The LuLac Edition #1246, July 25th, 2010

PHOTO INDEX: DANIEL SCHORR OF CBS AND LATER NPR. ALWAYS IN FRONT OF A MICROPHONE.

THE LAST LION
“All news is an exaggeration of life.” Daniel Schorr

Daniel Schorr died Friday. He was the last lion of the famed Edward R. Murrow boys who changed the course of news dissemination. All of them, Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Douglas Edwards were writers and reporters first, then TV journalists. My first memories of Schorr were when I used to watch him report on the Cronkite broadcasts. I was struck by the fact that he did not have the grand voice I thought a broadcaster should have. In a strange sort of way he was very cool. Almost unflappable. He proved that when he read his own name on the air when he got a hold of Richard Nixon’s enemy’s list and found himself on it. When he left CBS, Schorr became a mainstay on the new and exciting CNN. He later ended his career, right up to his dying breath at National Public Radio. At the age of 93 he was a walking history book having lived and reported on more than 75 years of the last century. About doing the right thing as a reporter, Schorr once mentioned his mentor Murrow saying, Whenever I'm not sure about something, the ethics of something, the question I ask myself is, 'What would Murrow have done? What would Murrow say?' It seems strange after all these years that I still have him as a kind of symbol and an emblem to live by, but I do.” Hopefully there are young reporters, worldwide and local today who might look to Daniel Schorr’s broadcast body of work, and when in doubt, ask the same question citing Schorr as that example.