At this week’s Edward R. Murrow Awards held by the Radio Television Digital News Association, the staff of the former CBS News Radio won Overall Excellence and Newscast in the Network Radio category for their entry “CBS World News Roundup: Plane Crash at DCA.”
CBS News Radio’s final Operations Manager and Acting Newsroom Manager Dustin Gervais had written a speech intended to be delivered at the ceremony, but because most winners were not allowed the opportunity to speak, he is instead sharing the comments with us here:
It’s a little strange to be here, with some of my colleagues, accepting an award on behalf of CBS News Radio, because CBS News Radio doesn’t exist anymore.
However, I think that’s also what makes this award especially meaningful. It doesn’t just recognize an organization, but the work that a group of people did together and how important that work is.
A lot of my own work focused on the technical side of journalism: making sure the microphones worked, and that when something unexpected happened, there was a plan.
However, ultimately I knew that my job was to make what was important possible.
About 70 years ago, one of our predecessors, Edward R. Murrow, addressed this group. He said:
“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is nothing but light and wires in a box.”
Murrow was talking about television, but he might as well have been talking about journalism itself, regardless of the medium or the size of the box.
There is something especially fitting about hearing those words tonight. Murrow helped establish the tradition of broadcast journalism that we inherited. He worked for CBS. So did we. Our part of it is gone.
But the work remains.
Murrow wasn’t afraid to believe that journalism stood for something. He believed it should confront ignorance, intolerance and, critically, indifference.
When he took on Senator McCarthy, he let the Senator speak for himself, on film, and trusted the evidence to persuade.
Today, we argue about what happened, about which sources to trust, even about whether the institutions that establish facts are legitimate. And when the facts themselves are contested, indifference gets easier. “Why bother?” is a tempting answer. It’s the one Murrow warned against.
That is why the responsibility of journalism is harder, not less important.
Our final chapter wasn’t defined by the fact that CBS News Radio was ending. It was defined by what we chose to do while it was ending. Right up until the end, we did the work of journalism.
Reporters, anchors, writers, technicians, engineers, producers, desk assistants and all of our affiliates worked every day to report what was happening and help people understand it.
I could say I’m proud of this award, and I am. But what I feel is closer to gratitude. To the people who judged our work, looked at a newsroom at the end of its run and decided it was worth honoring, on behalf of my team, both those here tonight and those who couldn’t come, I give you my thanks.
Murrow ended that speech by saying that television could be a useful weapon in the battle against ignorance, intolerance and indifference.
I believe journalism still can be, and, for the health of the country, must be.
But only if the people who run newsrooms, and the journalists who work in them, choose to use it that way.
It was my great privilege to work with journalists who chose to.
Thank you.
