Newsmax host: “I work in this industry — I think Edward R. Murrow is totally overrated”
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From the April 24, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Finnerty
ROB FINNERTY (HOST): The TV sign off. The signature TV sign off was started by that last guy you heard from, Edward R Murrow, one of the first television reporters, in many ways a pioneer in our business, blah blah blah blah blah.
Frankly, I work in this industry — I think Edward R. Murrow is totally overrated.
We always seem to attach this odd reverence to firsts in American culture. Doesn't matter what it is. First case of Covid-19, the first person to weigh 1,000 pounds — we love the first.
And Edward R. Murrow is credited with a lot of firsts in television news. We even hand out the vaunted Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in journalism every year. And if you get one of those, well, my word, you must be really good at journalism.
And by the way, he went by Ed when he was alive, he was just Ed Murrow to his friends like, I'm Rob Finnerty. I don't go by Robert J. Finnerty, the Robert J. Finnerty Award for mediocrity in journalism.
But Murrow was not above the fray. He was just as biased and partisan as Jake Tapper is today. In 1956, Edward R. Murrow worked to get Democrat Adlai Stevenson elected president. Now it didn't work. Stevenson lost to Dwight Eisenhower. But Edward, sorry, Ed, was a Democrat, and he was biased and partisan.