Murrow

The best show on TV tonight is a special devoted to a show originally broadcast 40 years earlier: a "CBS Reports" recap of Edward R. Murrow's landmark "See It Now" documentary about ZTC reputation-smearing Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Don't miss it.* "The Lion King: A Musical Journey With Elton John" (8:30-9 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Who would have thought, back when Elton John sang about "Crocodile Rock," that he was only an animal or two off from predicting his own future career path. John wrote the music to this eagerly anticipated Disney film, working with "Jesus Christ Superstar" lyricist Tim Rice.

WBAL-TV won a national Edward R. Murrow Award for a series on judges by investigative reporter Jayne Miller, the Radio Television Digital News Association announced Tuesday. Here's part of what the press release: The award for Best Video Investigative Reporting is for a series by WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team lead investigative reporter Jayne Miller called "Judging The Judges. " The award-winning investigation opens the book on judges who misbehave, violate ethics and break the law. The story focuses ion judicial accountability and reveals a system where reprimands are often kept private and judges remain on the bench...

Against the shades-of-gray backdrop of television studios, elevators, bars and sober suits, smoke spirals ominously through the biopic Good Night, and Good Luck. The smoke, and the countless cigarettes it emanates from, animate the anger that glows within Edward R. Murrow, as played by David Strathairn. As the legendary CBS newscaster challenges Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy's anti-Communist witch hunt, the cigarettes become an extension of his laconic determination in the face of mass hysteria.

The problem:: Graffiti on a community sign in Northeast Baltimore remained despite a request to 311 for removal. The back story:: Robert Walshe has been paying attention to graffiti lately. As coordinator of the North East Citizens on Patrol, he's been riding around his Waltherson neighborhood with volunteers such as Louise Harmony. Together, they spotted several graffiti incidents and reported them to Baltimore's 311 service online in June. The graffiti had been there for weeks, but Walshe noted that the 311 site said the markings would be removed within three days.

IN the wake of the death of Fred Friendly this month, many commentators proudly recalled his and Edward R. Murrow's 1954 "See It Now" broadcast attacking Sen. Joseph McCarthy for his cruel demagogy on the Communists-in-government issue.It was an influential program, but Murrow and Friendly were journalistic johnnies-come-lately to exposing McCarthy and his recklessness. First were those ink-stained wretches who wrote for daily newspapers. The two earliest and most relentlessly effective were Phil Potter of The Sun and Murrey Marder of the Washington Post.

Alexander Kendrick, 80, a journalist who covered war, famine and the birth of Israel and wrote a biography of Edward R. Murrow, died of a heart attack Friday in Philadelphia. Mr Kendrick worked with Mr. Murrow at CBS and wrote the biography "Prime Time" in 1969, followed by "The Wound Within," an analysis of American policy during the Vietnam War, in 1974.

Murrow family's Harford history While this story [about Bill Murrow, Nov 16] was wonderful, I'm afraid some of the reported facts are incorrect. I am Bill Murrow's sister, and would like to correct the author who stated that our mother's family was Quaker and moved from Philadelphia to Troyer Road in the Black Horse area of White Hall. Actually, it was our grandfather Murrow who was Quaker, but our Quaker relatives are buried in North Carolina, not in the Quaker cemetery in Fallston. Our mother's family did move to Harford County (Fallston)

A water-valve leak in Baltimore's Guilford neighborhood caused flood damage to 10 homes near a pumping station at Old Cold Spring Lane and Underwood Road, the city Department of Public Works reported. Robert H. Murrow, a DPW spokesman, said the leak occurred after routine maintenance on water valves and released a cascade of water into an alley near the Guilford pumping station and reservoir. Water damaged several yards and basements in the area, Murrow said. About a dozen Public Works employees were dispatched to the scene and halted the leak about 8 p.m., Murrow said.

Bill Murrow speaks in a slow and melodious voice, his words full of adjectives for the high-end antiques showcased in his renovated barn on Main Street, Fawn Grove, Pa. On his scenic 14 acres sit the Victorian house and barn where Murrow and his wife, Karen, have room for antiques, mo-peds, glassware, and goats, chickens and guinea birds. Murrow, 46, drove by the house for years while he did business selling antiques at a shop in Ellicott City. He finally bought it for his wife and son, Grant, now 9. This is the place where his collections and farming coexist, while Karen Murrow teaches school and Grant does his homework.

Now that Baltimore public works crews have completed repairs on a broken water main at Howard and Lombard streets, work to reconstruct the intersection could begin as soon as Thursday, officials said yesterday. An emergency contract for work at the intersection - which was closed July 18 after a 40-inch water main burst atop the Howard Street railroad tunnel - is to be awarded tomorrow, said Robert H. Murrow, a spokesman for the Department of Public Works. Public works crews worked around the clock during the weekend to fix the century-old water main, finishing repairs by noon Sunday.

In a day and age when documentary filmmaking is defined for many by Michael Moore's sharply edited images and his wise-guy narrator persona, K. Ryan Jones goes looking for truth the old-fashioned way in Fall From Grace, premiering tonight on Showtime. Like CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in his famous 1954 See It Now expose of hate-mongering Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Jones comes face to face with his subject and doesn't back down. Eye-to-eye, Jones and his camera never blink as Fred Phelps, pastor of Kansas' cultlike Westboro Baptist Church, spews bizarre interpretations of current events -- seeing the war in Iraq and Sept.

In a town so tough that most murders get just a few paragraphs in the paper, somebody called The Sun about 8 a.m. yesterday with a tip about a vandalized billboard. By noon, the story was all over the Internet, Rush Limbaugh was kicking off his national radio show with it, and City Hall was fielding calls from as far away as California. By 5 p.m., the story had become one of the three most popular individual articles in the history of the paper's Web site, with nearly 200,000 page views.

ANDY GOLDSWORTHY: RIVERS AND TIDES: WORKING WITH TIME (Special Two-Disc Collector's Edition) -- Docurama/New Video / $39.95 In its own quiet, voluptuous way, this unpretentiously brilliant documentary uses the work of Scottish sculptor Andy Goldsworthy to open up the hidden drama of the natural universe. Goldsworthy's method is to invade an untouched setting, "shake hands with it," sense its ruling shapes and rhythms, and use the materials at his fingertips - stones, leaves, ice - to create open-air forms that illuminate their environment.

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK / / Warner Home Video / $29.98 Good Night, and Good Luck, the factual account of how pioneer CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) took down the rabid anti-Communist witch-hunter Senator Joseph R. McCarthy at the height of the Cold War, is a brilliantly entertaining picture, as personal as it is political -- a tribute to a crusading reporter and a reverie on a bygone era of virile, metropolitan glamour. The director, George Clooney, filmed it in black and white because he wanted to use period footage of McCarthy.

Against the shades-of-gray backdrop of television studios, elevators, bars and sober suits, smoke spirals ominously through the biopic Good Night, and Good Luck. The smoke, and the countless cigarettes it emanates from, animate the anger that glows within Edward R. Murrow, as played by David Strathairn. As the legendary CBS newscaster challenges Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy's anti-Communist witch hunt, the cigarettes become an extension of his laconic determination in the face of mass hysteria.

Some of us went to the Charles Theatre the other night to see Good Night, and Good Luck, a movie about a distant era when people still had faith in reporters. This is only part of the problem today. Now reporters have to have faith in ourselves. Good Night, and Good Luck is about Edward R. Murrow's famous CBS broadcast on the scurrilous tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Murrow was lucky. He could break out the video and let McCarthy hang by his own outrageous bile. Today, the political Machiavellis are smarter.

Coming soon to an alley or trash-strewn lot near you: Mayor Martin O'Malley's Super Spring Sweep Thing II. In the mayor's second annual campaign to curb Baltimore's year-round trash problem, the Department of Public Works and city residents started mobilizing yesterday for the major citywide cleanup, scheduled for Saturday. This year, the event will be held for one day, not two. The city will again provide brooms, rakes, shovels, gloves and bags to all who want to get their hands dirty and their neighborhoods clean.

Janet Brewster Murrow, 88, a radio broadcaster and relief worker during World War II in London, where her husband, Edward R. Murrow, was CBS' star war correspondent, died of heart failure Friday at the North Hill retirement community in Needham, Mass., where she lived.Soon after the war began in September 1939, Mrs. Murrow made her first radio broadcast, for CBS, about family life in wartime, and she became an occasional broadcaster for CBS and BBC.Her relief work included arranging for British recipients to get medicine and other supplies from American donors and helping evacuate British children to the United States.

CBS News legends Walter Cronkite and Andy Rooney rave about the recently released Good Night, and Good Luck, but they worry that the George Clooney movie could baffle younger viewers. "Because of the complexity of the story line, and the entire generation that's grown up since those events, some of us felt there should have been a little introduction to what it was all about to set the scene," says Cronkite, 88, former CBS Evening News anchorman. Here's an introduction: Director Clooney depicts how Edward R. Murrow of CBS News challenged Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy's intimidating methods in investigating Communist influence on the U.S. government in the 1950s.

Good Night, and Good Luck has the guts and the smarts to tell several interlocked stories with passion, wit and sting. At its red-hot center is the attempt of CBS star newscaster Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) to expose the obscene over-reaching of anti-communist witch-hunter Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin. It's 1954, and after years of witnessing the senator make accusations stick using guilt by association and brute repetition, Murrow thinks it's time to debunk the senator's methods - and aims to do so in an uncharacteristic attack episode of his trailblazing weekly TV news show, See It Now. But the movie is also about the moral and professional stance Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly (George Clooney)