Murrow & the Girls

Edward Roscoe Murrow, one of the reportorial heroes of the Battle of Britain and TV's David against Goliath McCarthy, last week found his name linked with what one snickering newspaper called "doves of sin." It happened through CBS radio's lively tabloid report on "The Business of Sex" (TIME, Jan. 26), which alleged wholesale pimping by U.S. business to soften up clients. Murrow himself had got into the act only three weeks before showtime, read a script somebody else had written for him with his usual sonorous solemnity. But his voice had scarcely stopped vibrating when the ruckus started.

Everyone reacted wonderfully in character. New York's Finest, in the shape of First Deputy Police Commissioner James Kennedy, came forward indignantly to ask names and addresses of the call girls, madams and businessmen whose voices were heard on the show. He got no information from Murrow in an interview that lasted just long enough (seven minutes) for picture taking. The New Dealing New York Post found in the program some vague evidence of capitalism's corruption ("Sales are sometimes clinched by a clinch ... in the world of free enterprise"). The New York Journal-American saw the whole thing as grist for Communist propaganda, sent out a girl reporter to interrogate Murrow. The reporter tracked him to the very door of a CBS washroom, but got no information, was reduced to reporting about his red suspenders ("They're cute"). The Journal also came close to daring CBS to sue for libel by suggesting (so far without any supporting evidence) that the show had been a hoax, that actors and actresses had been used.

CBS Producer Irving Gitlin stoutly insisted that all the voices heard on the program were authentic, that three reporters had spent three months gathering background information and one month taping the interviews. Wasn't it strange that so many people had been willing to discuss so unsavory a business? Maybed Gitlin: "Maybe it's because all these people have a sense of guilt about what they're doing." How had the CBS reporters found their sources? Gitlin: "I can't go into details."

Many businessmen felt that Murrow had smeared them through "guilt by association." That call girls are sometimes used by business was scarcely news. But, said the New York World-Telegram and Sun: "We just don't believe this sordid business exists on anything like the scale Murrow suggests . . . Cops and other authorities are openly skeptical that many businesses routinely debauch their customers."

As for silent Reporter Murrow, Manhattan wags were offering him this wry consolation: "Confucius say, 'Man who walks through whorehouse is sure to be misunderstood.' "

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.