligns with your life goals whether you're saving for retirement, purchasing a home, or funding your children's education, they help to guide you in making informed decisions with personalized advice and ongoing support, ensuring that your plan evolves as your needs change. Learn more at eaglescrestadvisors. com. On the media is supported by Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort offering destination focused small ship experiences on all seven continents, with a shore excursion included in every port and programs designed for cultural enrichment And every Viking voyage is all inclusive, with no children and no casinos Learn more at Viking. comot This is on the media. I'm Michael Loinger. And I'm Brooke Gladstone Big shake upps s CBS's sixty minutes this week. On Thursday, CBS newews editor in chief Barry Weiss named Nick Bilton, a former New York Times opinion columnist and documentarian who's never worked in traditional TV news, to run what is for now TV's most watched newews magazine Also this week, another bombshell. The network did not renew the contract of Vetteran sixty Minutes correspondent Sharon Alfonsecy after twenty two years on the job Last December, she had prepared a report on the notorious prison in El Salvador where the president was deporting people. The night before the segment was slated to air, Barry Weiss pulled the story. Weiss told showh leadership to pull the segment in part because there was no interview with the Trump administration. Agry with the decision, correspondent Sharon Alfoni emailed her fellow sixty minutes colleaguesing Factually correct and accusing CBS newews editor in chief Barry Weiss of pulling it for political reasons. And she's not the first sixty minutes lifer to rebel against Weiss. In april twenty twenty five, longtime executive producer Bill Owens resigned, saying it was no longer possible to run the show with journalistic independence Last week, CBS's star anchor, Anderson Cooper quit the network, ending his final broadcast with a subtle jab. I think the independence of Sixty Mutes has been critical. and I think the trust it has with viewers is critical to the success of Sixty Minutes. Yeah, for the last time I'm Anderson Cooper And something else happened. far less covered, but no less important. M twenty second marks the end of CBS on the radio Over its nearly one hundred years, CBS has helped define the sound of America This is Edward Morrow speaking from Vienna. It's now nearly two thirty in the morning The l is not yet arrived. CBS Radio launched the career of the legendary news anchor Edward R. Murrow and helped shape the format of broadcast news But in late March, Barry Weiss and President Tom abrowsky issued a memo declaring that CBS radio would be tossed into history's dust bin. CBS newews says the change is coming as the world moves on to digital sources od Wyson Savrvski wrote that quote, CBS News Radio served as the foundation for everything we have built since nineteen twenty seven If true, it was kind of an accident. Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, historian A. Brad Schwartz, author of Broadcast Hysteria and a forthcoming biography of Edward R. Murrow, recounts the remarkable tale of history's first on the spot breaking news broadcast that entirely changed the trajectory of CBS newews and yet is largely lost to memory Brad, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. What's the real story? Well, for one thing, the company that we now know is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System didn't have anything like a news division or a news organization. When it started broadcasting in nineteen twenty seven, it goes on the air About a year after the national broadcasting compomany, NBC. It's arch rival. It's the unreachable star Absolutely, because it has the backing of the radio Corporation of America. It has the blessing of the U.S. government It is intended to be essentially the American version of the BBC structured differently, but starts in a very similar way. Whereas CBS is this upstart company. It's formed by a stock promoter and a talent agent, concert manager who are really trying to compete with NBC in terms of entertainment. So you see that's what they're promoting from nineteen twenty seven and struggling early reviews of the first performances make you want to tune in again You quote one reviewer in your piece saying that itss three hour premiere declined in quality with astounding speed and that no one not paid to listen could have survived it. That's right. And I left out the fact that they were, I believe, at least fifteen minutes late getting on the air in the first place because there were storms and there were technical difficulties They were in a studio that didn't have clocks Back in those days, broadcast journalism, as we think about it today, certainly didn't exist. You would have people reading bulletins off the newswire or literally just they'd buy a newspaper and read the text on the air. And in fact, CBS executes a great leap ahead of NBC What happened was there was a prison fire in nineteen thirty in Columbus, Ohio prison had a broadcasting facility right near where the cells were burning So this prison by the time of the prison fire in nineteen thirty is almost a hundred years old, but it had held Confederate prisoners of war during the Civil War, it's a very old facility near downtown Columbus. And during what appears to have been an escape attempt, a couple of inmates would later confess to setting an incendiary device in a cell block that was unoccupied but was next to an occupied and overcrowded sub block And just to be clear, these prisoners who were trying to escape, they set up this incendiary device in this abandoned building in order to create a distraction, right? Correct. But they got The timing wrong. They said it so that everyone would be dinner, but it didn't actually catch fire until they were all back in their cells locked individually. there wasn't any automatic unlock. Exactly. These cells which would contain probably three or four inmates are individually locked. So yes, these inmates hoping to create a diversion so they can escape during dinner. By the time the fire catches, everybody's locked up The untold story here pererhaps even more then the first time a live unplanned event was broadcast, was the broadcaster, Otto Gardner, a prisoner who fellow inmates knew as the deacon. Tell me about him Otto Gardner was originally from Virginia. He's African American and he comes north to Ohio at some point. this is, of course, the period of the Great migration He's living in Youngstown in nineteen seventeen when he murders his wife and her sister in law, shoots them both on a crowded streetcar in front of a lot of witnesses So he's convicted, of first degree murder pleads guilty is sent to the Ohio Penitentiary in nineteen eighteen And it appears that he experiences a religious conversion within the prison He at some point obtained a degree from the Moody Bible Institute. I'm fairly certain by correspondence because they even in the twenties had radio correspondence courses. The Moody had its own radio station and a lot of prisoners in the Ohio Penitentiary had radio sets in their cells like crystal receivers By nineteen twenty nine, nineteen thirty, he is known within the prison as the deacon because of his religious degree but also because he is working as the seecretary of the Protestant Chapel in the prison, which is in a building that's located right next to the cell blocks that are going to burn in april nineteen thirty. And one of his duties in the Protestant Chapel is managing a radio station that WAIU, the CBS affiliate in Columbus installed there to broadcast musical performances by the prisoners. And this was a regular program that began in early nineteen twenty nine Quite popular regionally, apparently. People all over were tuning in to hear these prisoner performers One duo in particular, there was an inmate, Harry Dawson, I believe, who wrote a song, I'm J just a Black Sheep and it became sort of a regional hit. And we can't find it Neither could I. I'm sorry. but He and his partner were sort of known as the Back sheep. People would write mail to the prison, and you look at the newspaper coverage, you see indications of like, you know, if you like this performance, like write to the governor,. These were popular broadcasts. And it appears that because Gardner was the secretary of the Pince and Chapel, he was responsible for managing what they referred to as the radio station almost certainly did some broadcasting as well. He was acting as an announcer in some capacity on at least a few of these programs. So when the fire breaks out, not only do they have broadcasting facilities, but they have prisoners and one in particular who have microphone experience, which makes a big difference when you're covering an event like this. You said that he knew the difference between addressing an in person audience and addressing a radio audience Yeah, that's a big factor that I think is going to make this broadcast as impactful as it was because the craft of broadcasting that is developing in the nineteen thirties. you know, particularly politicians are still or rating. They're still talking as if to a full lecture hall. But you see people like FDR, you see people like Edward R. Murrow, They're the ones who understand this is a conversation. You are addressing a singular imagined spectator, not a theater full of people. But this is before Murrow's Big moment and Roosevelt. This was april twenty first, nineteen thirty. The fire breaks out Describe what transpired after it started You know, it's iron bars and stone walls. so it's essentially like being inside a brick oven When they eventually were able to clear the burned building, they found men with their heads in the toilet trying to get away from the heat, but it's the heat and the smoke. that overcome you before the fire Once People smell the smoke and the cry of fire goes out. You know the first concern of the prison officials and the warden in particular is to avoid a prison break. They show much less concern for the lives of the people inside the burned building. So while the warden and most of the guards are trying to secure the complex and bring the National Guard in, a few prison guards, but mainly other prisoners are unlocking the cells are Breaking the locks off with hammers are doing whatever they can to get each individual door open and get their fellow prisoners out And so there was some saving done by the prison officials, but certainly the inmates who survived this and left accounts like Chester Himes, who became the famous novelist and wrote a story and later a novel about this, he marvels at how the people who are considered to be the worst of the worst, right, convicted of murder and every crime in the book are risking their own lives to save their fellow prisoners WAIU, that local CBS Columbus radio station. The eyewitness account of the fires. I mean, technically, how did they pull it off? Well, because WAIU is located on an upper floor of the only skyscraper at that time in Columbus, what is now the Leavek Ter. they can see the smoke coming up from the prison, which is right near downtown. So they actually break the news locally while they send someone over, their station manager, Fred Palmer to the prison within an hour or two of the breaking of the news, they have Palmer reporting in by telephone. He can tell an announcer on the other end of the line what he's seeing and then the announcer can repeat what he's saying over the air, which is, again, about as close as you could get given the technical constraints But once Palmer is able to get inside the prison about a couple hours after the fire has started, and he gets to the chapel and he sees that the radio facilities have survived and are in working order they're able to patch in certainly using a phone line with the WAIU transmitter. So now they're broadcasting locally direct from the scene of the disaster. Meanwhile, the WAIU officials are getting on the phone with CBS in New York, saying we have something, Can you clear your schedule This requires getting long distance phone lines The fire breaks out around five five thirty PM By eleven fifteen, the Columbia broadcasting system in New York is ready to take this local broadcast from Columbus and send it out to seventy two affiliates nationally who, you know, if you're listening to your radio at that hour, you have no idea what you're about to hear, right? But you know certainly in the local Columbus coverage area, there are reports that people thought this might be some sort of drama. They thought it might be, you know, a skit. because this is just such a new type of reporting that people didn't quite know how to take it. And Fred Palmer Has this set up now? and who does he put on the air to speak to the nation Deacon Gardner, he's not identified by name in the broadcast. He's identified by number, convict X forty six eight twelve. So that's what is in all the newspapers the next day It's difficult to know exactly why Palmer did this because accounts get very sketchy in that period between the fire and when they actually go on air. But they seem to have wanted a prisoner's perspective. And of course, we know Gardner was very eloquent. We know he was experienced with the microphone We don't have a recording. the Newspaper accounts conflict in some details. I think it's likely Palmer. came on as the announcer and then handed it over to cononvict X forty six eight hundred twelve, But what is very clear from all the accounts is that the voice everybody remembered was gardeners So threeree hundred and twenty two prisoners died in the fire, the deadliest prison disaster in U. S history Deakin Gardner was at the microphone delivering the first breaking news report in CBS history Tell me what we know about Gardner's use of the mic What's remarkable when you look at the press accounts is that the structure of what he's saying is so similar to a report that you would hear later from Murrow in World War two during the London Blitz, for example I'm standing on a rooftop, looking out over London at the Gardner starts by describing what he's seeing because he's in the chapel building, which has windows. It's right next to the scene of the fire He starts with The objective information, when the fire started how it spread, what the estimated death toll was at that time where the main loss of life was on the top floors paints this word picture. of what the prison looks like Again, I'm reminded of Murrow particularly when he's reporting from Vienna, after the Nazis march in in nineteen thirty eight, it's now nearly two thirty in the morning their Hitler has not yet arrived No one seems to know just when he will get here, but most people expect him sometime after ten o'clock tomorrow morning It courses obvious after one glance at Vienna that a tremendous reception is being prepared. Like all the radio reporters who were operating from Nazi occupied countries at that time He has to pick his words carefully because the Nazis control the microphone. So he can speak more frankly from Britain than he can from Germany. and there are things he doesn't say in that moment that he says later And the same thing is going on here, whereas Gardner knows he is on the air at the pleasure of the prisoned officials. So we know from other sources that there is a great deal of unrest in the prison. Apparently attempts at escape or rumblings of what might become a riot. This would proceed over the succeeding days. But in the moment, Gardner is emphasizing that nobody's trying to escape. Everybody's well behaved, the nurses don't feel that they're in danger press accounts, there's some conflict in who said what? But the one thing all the newspaper accounts that reported on this from the New York Times to papers in Canada what they agree on is that moreore than once Gardner referred to his fellow prisoners as brothers, specifically in the context of talking about how they saved each other And so he makes this comment after seeing the things they did and the bravery of them I am glad and proud to call them brothers. And because it shows up in all these news reports, you can tell that's the thing that really landed with the audience. Yeah. the Kansas City star declared that quote Radio, for the first time in history gave millions of listeners eyewitness accounts of a catastrophe at the time of its happening. The Kentucky Post Gardner, a radio hero for his intensely dramatic account And the Chicago defefender reported that Gardner startled America thanks to his vivid and amazing description I can't help comparing it to Murrow's reports during the Bitz specifically because so much of the content of those reports is about the character of the people that he's seeing, in this case, the British. I saw many flags flying from stars No one ordered these people to put out the flags. They simply feel like flying a union jack above their rofs. No one told them to do it, and no flag up there was white. It's sort of making an argument to American listeners that they can take What a lot of people outside of Great Britain thought they couldn't, the Blitz, right? And Gardner is doing the same thing. He is looking at these prisoners, seen as the worst of the worst, the cast offffs from society. He's commenting on the brotherhood, the sense of solidarity that they demonstrated in risking their lives to save each other. And that's really remarkable Coming up, we delve deeper into the evolution of CBS newews after the fire and the Dacons at the stage for Edward R Murrow and pick through the embers of network news today. This is on the media WNYC Studios is supported by proof on Broadway Only six weeks left to see the Pulitzer and Tony winning play, the Chicago Tribune says, is one of the best American dramas of the twentieth century, brought thrillingly back to life. Deadline declares. Iowa Deborie is utterly captivating in her roaring Broadway debut, leading one of the best casts on Broadway right now. and entntertertainment Weekly raves, Don Cheetles's portrayal is filled with sparks of genius O Broadway through july nineteenth Tickets available at proofroadway. comot W NYC Studios is supported by Mohonk Mountain House Celebrate summer at Mohak Mountain House, the Hudson Valley's most iconic resort. A family owned and operated National Historic landmark Resort since eighteen sixty nine featuring breathtaking views, guided nature hikes, tennis and pickleball, golf, sumptuous dining and evening entertainment, all included in your overnight stay. Experience for yourself why Mohaonk Mountain House is voted the most iconic resort in the Hudson Valley. Reserve your next getaway at moohonk. com and feel your stresses melt away. On the Media is supported by Eagles Crest Advisors. Eagles Crest Advisors works to take a holistic approach to financial planning, helping you create a comprehensive strategy that aligns with your life goals. Whether you're saving for retirement, purchasing a home, or funding your children's education, they help to guide you in making informed decisions personersalized advice and ongoing support, ensuring that your plan evolves as your needs change Learn more at eaglescrestadvisors. com On the media is supported by Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort offering destination focused small ship experiences on all seven continents, with a shore excursion included in every port and programs designed for cultural enrichment And every Viking voyage is all inclusive, with no children and no casinos Learn more at Viking. com This is on the media. I'm Michael Loinger. And I'm Vrooke Gladstone. Continuing with historian A Brad Schwartz, we shift our focus from the stunning impact of a horrific prison fire on broadcast news to the internal workings at CBS Apparently, owner William Paley was known for taking credit when in fact, credit was not due. Yes, his memoir that came out in the nineteen seventies, the title is As it happenpped, but the joke was it should be, as it didn't happen So at the time of the prison fire in april nineteen thirty, he's twenty eight years old. He had acquired control of the CBS network aboutbout a year and a half earlier, right around the time he turns twenty seven So he didn't found the network, even though he identified himself as the founder in later years, but he had bought this failing company that had never turned a profit He comes in from a family business in Philadelphia, successful cigar company, founded and run by his father and uncle he's in charge of the advertising for that concern. And sees in the mid to late twenties, what an amazing advertising medium, this new thing called radio is, how great it is it's selling. So in the moment, he's very conservative in the sense that he doesn't want to risk what he has. He's slow to see the promise in television, even though he would play differently And the same is true with newews Even when he has sort of this minor phenomenon on his hands with this prison fire broadcast, he's still reluctant to capitalize on it as best we can tell although ultimately, Paley sends Gardner a five hundred dollars check and a thank you note Pumably to allow CBS to take credit for what the local station had done? Yes, exactly. So this is really one of the only reasons we know Gardner's name because he's only identified on air and in the initial news coverage as convict X forty six eight twelve, But then within a day It goes out on the associated press and the other newswires that the president of CBS William S. Paley is sending this auto you Gardner a check and a thank you note, commending him for this historic broadcast that he's made Paley one of his first actions when he took over CBS around about nineteen twenty nine retained the services of Edward Bernays, who was the inventor of public relations, who was propagandist during the First World War. And incidentally, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who really wasn't crazy about his nephew. Yeah. But Bernays was a big believer in what he called created news. and there's other examples of him in this twenty nine and thirty period genning up stories that turn out not to be true, but the whole idea that If you can get the press to report on your company, that's better than buying advertising because it's cheaper and people regard that with less skepticism because it's not an advertisement, it's a news story. So the idea of sending Gardner a hundred dollars hundred check gets CBS in newspapers around the country and keeps the story alive literally for weeks And it demonstrates specifically that the public really wants up to the minute news somebody who works at the public relations firm of Edward Bernays, who used to work at the The New York Times, whose name was Edward Claber. He had an editor at the Times someone who really internalized and believed in the principles of journalism specifically as practiced at the times Now he's working in public relations and he's making an argument to Paley that this broadcast demonstrates that there is a demand for news delivered in this way over the air, that will be filled by someone because Paley is reluctant. Newspapers at this time are still the dominant news medium in the United States. Broadcasting depends on them. not just for news content because newspapers are doing the reporting, but radio also depends on the press for advertising because radio listings in the newspapers, that's the only way people are going to know what's on the air. And Paley fears, as would turn out to be the case in later years, that the more radio becomes a competitor to newspapers in terms of delivering original reporting There's going to be friction between radio and the press. That would break out in the thir thousand three thirty four, what they call the press radio warar But in this moment Klobber is urging Paley to move forward Within four months of this broadcast, Paley has hired Ed Klaobber to be an executive vice president, basically putting him in charge of news. By the end of that year, Klaobber has hired Paul White, who is a wire service man from way back And the two of them really start to build the news division, what we now know as CBS News. It's not its own sort of journalistic organization for a few more years. You know they refer to it as like public affairs and special events In nineteen thirty five, when Ed Klaber hires a young man in his mid to late twenties, claiming to be in his early thirties, named Edward R. Murrow, he joins this special events division. N as a journalist. He has no reporting background. He's never worked on a newspaper, but is booking speakers for the CBS network in this organization where he's surrounded by all of these news people He then credits Ed Klauber above everyone else for establishing the the ethic, the integrity the standards of CBS newews But getting back to the fire, CBS had started promoting itself as the news network But as you wrote Gardner became a footnote, misremembered, if remembered at all Haley's memoirs falsely describe an inmate who seized the microphone and began broadcasting the roar of the flames and the screams of the dying I the gardener Well, he's transferred to the less secure prison farm facility as a lot of prisoners were to relieve overcrowding because of the reforms, I think that take place in the years after the fire Even though he has a life sentence, he's paroled in nineteen forty seven He stays in prison for seventeen more years after the fire, though, right? Correct And then once he gets out by now, he is an ordained minister So he continues to do this ministry to the incarcerated One of the black newspapers in Ohio, the Ohio State News catches up with him two years after his release. This would be now in ' forty nine And it's the only news source that I've been able to find in the years after the fire recognizing him as this I mean, he's referred to in the headline as the hero of the Ohio Penn fire talking about the broadcasting that he did and then interviewing him. saying that he's turned his life around Again, he doesn't talk much if at all about his own experience in the fire. he's putting the focus back on ministry toward the incarcerated and doing what he can to improve the lives of his brothers, as he called them still behind bars att the time of his death in nineteen sixty seven buried in the same cemetery in Columbus where The unclaimed bodies were interred after the nineteen thirty fire. H You say that the early years of CBS is just a black hole because CBS either doesn't care to preserve its history or maybe it wants to make sure that some people don't see parts of its history with CBS newews radio being shut down and the entire team being laid off Are you worried about the archives that will just lose more of this history? or how much history is there left to lose Well, the paper history of CBS's earliers, as far as anybody has been able to determine was destroyed probably sometime in the nineteen eighties The Library of Congress is specifically concerned with preserving the audio history because Radio, one of the things that makes scholarship about broadcasting so important is that especially in the twentieth century, radio was the soundtrack of American life. and So much went on the air without being recorded. I mean, we're talking about the national network level. if you get down to local radio, college radio, I mean, just you know, so much is gone do have, if you're tal about a network like CBS, interviews with newsmakers of all kinds, just the work of all these journalists for decades by this point. CBS never cooperated as far as I'm aware with making the archived audio available at a facility like the Library of Congress I do know that there is a great deal of concern about what will happen to the record of all of that work because for scholarship and just for the interest of the general public in what the twentieth and early twenty first century sounded like, that would be inirreparable and immeasurable loss You say that CBS' new leaders