(Fred Friendly's memoir Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Co...)
Fred Friendly's memoir Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control... remains important for its fundamental truths and warnings about the role of television in American society. Anyone who cares about journalism, about important national issues and the way the media addresses them, must read this book.
The Good Guys, the Bad Guys and the First Amendment
(Unlike newspapers, TV and radio broadcasting is subject t...)
Unlike newspapers, TV and radio broadcasting is subject to government regulation in the form of the FCC and the Fairness Doctrine, which requires stations "to devote a reasonable amount of broadcast time to the discussion of controversial issues" and "to do so farily, in order to afford reasonable opportunity for opposing viewpoints." In this provocative book, Fred W. Friendly, former president of CBS News examines the complex and critical arguments both for and against the Fairness Doctrine by analyzing the legal battles it has provoked.
(Minnesota Rag takes the reader on a tour of the underside...)
Minnesota Rag takes the reader on a tour of the underside of a dark period in Minnesota's past, one filled with crooked public officials, vengeful gangsters, and yellow journalists. Featuring notorious characters such as Jay M. Near, racist and antilabor publisher of Minneapolis's Saturday Press, pioneering newsman Fred W. Friendly weaves the tale of a court case that molded our understanding of freedom of the press and set a precedent for the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
(Consisting of thirteen episodes television series broadca...)
Consisting of thirteen episodes television series broadcast represents the series of seminars with a group of around 15-20 politicians, journalists, educators and others, including the former President Gerald Ford and the former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who also participated in related discussion with the series host Fred Friendly.
(12 memorable scripts from the Edward R. Murrow and Fred W...)
12 memorable scripts from the Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly TV series "See It Now" with highlights from 15 other provocative shows, illustrated with photos.
Fred W. Friendly was an American correspondent, producer, and the president of CBS News. Along with Edward R. Murrow, he was the creator of the documentary television program See It Now.
Background
Fred W. Friendly was born on October 30, 1915, in New York City, New York, United States to Therese Friendly Wachenheimer and Samuel Wachenheimer, a jewelry manufacturer. The family moved from Manhattan's Morningside Heights district to Providence, Rhode Island, United States in 1933.
Education
Friendly was graduated from Hope Street High School in 1933. He received an associate degree from Nichols Junior College in 1936.
Friendly began his career in 1937 in radio at WEAN in Providence, Rhode Island. He saw success with the show Footprints in the Sands of Time, which discussed important historical figures. During World War II, Friendly served in the U.S. Army as a Signal Corps instructor and also as a correspondent for the CBI Roundup. His decorations included the Legion of Merit and the Soldier's Medal. Later, he became a CBS correspondent in India, then began a radio quiz show on NBC called Who Said That with his then-wife, Dorothy Greene.
In 1948 Friendly met Murrow and the pair initiated a collaboration that would last throughout much of the remainder of Murrow’s life. First, they created an oral history of 1932 to 1945 that was recorded by Columbia Records as I Can Hear It Now. They followed with albums featuring the 1920s and the years after World War II. The duo turned their success into a radio series called Hear It Now in 1951 for CBS. The weekly series was adapted into the television series See It Now the same year; when it aired, it became the first commercial broadcast to be seen live from coast to coast.
Murrow appeared on camera, while both men co-produced. The show, as detailed in the Los Angeles Times, took viewers to Europe for a ride on the Orient Express, to Korea for a battlefield tour, and to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for the announcement of Dr. Jonas Salk’s new polio vaccine. The show also featured more controversial segments, especially the 1954 “Report on Senator McCarthy”, which attacked Joseph McCarthy’s witchhunt for alleged communists. Amid its success, the show was eventually expanded to an hour, yet network executives shifted its format from a weekly show to a series of specials. Some joked it should be called “See It Now and Then”. According to the Los Angeles Times, canceled in 1958 the show fell victim to the commercialism that Friendly battled throughout his career-the networks’ preference for more marketable adventure and game shows over controversial documentaries.
In 1959 Friendly became executive producer of CBS Reports until 1964 when he took over as president of CBS News. While with CBS Reports, Friendly produced Murrow’s Harvest of Shame, a 1960 look at the life of migrant workers. Friendly’s stint as president of CBS News only lasted two years but included the shows Town Meeting of the World, National Drivers Test, and Vietnam Perspective. In 1966 he resigned in protest when the network chose to air a rerun of I Love Lucy rather than the fifth night of live coverage of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee public hearing on Vietnam.
Friendly then joined the faculty at Columbia University as the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Journalism. Later stints included work as a television adviser to the Ford Foundation, member of the New York City Mayor’s Task Force on CATV and Telecommunications, and teacher and director of the Television Workshop for the Columbia University School of Journalism. In 1979 he retired and relinquished control of the Journalism School's broadcast program. However, he continued to teach and produce the seminars at Columbia as an administrative officer of the University before retiring in earnest in 1992.
He also served as a visiting professor at Yale University in 1984 and Bryn Mawr College in 1981. He continued to be concerned about the ethical problems facing the news media and he organized private conferences for newsgroups. He began “The Fred Friendly Seminars” in 1984, which featured various politicians, educators, newspeople, and other notable figures. The seminars were broadcast on public television. In addition to his television writings, Friendly wrote several books. They include Due to Circumstances beyond Our Control, The Good Guys, the Bad Guys, and the First Amendment: Free Speech vs. Fairness in Broadcasting, and Minnesota Rag: The Dramatic Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Case That Gave New Meaning to Freedom of the Press.
(12 memorable scripts from the Edward R. Murrow and Fred W...)
Views
Quotations:
''TV is bigger than any story it reports. It's the greatest teaching tool since the printing press. It will determine nothing less than what kind of people we are. So if TV exists now only for the sake of a buck, somebody's going to have to change that'' - speaking about television.
"Television makes so much at its worst that it can't afford to do its best."
"You gotta be willing to be lucky."
"I have a motto: My job is not to make up anybody's mind but to make the agony of decision making so intense that you can escape only by thinking."
Personality
Fred Friendly had restless intellect, curiosity, and desire to stimulate debate.
Quotes from others about the person
''Fred was a fierce and mighty warrior, for the best ethics and principles in journalism, for the First Amendment, for his friends, and for his country. He never gave up, he never gave in; he never backed down and he never backed up.'' - an American journalist Dan Rather about Fred Friendly.
Connections
Fred Friendly was married to Dorothy Green from 1947 till 1968. His second wife was Ruth Weiss Mark from 1968 till 1998. Two marriages produced six children.