William L. Shirer - Shirer and Murrow

Shirer and Murrow

The friendship between Shirer and Murrow ended in 1947, culminating in Shirer's leaving CBS in one of the great confrontations of American broadcast journalism. The dispute started when J.B. Williams, a maker of shaving soap, withdrew sponsorship of Shirer's Sunday news show. CBS, through Murrow, who was then vice president for public affairs, and CBS head William S. Paley, did not seek another sponsor, moved Shirer's program to Sunday midday and then stopped producing it, all within a month. CBS maintained that Shirer resigned based on a comment made in an impromptu interview, but Shirer said he was fired.

Shirer contended that the root of his troubles was that the network and sponsor did not stand by him because of his on-air comments, such as those critical of the Truman Doctrine, and what he viewed as an emphasis on placating sponsors instead of on journalism. Shirer blamed Murrow for his departure from CBS, referring to Murrow as "Paley's toady." The episode hastened Murrow's desire to give up his vice-presidency and return to newscasting. It foreshadowed his misgivings about the future of broadcast journalism and his difficulties with Paley.

The friendship between Shirer and Murrow never recovered. In her preface to This is Berlin, a compilation of Shirer's Berlin broadcasts published after his death, Shirer's daughter Inga describes how Murrow, suffering lung cancer he knew could be terminal, tried to heal the breach with Shirer by inviting the Shirers to his farm in 1964. Murrow tried to discuss the breach. Though the two chatted, Shirer steered the conversation away from contentious issues between the two men, and they never had another opportunity before Murrow died in 1965. Shirer's daughter also writes that, shortly before her father's death in 1993, he rebuffed her attempts to learn the source of the breach that opened between the two journalists 45 years earlier.

Some clues are given in The Nightmare Years (1984), the second volume in Shirer's three-volume memoir, Twentieth Century Journey. Shirer describes the birth and growth of a warm relationship with Murrow in the 1930s. Although his reminiscences are wound together with his version of their professional relationship, he emphasizes that he and Murrow were close friends as well as colleagues. He does not mention their break. A number of touching recollections are included. Thus, it is easy to understand that their break in 1947, based on business disagreements, was made bitter by the close personal relationship they once had.

Another aspect of The Nightmare Years is Shirer's description of his and Murrow's three-way relationship with Paley. Shirer says that, in private, he and Murrow were contemptuous of Paley and almost always sided against him in the 1930s. Thus, when Paley and Murrow ganged up on Shirer in 1947, it was a shock, although Shirer does not say so explicitly.