(2 of 2)
At last week's ornamental banquet, presided over by CBS's silver-haired Standby Elmer Davis, two debts were implicitly acknowledged. One acknowledgment came from the Administration to the men who had made the urgent plight of Britain palpable to millions. Said Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish to Ed Murrow: "You have destroyed . . . the superstition that what is done beyond 3,000 miles of water is not realty done at all."
The other debt was from the Columbia Broadcasting System itself. If any single radio job since radio began could unanswerably justify the business of broadcasting as now conducted, CBS's news coverage since 1938 might well be it. But the radio business as now conducted has been challenged by the Government's powerful Communications Commission. An observer at the banquet could note the glint of FCC Chairman James Fly's glasses down the table as CBS's earnest, boylike President William S. Paley, praising Murrow, promised to fight for freedom of the air "no matter whence, nor how subtly or how boldly comes the attack."