But is there another Murrow in the house?

No, not at CBS, nor any network. None has the courage to hire another Murrow. Newsrooms today live in fear of antagonizing a president who is clearly on a warpath against any criticism, justifiable or not. Is the U.S. then slipping into an authoritarian form of governance, in which the executive branch dominates the other two, diminishing them into embarrassingly obedient Yes-men and women? Murrow’s answer would have been a resounding “Yes.” To the day he died, Murrow worried constantly about the weakness of Western democracies to populist pressure.

Murrow started his exceptional career not as a journalist but as a young educator working in Europe in the early 1930’s, hoping to establish an exchange program between European and American scholars. Hitler intervened, blocking Murrow’s hope for transatlantic cooperation. Overnight, it seemed, Hitler converted the Weimar Republic into a fascist state, lighting bonfires of banned books and banishing such writers as Thomas Mann, Martin Buber, and Hans Morgenthau. Against heavy odds, Murrow managed to get some of these intellectuals out of Germany and into professorships at American universities. “The most satisfying thing I ever did in my life,” he later said.

During this time Murrow learned how swiftly a frail democracy could disintegrate into a dictatorship. He once told me the story of a middle-class German family he’d met and, for a time, admired. The father was a lawyer, the mother a teacher. Together, they shared the excitement of Shakespeare, Beethoven and many other wonders of Western culture. Murrow enjoyed their company. Then, in 1938, on a swing through Europe, Murrow visited his German friends. It was a visit he’d never forget. The father was wearing a Nazi uniform and mouthing Nazi slogans, as if he truly believed them. In just a few years, these good Germans had become Nazi fanatics.