Editing Edward R. Murrow (section)

==Career at CBS==
Murrow joined CBS as director of talks and education in 1935 and remained with the network for his entire career.<ref name=Baker /> CBS did not have news staff when Murrow joined, save for announcer [[Robert Trout|Bob Trout]]. Murrow's job was to line up newsmakers who would appear on the network to talk about the issues of the day. But the onetime Washington State speech major was intrigued by Trout's on-air delivery, and Trout gave Murrow tips on how to communicate effectively on radio.

Murrow went to London in 1937 to serve as the director of CBS's European operations. The position did not involve on-air reporting; his job was persuading European figures to broadcast over the CBS network, which was in direct competition with [[NBC]]'s two radio networks. During this time, he made frequent trips around Europe.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Russell|first1=Norton|title=They Also Serve: Edward R. Murrow|url=http://www.otrr.org/FILES/Magz_pdf/Radio%20TV%20Mirror/Radio%20and%20Television%20Mirror%204010.pdf|access-date=August 10, 2016|work=Radio and Television Mirror|issue=6|date=October 1940|volume=14|pages=19, 68–69}}</ref> In 1937, Murrow hired journalist [[William L. Shirer]], and assigned him to a similar post on the continent. This marked the beginning of the "Murrow Boys" team of war reporters.<ref name="Wertenbaker">{{cite magazine|last1=Wertenbaker|first1=Charles|title=The World On His Back|magazine=The New Yorker|url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1953/12/26/the-world-on-his-back|date=December 26, 1953|access-date=July 28, 2017}}</ref>

===Radio===
Murrow gained his first glimpse of fame during the March 1938 ''[[Anschluss]],'' in which [[Adolf Hitler]] engineered the annexation of [[Austria]] by [[Nazi Germany]]. While Murrow was in [[Poland]] arranging a broadcast of children's choruses, he got word from Shirer of the annexation—and the fact that Shirer could not get the story out through Austrian state radio facilities. Murrow immediately sent Shirer to London.  Shirer wrote in his diary:

{{poemquote|I was at the Aspern airport at 7a.m.  The [[Gestapo]] had taken over.  At first they said no planes would be allowed to take off.  Then they cleared the London plane.  But I could not get on.  I offered fantastic sums to several passengers for their places.  Most of them were Jews and I could not blame them for turning me down.  Next was the plane to Berlin.  I got on that.<ref>William L. Shirer, ''Berlin Diary'', ©1941 reprenited 2011 by Rosetta books, entry for March 12, 1938</ref>}}

Shirer flew from Vienna to Berlin, then Amsterdam, and finally to London, where he delivered an uncensored eyewitness account of the Anschluss. Murrow then chartered the only transportation available, a 23-passenger plane, to fly from [[Warsaw]] to [[Vienna]] so he could take over from Shirer.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Russell|first1=Norton|title=They Also Serve: Edward R. Murrow|url=http://www.otrr.org/FILES/Magz_pdf/Radio%20TV%20Mirror/Radio%20and%20Television%20Mirror%204010.pdf|access-date=August 10, 2016|work=Radio and Television Mirror|issue=6|date=October 1940|volume=14|page=68}}</ref>

At the request of CBS management in New York, Murrow and Shirer put together a ''[[CBS World News Roundup|European News Roundup]]'' of reaction to the Anschluss, which brought correspondents from various European cities together for a single broadcast. On March 13, 1938, the special was broadcast, hosted by Bob Trout in New York, including Shirer in London (with [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] MP [[Ellen Wilkinson]]), reporter [[Edgar Ansel Mowrer]] of the ''Chicago Daily News'' in Paris, reporter [[Pierre J. Huss]] of the [[International News Service]] in Berlin, and Senator [[Lewis B. Schwellenbach]] in Washington, D.C. Reporter [[Frank Gervasi]], in Rome, was unable to find a transmitter to broadcast reaction from the Italian capital but phoned his script to Shirer in London, who read it on the air.<ref name="sperber1998"/>{{rp|116–120}} Murrow reported live from Vienna, in the first on-the-scene news report of his career: "This is Edward Murrow speaking from Vienna.... It's now nearly 2:30 in the morning, and Herr Hitler has not yet arrived."

The broadcast was considered revolutionary at the time. Featuring multipoint, live reports transmitted by shortwave in the days before modern technology (and without each of the parties necessarily being able to hear one another), it came off almost flawlessly. The special became the basis for ''[[CBS World News Roundup|World News Roundup]]''—broadcasting's oldest news series, which still runs each weekday morning and evening on the [[CBS News Radio|CBS Radio Network]].

On March 19, Shirer returned from London, and Murrow met his plane at Vienna's Aspern airport.  Returning to Shirer's apartment, they encountered SS troops looting the Vienna mansion of the [[Rothschild family]].  "We found a quiet bar off the Kärntnerstrasse for a talk," Shirer wrote.

{{poemquote|Ed was a little nervous.
"Let's go to another place," he suggested.
"Why?"
"I was here last night about this time," he said.  "A Jewish-looking fellow was standing at that bar.  After a while he took an old-fashioned razor from his pocket and slashed his throat."<ref>Shirer, ''Berlin Diary'', entry for March 19, 1938</ref>}}

In September 1938, Murrow and Shirer were regular participants in CBS's coverage of the [[Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945)|crisis over the Sudetenland]] in [[Czechoslovakia]], which Hitler coveted for Germany and eventually won in the [[Munich Agreement]]. Their incisive reporting heightened the American appetite for radio news, with listeners regularly waiting for Murrow's [[shortwave]] broadcasts, introduced by analyst [[H. V. Kaltenborn]] in New York saying, "Calling Ed Murrow ... come in Ed Murrow."

During the following year, leading up to the outbreak of [[World War II]], Murrow continued to be based in London. William Shirer's reporting from Berlin brought him national acclaim and a commentator's position with CBS News upon his return to the United States in December 1940. Shirer would describe his [[Berlin]] experiences in his best-selling 1941 book ''[[Berlin Diary]]''. When the war broke out in September 1939, Murrow stayed in London, and later provided live radio broadcasts during the height of [[the Blitz]] in ''[[London After Dark]]''. These live, shortwave broadcasts relayed on CBS electrified radio audiences as news programming never had: previous war coverage had mostly been provided by newspaper reports, along with [[newsreel]]s seen in movie theaters; earlier radio news programs had simply featured an announcer in a studio reading [[wire service]] reports.