It's About Excellence
Howard Stringer receives the Edward R. Murrow Award

BY GLENN A. JOHNSON

For a young man growing up in the United Kingdom, Edward R. Murrow’s broadcasts from London during World War II became a special magnet that drew Howard Stringer to leave his British homeland and start a broadcast career at CBS.

In accepting the Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in International and Intercultural Communication from Washington State University President V. Lane Rawlins in New York City, Stringer recalled the legacy of Murrow and his own beginnings in broadcasting.

Stringer, who is now the chairman and chief executive officer of the Sony Corporation of America, said his admiration for Murrow’s work during the war and later Murrow’s documentaries were the major attractions for him.

In looking for similarities between himself and Murrow, Stringer noted that “both Ed and I were there during the blitz, but I was only two.” He chuckled as he said it, looking at Murrow’s son, Casey, who came to the Nov. 26, 2002 event from his home in Vermont.

“My first job with CBS was answering viewer calls after the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday evening,” Stringer said. From that humble start, Stringer spent 30 years with CBS as a journalist, producer, head of the documentary unit and eventually president of CBS News.

Stringer said the other tie to Washington State University’s most illustrious graduate was documentaries, mentioning such Murrow classics as Harvest of Shame and the Sen. Joseph McCarthy broadcasts. Stringer said that the WSU award should be shared with others in the documentary unit and at CBS.

Several of Stringer’s colleagues at CBS, including Dan Rather, Connie Chung (now with CNN), Leslie Stahl, Morley Safer, Andrew Heyward and Susan Zirinsky, the producer of 48 Hours, attended the invitation-only event that was held at the Sony Club, on the 35th floor of the Sony building in downtown Manhattan.

In addition to the WSU president, other representatives from the university attending the event included Alex Tan, director of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication, and broadcast news professor Glenn Johnson. They were joined by Fred Cohen, president of the International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and Ralph Baruch, foundation chairman of the Academy.

A former recipient of the WSU Murrow Award for International/ Intercultural Communications, Moriyoshi Saito, president of the Broadcast Programming Center of Japan, was also in attendance, along with a number of top Sony executives.

Dr. Kenji Kitatani, who graduated from WSU and later returned as a broadcast professor after earning his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, served as emcee for the event. Kitatani, executive vice president with the Sony Corporation, continues as an adjunct professor at WSU and helped with many of the arrangements for the New York trip.

On the day before the Murrow award was presented to Stringer, WSU was one of three academic institutions recognized at a special luncheon of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, prior to the 30th International Emmy Awards gala.

During the Emmy awards ceremony in the evening, attended by those from WSU, Stringer was given the International Founders Emmy Award that was presented to him by his friend and veteran performer, Angela Lansbury.

A native of Cardiff, Wales, Stringer was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1999. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in modern history from Oxford University and received the U.S. Army Commendation Medal for meritorious achievement for service in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967. He became a U.S. citizen in 1985.

According to Tan, “Stringer exemplifies the vision and accomplishment deserving of the Edward R. Murrow award. It was clear that Mr. Stringer and the luncheon guests held Edward R. Murrow in very high regard. Thanks to President Rawlins and Casey Murrow, they now know that the Murrow tradition lives on at WSU and the Murrow School of Communication.”

Past recipients of the Murrow award have included Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent; Daniel Schorr, now senior news analyst for National Public Radio and formerly with CNN and CBS; Bernard Shaw, formerly of CBS and CNN; Ted Turner, founder of CNN; Keith Jackson, with ABC Sports; Frank Blethen, publisher of the Seattle Times; Walter Cronkite, retired anchor of the CBS Evening News; and Al Neuharth, who created and published USA Today.