Reporting a Date Which Still Lives in Infamy

On Dec. 7th 1941, noted news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow was scheduled to have dinner with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR wanted to talk to Murrow, then the most famous newsman in the world, about Britain and its war with Nazi Germany. Murrow was certain that the president would cancel, given that Japan had attacked the United States at Hawaii just hours earlier. However, FDR kept the appointment. And he did something amazing. He told Murrow every bit of information he had about damages and causalities. But then Murrow did something even more amazing. Fearing that such details could aid the Japanese, he sat on the information for 2 days.

"Imagine today. Something like that would never happen," veteran newsman Marvin Kalb told a large group assembled tonight at the National Archives to hear the former Meet the Press moderator discuss the early days of news reporting after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Time and again Kalb, who was the last journalist hired for CBS by Murrow in the 1950s, referred to the significant differences in news operation today and in the 1940s in his talk, which was augmented by actual sound recordings, video, and pictures provided by event co-sponsor The Newseum.

In 1941, Americans received  their news primarily through radio. There were 133 million radios in the country and the average American family listened to 4 and 1/2 hours of radio daily. "Television was absolutely not a player at all," Kalb said, noting that there were only about 2,000 TVs in the entire United States.

President Roosevelt first learned of the attack at 1:47 p.m. Washington time. Thirty-nine minutes later, New York radio station WOR interrupted the broadcast of the New York Giants/ Brooklyn football game to give Americans their first word of Pearl Harbor.

But apparently such relative quick news response for the time was not the norm everywhere. As the President was taking the first steps for America's involvement in World War II, the Washington Redskins were playing the Philadelphia Eagles in the nation's capital. There was no word of the attack from the broadcast booth. However all those present knew something was up as they kept hearing announcements such as would General so-and-so report immediately to his office. Then Redskin owner George Marshall later defended the decision not to make any attack announcement by claiming "we don't report non-sports news over the public address system."

Americans quickly became consumed with war news. An estimated 80% of all Americans listened to President Roosevelt ask for a formal declaration of war from Congress on Dec. 8th in his famous "a date that will live in infamy" speech. Interestingly, FDR made a last minute change in that speech; originally he had intended to say "a date that will live in world history."

Kalb said that in news stories, commentaries, and news reels, war reporters made little effort to be fair and objective. "America was galvanized. You can hear the anger and the fury. Today, it is so different," Kalb said. Supporting that contention, a news reel was played identifying Japan as "little yellow bellies"  and "Jap gangsters" who gave America "a stab in the back."

Kalb said that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center "returned us to a kind of Dec. 7th mode."

"Now, we're (the news industry) struggling to get back to middle ground of being objective and fair," he added.

Tales, Tidbits, and Tips 
Kalb's talk came on the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. At the time, much of the country was extremely isolationist. FDR and others in his administration had been expecting Japanese action, but they were leading a country that was not eager for war in foreign lands.There had been reports of Japanese action on Nov. 30  and Dec. 4, but those dates came and went without incident. But the shocking news of the Dec. 7th attack was one of those few events that made virtually everyone remember exactly where they were on that day that still lives in infamy. Suddenly, isolationism was out and a 4-year war effort was in.