So I've been reading the newest book about Edward R. Murrow.

He is, and always will be, my hero.

I’m going to assume, hope, that everyone knows who he is: the father of broadcast journalism. Moreso, he is one of the greatest journalists who ever lived. He was 57 when he died. He brought fame and respectability to CBS. He was a god. Women loved him and men envied him.

He always wore a suit, vest, 40’s gear. He was a chain smoker (puffing endlessly through newscast after newscast, even during one about the dangers of smoking. How can you not love that?) He drank heavily because he was a nervous wreck even though he seemed calm as fuckall to everyone around him. For every transmission, there was whisky.

He showed America WWII with his voice. He gave the people of the world a startling view of what was happening in Britain when the Luftwaffe was bombing the Holy Spirit out of the English people. Edward Murrow brought down Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s insane crusade. Through him, the migrant workers had a voice (watch “Harvest of Shame” sometime). Through him, the underdog was heard. He never let go of that. He never compromised.

The corporations killed him for that, at least in a spiritual sense.

Greed and a loss of passion for the truth in his “business” killed him.

He died so young because he put everything in his work; he gave everything for the truth. It wasn’t so he could be heard, it wasn’t because he liked the sound of his voice, it was because he believed and understood the honor and purity of what he was doing: getting the story out.

Every morning that I wake up, I think of Murrow.

Every time I put my “uniform” on, I consider it armor. I imagine this work to be combat.

And really, that’s what it is, or should be, for any real journalist. They should think of themselves as soldiers. They are waking up and entering the battlefield. Every day, every night, every moment, is a fight.

How one chooses to fight…is something else and fit for a different exposition.

This is just baseline truth as I see it.

The reason I am so fed up is simple: I miss the old days. I wasn’t alive in the 40’s, I never met Murrow, but I grew up with people who had. I grew up talking to real journalists who followed Murrow’s ethic, I've talked at length with Dan Rather about being a reporter, spent my entire life following what my father did because he too believes that journalism is still an honorable profession. I am not senselessly blowing smoke up everyone’s collective ass; I am just trying to explain that while I may not have been alive and working during the golden age of reporting, I can feel it and I grew up aspiring to be like those who did.

And now, I long for it terribly.

There’s a tremendous air of disappointment when I talk to Brian and Lauren about it.

Everyone who works now feels it.

If they don’t, then there is something wrong with them. They shouldn’t be in my fucking business.

I am a journalist. I do not have to put up with this shabby crap.