In 1951 – exactly seventy years ago – famed broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow inaugurated This I Believe across this nation’s airwaves. In his opening words, Murrow said:
This I Believe. By that name, we present the personal philosophies of thoughtful men and women in all walks of life. In this brief space, a banker or a butcher, a painter or a social worker, people of all kinds who need have nothing more in common than integrity, a real honesty, will write about the rules they live by, the things they have found to be the basic values in their lives.
Over time, Murrow broadcast essays by the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Helen Keller, Harry Truman, and Pearl Buck. And, as importantly, Murrow featured the insights of taxicab drivers, secretaries, the unsung people who make up the rich fabric of our world.
Eighty-five leading newspapers printed a weekly column based on This I Believe. A collection of essays published in 1952 sold 300,000 copies – second only to the Bible that year. The series was translated and broadcast around the globe on the Voice of America. A book of essays translated into Arabic sold 30,000 copies in just three days.
Fast forward. In 2005, I was invited to share my own beliefs in a national This I Believe broadcast soon after the series was revived by NPR. In that essay I reflected on agonizing decisions I was obligated to make as a member of the State of Rhode Island’s Parole Board, on which I served for 24 years. I shared my first-person struggles to balance the clanging, colliding rights of crime victims and the people who hurt them profoundly. Shortly thereafter, the then-general manager of this station, Joe O’Connor, invited me, I dare say exhorted me, to host and produce This I Believe—New England, a regional version of the national series. What I knew about radio at that point was how to tune in a station and listen. I had to learn fast about radio’s nuances, intricacies, and technology, and how to help listeners craft and broadcast their compelling thoughts.
During the last decade and a half, I have had the genuine opportunity, indeed privilege, to collaborate with so many of our listeners who have profound insights and beliefs to share, to record their voices, and send them out over the airwaves. I know that so many of you have been touched and moved by these words, as have I.
Let me circle back to Murrow’s original This I Believe comments in 1951: “We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion—a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the marketplace while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply.”
So, after this journey, what do I believe? I believe that Murrow’s original sentiments still hold. And, I believe, more than ever, that words matter. They matter a lot. I will take that belief with me, now that we are bringing This I Believe—New England to a close. I hope you will, too.
Frederic Reamer is professor in the graduate School of Social Work, Rhode Island College, where he has been on the faculty since 1983.
