Coverage of the 2008 Edward R. Murrow Symposium with Don Hewitt

[trooping the colors] Please be seated. Good evening. I'm Erica Austin, interim director of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University. Welcome to the thirty-fourth annual annual Edward R. Murrow symposium, a national forum for the discussion of important social, political, and communication issues of the day. At the symposium, we honor outstanding and lasting contributions to the fields of communication with the Edward R. Murrow Award.

Our school is honored to bear the name of our most illustrious alumnus. The Murrow family has entrusted us to keep alive the Murrow tradition by educating the next generation of communication professionals in the highest standards of ethical practice in journalism, broadcasting, and community. Casey Murrow, Edward R. Murrow's son, is in attendance this evening, and I would like to invite Casey to say a few words. Casey Murrow? I promise to make this the shortest set of comments this evening. May I say to President Floyd and to all of you here tonight, how much the Murrow family appreciates the continued recognition of my father and his work here at WSU, his alma mater. Being his son, I am sometimes asked, what would your father think or say or

do if he were alive today? Generally I duck the question. In fact, in many cases I of course have no clue. But tonight I'll hazard two answers. First, I think he would be honored. I know he would be honored that his name has been associated with the School of Communication and further honored that the school will become a college within the WSU system. Second, my dad would be thrilled to see his old colleague, Don Hewitt, here at WSU tonight to accept the Murrow Award for his own exceptional work. So thank you, Don, and thank you, WSU. Thank you very much, Casey. I'm sure your father, Edward R. Murrow,

would be pleased with tonight's program, because tonight we are honoring Don Hewitt, creator of 60 Minutes and executive producer at CBS News. His efforts continue the Murrow tradition of excellence. Don worked with Edward R. Murrow when he directed See It Now, the landmark documentary news program. See It Now was co-produced by Fred W. Friendly and Edward R. Murrow. Tonight's Murrow Symposium is flanked by a record-breaking number of event sponsors. The commitment to the Murrow legacy is clear. The majority of the region's media and communications companies are here tonight in support and appreciation. A special thanks to the Murrow Professional Advisory Board development committee, who should be credited with building many of these relationships. Will Joyce Umansky, chair of our advisory board, and the committee members please stand to be acknowledged? Thank you, Joyce, for your incredible leadership. And now please join me in

recognizing tonight's sponsors. Our event sponsor, the Saul and Dayee G. Haas Foundation, whose generous gift of... is our event-level sponsor. Please give them a round of applause. We're so grateful. And our premier sponsors, contributing from 5 to almost $10,000 of support. Please acknowledge them as well. And our executive sponsors, $2500 or more. Thank you to all of you. And our director/provider sponsors, who have contributed a thousand... level of support. Thank you. And thanks also to those who gave at the Friends level of support. We really appreciate

your continued support and generosity. We would never be able to do all of this without your help. Thank you so much. Ever since I joined the Murrow School faculty almost 19 years ago, I've been deeply impressed with the tradition of the Murrow Symposium and the role of the Saul and Dayee G. Haas Foundation. The Murrow Symposium grew out of the Haas Foundation's desire to honor Saul Haas. Mr. Haas was a Northwest broadcasting pioneer and a longtime friend of Ed Murrow. Like Murrow, Haas dedicated his life to exposing misinformation, cultivating communication excellence, promoting journalistic ethics, and engaging in public debate about important humanitarian issues. Mr. Haas also was dedicated to the public's education, and I am sure he would be proud of how this symposium has grown. Each year, we have had the privilege of bringing extraordinary communicators to campus to inspire our students to pursue

lofty goals consistent with the values of Mr. Haas and Mr. Murrow. And now here virtually is Frank Hanawalt, retired and... retired from the Saul and Dayee G. Haas Foundation, and Ken Alhadeff, chairman of the Altaeus Enterprises, with a few words about the Haas Foundation and in its support of the Murrow Symposium. Saul Haas grew, became acquainted with Edward R. Murrow right after the world was over, or maybe just before. He was a... doing broadcast work in Europe and worked with Edward R. Murrow at that time. And they became very close friends. And...So when Saul

Haas passed away, why, the board of directors wanted to find some way to memorialize him. And they decided that a good way to do that would be to bring a celebrity, a nationwide celebrity, to the Pacific Northwest in a symposium each year. Well, there's one shining piece of that foundation's work that is so dear to my heart, and that is the sponsorship of the Edward R. Murrow Symposium at Washington State University. I've been on the board of regents for 10 years, and our school of communication is one of the most outstanding in the nation, and one of the things that makes it so is the symposium we have every year, where we bring some of the leading people in this country together to continue the dialogue about the effective nature of communication, radio, and the other communication arts and how they play on the fabric of our country. And this foundation, the Saul Haas Foundation, has been a major sponsor of that

for a quarter of a century, and it's made an incredible difference for thousands of people. ... Edward R. Murrow came from a tiny hamlet in northwest Washington. He shaped his ideals and values as a student at Washington State College and in Europe, and through his style of journalism, changed the way we look at the world. Ed Murrow was an inspiration, not just to his generation, but to future generations of journalists to come.

And for those of us who were lucky enough to work with him, he was our mentor. Ed Murrow made it plain to all of us who have been lucky enough to follow him at CBS News that he was a reporter with a conscience, that accuracy, fairness, and the courage to face down pressure from government, from big business, pressure from power, is the sure sign of a good journalist. He had his run- ins with all of the above and he never lost his way. His fresh eyes, his eloquence, and his willingness to go in harm's way made him a reporter's reporter, and I can think of no higher tribute. I think of Edward R. Murrow as the founding father of our profession. Murrow joined CBS in 1935 and was soon stationed in London. He brought World War II into American living rooms. Hello, America. This is Edward R. Murrow speaking from London. There are no words to describe the thing that is happening. He was a progressive. He experimented with television. I think the popular phrase is,

he pushed the envelope. He did things that hadn't been done before, and he did them successfully. From Hear It Now on radio to See It Now on television, Murrow expanded journalistic horizons with his courage to stand up against Senator Joseph McCarthy and his investigation into the plight of migrant workers in Harvest of Shame. I admire most of all the fact that Edward R. Murrow was an ordinary man, and as an ordinary man confronted with extraordinary evil and extraordinary challenges in his professional life, he and many of the Murrow boys came out on the right side of history. Merle left CBS in 1961 and worked for the Kennedy administration as head of the United States Information Agency. He was knighted by the Queen of England, and in 1964 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction. A pioneer in education through mass communication, he has brought to all of his endeavors the conviction that truth and personal

integrity are the ultimate persuaders of men and nations. Murrow sets the standard. He says... That's the kind of bar you need to reach for. His devotion to the truth and his fearlessness in going after it and then broadcasting it has set a standard that is going to live as long as journalism itself, I'm sure. His curiosity and his persistence is as fresh today as it was when he was setting the standard for broadcast journalism. And Murrow said it best of all. "There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought," he put it, "against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference. This weapon of television and radio can be so used." Good night, and good luck. The Edward R. Murrow Award has been presented to a select few whose careers have

demonstrated the standard of excellence set by Edward R. Murrow. Edward R. Murrow nominees have, have commitment and achievements that exemplify the career of Edward R. Murrow. The 2008 award is the lifetime achievement in broadcast journalism award, given this year to Don Hewitt. And it's now my pleasure to ask Washington State University president Elson S. Floyd to come to the podium. Well, I want to begin my remarks by thanking each and every one of you for being a part of this symposium. When we think about uncompromised excellence, we think of the work that we have been committed to in the Edward R. Murrow School of Communications, soon to be a College of

Communications. Tonight we have the very good fortune to have in our midst Don Hewitt. Don is clearly one of the leading thinkers in broadcast communication. He is perhaps best known as being the creator of 60 Minutes, but he also has made so many other contributions to broadcast journalism. You see Don attended to New York University and began his career in journalism in 1942 at the New York Herald Tribune, where he started as a copy boy. In 1948 he started at CBS News as the producer-director of the evening news broadcast. He was the first director of See It Now, the landmark documentary news program that was co-produced with Fred W. Friendly. And who was the host? Edward R. Murrow. In

1960, Hewitt produced and directed the first televised presidential debates between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. He later became the executive producer for the CBS Evening News. He was best known for creating the longest primetime broadcast on American television, the CBS news magazine, 60 Minutes. During his distinguished career, he received many accolades for his work, among them, two George Foster Peabody Awards, eight Emmy awards, including the second annual lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the American Federation of Television and Radio Actors' George W. Heller Lifetime Achievement Award, the Spirit Award, and a lifetime achievement award from the National Association of Broadcasters. Mr. Hewitt joins a distinguished list of recipients for this award

this evening, among them Sam Donaldson, Keith Jackson, Ted Turner, Bernard Shaw, David Schorr, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw. You see, in our lifetimes, there is one or two individuals who will make an indelible imprint on the profession that they have chosen. Don, you have done that. And we benefit from your intellect, from your creativity, from your vision, always keeping the media and news open and transparent. You are indeed a true visionary. We are so pleased that you accepted our invitation to be here and we look forward to your comments. As Don has said so many times, and I will say to those people up in the book, or up in the box, roll the videotape. [video not included] And now Don, would you mind joining us here at the podium please?

... ... ...

Don Hewitt. I ought to shut up and go home after that. You can't top that. You know, when you've been in television for more than 60 years, as I have, and you're better known for your 60 Minutes then you are for your 60 years, the only thing better than getting an Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award is not getting it posthumously. In looking back at the best of that more than half a century in broadcast news, I find myself more and more asking, "Ed Murrow, where are you now that we need you to help us sort out the, uncertain at best and dangerous at worst, times we live in?" To notice, for example, that the political camps of the three presidential

candidates spend more time telling us why their candidate deserves to be president than why he or she is qualified to be president. Being a woman as Hillary Clinton is, being member of a minority as Barack Obama is, being a prisoner of war as John McCain was, are facts of life. They're not reasons to be elected president. That kind of "where are we going and what are we doing" commentary was Murrow's trademark. And now that the inheritance of the Murrow mantle, the Walter Cronkite, the Tom Brokaws, the Peter Jennings, the Chet Huntleys and David Brinkleys are no longer in the anchor chair, that chair is in need of some serious reupholstering. Why, for example, is strong opinion, the meat and potatoes of a well- balanced TV meal, confined to a Sunday brunch

with Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, and George Stephanopoulos? Why ABC News, NBC News, and CBS News confined opinion to Sunday mornings mystifies me. Strong opinions, strongly held and strongly expressed, would give a badly needed shot in the arm to ABC, NBC, and CBS's evening news. What has already done that, giving a long overdue shot in the arm of television news, are bright, attractive, knowledgeable women broadcasters, not the least of whom was the Washington Post State Department correspondent and later NBC's White House correspondent, Marilyn Berger, who, when she's not being bylined on page one of the New York Times, goes by the name of Mrs. Don Hewitt.

She's a pioneer, a young pioneer, in an industry that has given rise to such followers in the steps of Ed Murrow as NBC's Norah O'Donnell, PBS's Gwen Ifill, CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, and jack of all trades, or better yet the Jill of all trades, Christiane Amanpour, one of the earlier Murrow Award winners, who reports from what sometimes seems like every dateline on earth. They were a crew of what used to be called, before politically correct became the politically correct thing to do, they used to be called "girls". Had they been around during World War II, the odds are they would have been boys, Murrow's boys, just as Eric Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, Charles Collingwood, and a slew of other first-rate journals- journalists were, as members of the best

broadcasting team in the history of the medium. In fact, I was, I once said that Ed Murrow and the Murrow boys were not the best broadcasters ever. They were the best journalists in the world ever. And a close second being the one I was lucky enough to have recruited for 60 Minutes, the most watched, most honored, and most profitable broadcast of its kind in television history. So with the 60 Minutes success staring them in the face, why aren't the CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, evening news broadcasts attracting the kind of viewership they once did? And is there a way for them to be what they once were under the baton of a Walter Cronkite, a Tom Brokaw, a Peter Jennings? I think there is, and that is to blend some local news delivered by first-class local newscasters into the

CBS evening news each evening. Let's face it, in local communities, local newsman and local newswomen are local celebrities with a following a network news show beamed to their community could certainly benefit from. By taking advantage of the fact that local anchors have become to local viewers what the Cronkites, the Brokaws, and the Jennings once were to a national audience. Bright, attractive, highly skilled broadcasters with huge followings in their own communities. So making them, in their viewing area, a co-anchor of sorts of the anchor in New York would I think give a badly need kick start to a whole new way of delivering television news that, let's face it, ain't what it used to be, but could be again if it got off the same old

merry-go-round we've been on for far too long and gave some serious thought to making the evening news a blend of national, international, and local news, as every newspaper worth its salt does right now. What I'd do is try in one market, Seattle for instance, by having the CBS local affiliate cut away at pre-arranged times from what's happening in the world to what's happening in their city. And if it worked, which I bet it would, extend it to Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, you name it. Technically, cutting away to local newscasters in the middle of a network newscast is a piece of cake. Would it add some salt and pepper to what the networks do now and have been doing for the 60 years I've been in television? I say try it and let's find out. Now, getting back to the broadcasting giant this school is named for, don't think for a

moment that the success of 60 Minutes as the most watched, most honored, and most profitable broadcast of its kind in television history could have come about had I not found disciples of Ed Murrow like Mike Wallace, Harry Reasoner, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, and Lesley Stahl who could make that happen. So with national news anchors' name and face no longer the logo of a network news division and the ratings of network newscasts nothing to write home about, when is somebody going to take the bull by the horns and do something about the declining popularity of the evening news as an American institution? The time seems ripe to rethink the facts of life of broadcast news in much the same way that newspapers are rethinking who they are and what they are, and I as the oldest living veteran of the network's evening news will

always propose that we do the same. If a network's anchor-driven evening news is caught in a rut, and the chance of getting it back on the road are minimal at best, isn't the time ripe for a network to change the more than half a century old anchorman game and plow some new ground, as CNN and Fox and NBC are, or at least trying to do? And over and above that, it can't hurt that the networks' news divisions are putting some of their hard-earned cash now in trying to hook up with the Internet generation hungry for, as the Internet generation would put it, wuz happening. Just because what's happening, as opposed to wuz happening, isn't working like it once did, except when it's packaged like Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, Extra and draws that obligatory 18 to 49 demographic. News

biz that's strictly news biz is like the old grey mare, not what she used to be. Except if the old grey mare is 60 Minutes and is still pulling her weight as she has for almost 40 years as the undisputed heavyweight champion of television news, a crown it won by following the path taken by both Ed Murrow's See It Now and Ed Murrow's Person to Person, two TV shows that the TV critic John Crosby, of the New York Herald Tribune, called "high Murrow" and "low Murrow", the high being See It Now and the low being Person to Person, which, when it came to ratings, the higher of the two got the lower marks and the lower of the two got the higher marks. But together, they got high enough marks to put the thought in my head that high Murrow and low Murrow

in the same broadcast would be a winner. Thus was born what turned out to be a Sunday evening perennial, 60 Minutes. A broadcast that garners the kind of praise that See It Now did, with a liberal sprinkling of Murrow's Person to Person thrown in for good measure. It was a formula that produced a never-to-be-broken record 23 years in the top 10, by catering to a thirst for knowledge and a desire to occasionally rub elbows with celebrities. And had those 23 consecutive years in the top 10 been only two or three, maybe the award you've just given me would have gone to somebody else and I wouldn't have ever had the chance to sound off here, as I'm about to do, about TV's much too symbiotic relationship with office seekers, by being the master of ceremonies of their

conventions, participants in their debates, callers of their elections, and recipients of a lot of the money they spend on commercials. I think what's happening between television and politicians is a much too close "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" relationship, and they're winged off the TV debate that pitted Jack Kennedy against Richard Nixon that I had the good fortune, or maybe it was the bad fortune, to produce and direct. Bad fortune because that was the night-- That was a night, where, where in the hell were we-- That was the night the politicians looked at us and saw us as a place to run for office, and we looked at them and saw a bottomless pit of advertising dollars. So there you have it. They married us for love,

and we married them for money. That was the night that the words "freely elected", "freely elected", became "outlandishly expensively elected". And I keep thinking the founding fathers would turn over if they knew the amount of money that goes into an American election campaign that was supposed to produce freely, freely elected members of our government. And the word debate also, that name, that word, became a misnomer, because what we've come to call debates are not debates. They're news conferences which the questioners prepare themselves for by asking themselves, "what can I ask that will make me look good but not partisan?" Well right there is the rub. If you're not partisan, you shouldn't be in a debate. Partisan is what debates are all about. OK. Having given you an earful of what I think needs fixing in my backyard, let

me take a stab at what I think needs fixing in a newspaper's backyard. Nothing so much as a pet peeve of mine, news-- which is newspapers endorsing candidates for public office, telling its readers who to vote for, which I think is nervier than anyone has a right to be. I can live with a newspaper telling me what movie I should go see, but not what candidate I should go vote for. I think that makes a mockery of what it says on the masthead of every Scripps-Howard newspaper, "Give light and the people will find their way". So how do I at 85 find my way? The best way I've found to do that is to follow the teachings of the late, great Satchel Paige. And if that's not a name that strikes a bell with you, consider that Woody Allen named his kid after him. He was a baseball legend in what was once known as the Negro Leagues,

whose reputation for throwing a wicked curve took a back seat to his oft quoted, "How old would you be, if you didn't know how old you was?" Well, I'd be 45, completely ignoring the fact that I was born-- Get this. I was born before ballpoint pens, credit cards, pantyhose, computer dating, househusbands, word processors, and guys wearing earrings. Back when grass was something you mowed, pot was something you cooked in, and closets were for clothes, not for coming out of. While Eliza Doolittle may have been fed up with words when she said in My Fair Lady,

"Words, words, words, I'm so sick of words", I'm not. So let me close with a few words about words. While most television producers are preoccupied with pictures, I'm inclined to be, as Murrow was, more preoccupied with the story the pictures illustrate. And while out of focus pictures leave a lot to be desired, out of focus sound is a catastrophe, as in the two out of focus phrases that keep showing up like clockwork on TV newscasts. One is, unless you're reporting about a baseball game or a football game or a basketball game, "team coverage", and unless you're reporting about Jacques Cousteau or a lost submarine, "in depth". Two, two cliches that remind me of a secretary of mine putting down a colleague of hers by referring to her as someone who would use cliches

if she knew any. OK, how about some words that struck me as examples of phrase making at its best, as in my wife's rejoinder when her mother phoned her to tell her that a cousin of hers was dating the oft-married Elizabeth Taylor. "Marilyn," her mother said, "Do you realize that someday we may be related to Elizabeth Taylor?" to which Marilyn responded, "Mother, some day everybody may be." Or David Frost's secretary on her first visit to Dallas from London, excusing herself to go to the ladies room only to come back a few seconds later and ask, "David, am I a steer or a heifer?" And there was Ed Murrow's sidekick Fred Friendly's story about his first day teaching at the

Columbia School of Journalism and encountering a student wearing a button that said "Make Love, Not War" and telling her he didn't think that was an appropriate button to wear in his classroom, to which she responded, "Oh, Mr. Friendly, you're so old fashioned You think making love is making out." Well, end of story? No. When Friendly told one of journalism's icons, the columnist Walter Lippmann, about his making love making out encounter with one of his students, Lippmann's reaction was "What the hell is making out?" Topped only one by one of Fred Friendly's journalism students who said, on hearing about Lippmann's "what the hell is making out?", said "Who the hell is Walter Lippmann?" So, please, if anyone ever asks you "who the hell is Don Hewitt?", tell him for me, will you, that he's the guy who won the 2008 Edward R. Murrow

Lifetime Achievement Award and is more grateful than he's ever been in his whole life to this great university for awarding it to him. Find. ... ... ... We're going to begin...whoops, can we turn this back on? OK. We're going to begin a short question and answer period with Mr. Hewitt.

We have a couple of microphones set up on either side here and if you would, come to the microphones and introduce yourself, and we'll accept only one question from each person. And we can start over on this side here with your question. Please go ahead. No? Oh. OK. I'll give you a minute to come to the microphones for your question. Good Night and Good Luck. Please go ahead. Yes. Mr. Hewitt, my name is Stephanie Clark, and I would like to ask, what is it you miss the most about Ed Bradley? Everything. Let me tell you a story. I introduced Ed Bradley when he won the Paul White Award as the best broadcaster of the year,

and I spoke to a luncheon of 1000 people and I got up and I said I want you to know why I hired Ed Bradley. I hired Ed Bradley because he's a member of a minority. And there was this gasp in the room like "what the hell would he say that for?" And I let the gasp die, and I said "He's a great gentleman, he's a great reporter, and if that ain't a minority, I never heard of one." Question over here. I was wondering what you think of online personal news mediums like blogs and internet radio. It's funny. I come from the era of Edward R. Murrow and I've lived long enough to come from an era of blogs. I'm not even sure I know what a blog is, to tell you the truth. And whatever a blog is, next year it will be called something else anyway so... I

think it's sort of, a lot of undisciplined. I'm not sure it's all bad to have everybody have his say. I don't know what to complain about exactly. I don't take them very seriously, but it turns out...I grew up in the Edward R. Murrow age and I'm still living in the Matt Drudge age, you know, and now its Arianna Huffington has her own blogs. It's, I don't know what to make of it. I wish I could give you an answer but I don't know, I don't know about it. I'm too old to think about that. Question over here. Hello, Mr. Hewitt. My name's Ray Collier. I was just wondering if you could give us your views on more cynical shows, like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I think it's healthy. I mean, my favorite show used to be That Was The Week That Was. And, and I think these guys are carrying that tradition, and I like Jon Stewart better than the guy who follows him, but that's, you know,

everybody has personal taste. I don't think they do anybody any harm. I'm not sure they do any good either but that's what, you know, the airwaves, use them. We have another question over here. Hey Mr. Hewitt, my name is Joey Clift. I was just wondering, right now, what do you think is the most important issue in like the entire world? Nah, I'm just, serious question. The most important issue. Well, everybody has his own issues. But this country's issue is, we're living in the most dangerous times. I, I can't believe what's happening. Over and above Iraq, which is like a disaster every day, there's another tornado, another hurricane. And I keep wondering, what is Al Gore going to do about that? Nice. Thank you. Go ahead. My name is Richard Lotz. I'm just curious what advice you have to an

individual who is trying to get into broadcasting. Get a job. You know something, I have a feeling that everybody's cutting back. You know, the state of the economy is everybody is looking at the bottom line. And I fear that there are a lot of people who've already got jobs in broadcasting that are going to come to me one day and say "How do you get a job in broadcasting?" It's a, it's, it's a bad time. I have no idea how we're going to get out of this Question over here. I really think even the great Ed Murrow wouldn't know at this point how we're going to get out of it. Hi, Mr. Hewitt. My name is Rebecca Bench and I'm a student at the University of Idaho and I was wondering, do you have any opinions or ideas on how to get the younger generation more tuned in to the news and current events? No, I don't. I mean I, I, it's all out there and it's

up to them if they want to watch it. I think one of the problems is that broadcasting is probably seeing its last days among a younger generation because they're all wedded to the Web, which I don't think is particularly bad, but it just means that they aren't going to get that 18- to-49 demographic that they hunger for, because they don't even own television sets. And I don't know why there's this emphasis on that crowd. And they claim that that's who advertisers want, and I'm not convinced that that isn't because all the guys that work for advertising agencies aren't old enough to know any better. Question over here. And I wish I had a great question for a great man. But how did you come across Andy Rooney as the voice of 60 Minutes opinions? We used to do a thing with Shana Alexander and Jack Kilpatrick called Point/ Counterpoint in the early days and then Shana didn't think she was making enough money, and I said you're making it from

lecture tours, why don't you stay? She decided to leave, and I needed something at the end of the show. Now I'm going to really level with you. You know why you need something at the end of the show? You have to separate two commercials. And you need some feature at the end because there are two more, you know don't what to do with the commercials. And I knew Andy, we were both war correspondents in, in London in World War II. And... Andy is, you know, he's like, I wanted to have a cartoon character on 60 Minutes. You know that Andy Capp thing in the funny papers, and I wanted to do a Andy Capp for television. I asked Rooney to write me one. And then he wrote it, and I liked it, and I said, well, deliver it so I can see what it sounds like, and when he delivered, I said, he is Andy Capp. And that's how he got hired.

Question over here. How you doing, Don? My name is Johnny, I'm a student at the University of Idaho and a big Satchel Paige fan, by the way. I wanted to ask you, what do you think the best qualities are of network news today? Well I have this gnawing feeling that the best is behind us. I think that what network news has to do now is find a way to attract the people, who as I said, the younger generation, I call them the Obama crowd, who are wedded to their websites, and I don't think they have their own television sets. So the challenge, I think, is to try to get young America, or do something, and get them back into the television audience. And I think maybe they're better off not being in that audience. It's been a pleasure having you here the last couple days. Thank you very much. My question is, tell us your take on the

upcoming election. What do you think's going to happen? Boy, I don't know. I don't know. You know I, I keep wondering, I don't think the two candidates, or the two Dem-, are getting very good advice. I mean, I don't know who.. The other day Hillary said she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary who conquered Everest. Hillary was born six years before they conquered Everest. So I think, doesn't somebody say, hey, you don't want to say that? And the other thing that gets me is, Bill Clinton said well the whole question is what, what is the meaning of the word "Yes" and not recently I figured somebody better tell Hillary what the meaning of the word "sniper" is. And they keep, they keep stubbing their toe. I think Obama stubbed his toe by not making a stronger condemnation of that, his minister. OK, so he was, is, he christened

his kids, and he married them, and he was his minister. It's like some guy in Germany saying well, listen it was my Fuhrer, I can't turn my back on my Fuhrer. And I wish he'd been much stronger in his condemnation. I have this crazy feeling, and Joe Klein's got it in this week's Newsweek, so it's not new. Somehow, if the super delegates get locked, you're going to hear again from Al Gore. I think that Al Gore may have his eye on getting Obama to run as his running mate, because I think if Hillary wins the election, or wins the nomination, I think there's a whole segment of young America that's just not going to go to the polls, as their protest. But aren't you getting sick of this, you know, this political season? It's going on for almost a year, and you know, it's very... And, as I said in that speech, these debates aren't debates, they have never debated

Nixon and Kennedy never debated. There are these reporters who go and ask them the same questions over and over again, and, and it's getting a little boring. No applause on that one, right? Mr. Hewitt, I'd like to know your thoughts on media consolidation and the effects that it's having on our country. Oh, I don't know, what are the effects it's having on our country? I, I'm not sure I know exactly what the effects are that they're having on our country that concerns you. I mean, the free press is still there. They still say what they want to say, and I'm not sure that the media, whatever it was you said it was, consolidation is, I don't see it as any great

terrible thing happening in America. I mean, there may be some pretty bad things happening in America, but I'm not sure that's one of them, compared to Washington D.C. Hi, Mr. Hewitt. My name is Grahan EC and I have my ears pierced, and I just want to see what your biggest inspiration was for the path you chose for your life. I lucked into this. I don't know. I - when all the little kids in my neighborhood were playing cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians, I was playing reporter, and I have no idea why. And all I ever wanted in my life as a kid was to someday have a fedora with this press card stuck in it, which nobody has anymore. Neither fedoras nor press cards. Thank you. Thanks so much for being here, Mr. Hewitt. Really, it's been a pleasure listening to you speak. But my question is, you talk about how the media today is

going down, it's spiraling, it's out of focus. Where do you get your news and information during the week? Wait, wait, I don't think I've said that the media is going down and spiraling in and out of focus. I think there are some very good newspapers. I think there's a free press. There's nothing happening that doesn't... Light seems to be shown on everything that could have been kept in the dark. There's very little... I think that it may take a while to come out, but eventually all the shenanigans in Washington, somehow somebody finds a way to make them public. And I think that's healthy. So I'm not really worried. I don't think the press is being had, and I think that there are reporters, there are guys at the Times, or guys at the Washington Post, who every day come up with some revelation about something that shouldn't be happening and nobody is putting them in jail for it.

I don't, I think it's a pretty healthy country. All I got to tell you, once we were at something and somebody said to Mike Wallace, "do you think the press does a good job?" and Mike said "the fact that George Bush got re-elected ought to be the answer. No, they're not." Congratulations, Mr. Hewitt, on your award and an amazingly distinguished career. And in the sentiment of the words that you shared in the clip earlier, tell me a story. I'm wondering if you would share with us some of your stories about your first encounters with Edward R. Murrow. Oh I was kind of awed by, you know, Murrow was bigger than life. I mean, you know, you're there hasn't been another one. And you know it's very, Casey will tell you, it's very difficult to put into words what you feel about certain human beings.

You just knew that he was, you know, somebody, a singular individual, and there haven't been many of those in our lifetime. I had the good luck to work with two of them, Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. And if you're going to take journalism as your career, there ain't nothing better. I mean that's about as good as it gets. More than that, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know how to quantify people of the Ed Murrow stripe. They just are what they are, and thank God they're here, and I wouldn't have a guess how to tell you what it was. Looking back on your 60-year career, is there anything reflecting upon it that you would do differently? Gee, I don't know, having gotten here tonight, why would anybody do anything different?

A strong argument. And on this side? Hi, I'm Matt, and I was wondering, of your 60-year career through all the blood, tears, and sweat you must have shed, what was the most significant event to have happened that brought you to that chair where you sit right now? Luck. Good old dumb luck. I've always said this about myself, that I don't, I'm not being overly modest, I'm telling you the truth. I went further on less than anybody ever knew in my life. I don't know how I got where I got, but thank God I got there. I really can't answer that. I don't know. I, there was no significant event. It might have been, I don't know-- ...

I was working at a place called Acme News Pictures after the war. And I got a call from a friend of mine at CBS, and he said "Listen, they're looking for guys with picture experience at CBS." And I said "What in hell would a radio network want with pictures?" He said, "No, no, it's television." And I said "it's whatavision?" and I said, he said, I said "You mean like you sit at home and look at old pictures in a box?" and he said "Yeah." I said "They don't have that." He said "The hell they don't, go look at it." So I went over, they had an experimental studio in Grand Central Station, upstairs on the third floor. And I'm a kid, I was a child of the movies. I never knew whether I wanted to be Julian Marsh, the producer in Forty Second Street, or Hildy Johnson, the reporter in Front Page, and I took one look at a television studio and I said, gee you can be both of them. And, and it, it fit me and I fit it. And it was amazing. I went to CBS. I took a $20 a week cut

from Acme News Pictures to go to television, and I wake up some night with cold chills thinking how close I came to not taking the cut. And when I went to work at CBS in 1948, there were about five or six of us kind of kids in this new medium, making $80 a week. One of them's name was Sidney Lumet, one of them was John Frankenheimer. They went to Hollywood. Frank Schaffner was the guy who alternated with me on the news. He left and went and made the movie Patton. My associate director was a little kid named Bobby Mulligan who directed To Kill a Mockingbird, and we had one other guy who quit to become the king of Siam, and his name was Yul Brynner. And I looked around one day and all these guys are going to Hollywood or Broadway. And I figured, I own this place. They're gone. If they'd stayed, I wouldn't be here now.

Hi, my name is Julie. I was wondering what your opinions are about the coverage of foreign news compared to back in the day, maybe compared to like Murrow for World War Two compared to the media covering the war in Iraq. I think the war in Iraq has been covered about as well as any war we've ever been in, and this being the worst one, the one we shouldn't be in, and never... You know, how we, how they allowed us, how Bush stayed with Donald Rumsfeld all those years is beyond me. I mean, I can't figure that out, but I think all of that was covered pretty well. And I think the war coverage... I don't think there's a soul in this audience who doesn't know more about what's going on in Iraq than they ever knew about what's going on in World War Two or Vietnam. I think there's coverage every night, so I don't think there's anything to complain about

the coverage of the war in Iraq. I mean, everybody knows it's a disaster. And if we were going to go to war, it should have been Afghanistan. And, but then again, you know, I, you know, I've already let you know how I feel about the present administration. Well, go back a couple of administrations. Jack Kennedy got us in -- my hero -- He got us into Vietnam and they told us, if Vietnam falls, all of Southeast Asia falls. Remember the domino theory? Vietnam fell. Not one country fell with it. So I think we were had then as we're being had now. I'm an equal opportunity hater. Yes. Hello, Mr. Hewitt. I was just wondering, what is your opinion on the 24-hour news cycle, having news available at all times on television networks?

How could it be bad? I mean, I think CNN is pretty damn good. I look at Anderson Cooper and I say, when does that guy sleep? Every night he's somewhere else. And Christiane Amanpour is about as good a reporter as I've ever worked with. And I think that in a couple of years, I think the networks are going to get out of the news business and leave it to the all-news stations. They're so much better. They're there. By the time people get home at 7 o'clock at night, they've either heard on the car radio, or I've noticed in New York, in offices people leave CNN on with no audio and they look over and there's bulletin on and they put it on, and... When I started the Doug Edwards news, it was the Korean War. We would report about a battle, and one week later we'd get the film. Today it's instantaneous. And I, I, I really think

that one of these days, the FCC is going to back off of this thing of broadcasting has to be in the news business, because the all-news networks are in it. I know for a fact when Mel Karmazin was chairman of CBS, he tried to buy CNN, and they wouldn't sell it to him, they said it would break Ted Turner's heart. But Ted Turner was a revolutionary, a little nuts, but a real revolutionary. And he changed the world, and all-news networks I think are the future. And I don't think that the networks are going to go back into the entertainment business and leave news to all-news networks, and they're very good. I mean, I look at the gal named Suzanne Malveaux, who is the White House gal at CNN, she's about as good as you get. Norah O'Donnell shows, keeps showing up on MSNBC. Lou Dobbs, I could do without. But

I think that's the future, all-news networks, and why not? Pretty good, pretty good to come home and find out, you can find out what's going on anywhere in the world at one moment. I'm afraid that's all the time we have for questions. Please join me again in congratulating Mr. Hewitt. Thank you for being here this evening. ... ... Night.