(soft music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] On April 1st, 2025, legendary journalist Harry Smith made the journey to Pullman Washington to accept the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2025 Murrow Symposium.

During his time on the Palouse, the Emmy award-winning reporter joined NWPB's Sueann Ramella, in front of a studio audience of staff, students and NWPB supporters for this wide-ranging interview.

- Hello and welcome to "Northwest Public Broadcasting Presents."

I'm Sueann Ramella, and with us master storyteller and journalist Harry Smith.

Harry, thank you for being here.

- It's my pleasure.

- It's good to be with you.

We're gonna skip the long introduction 'cause if you are watching PBS, you're of a certain generation who definitely knows Harry Smith.

(all laughs) - I'm the right demographic, that's for sure.

- Exactly.

- Well done.

- Harry, we're gonna talk about family first.

So what's it like to have in your household two famous journalists.

Your wife Andrea Joyce is a sportscaster and journalist, that's quite the feat to both have these high-powered careers and still be married since the ' - I know.

(all laughs) I'll tell you what, I've been thinking about this a lot of late, getting ready to come here for this event, and one of the things that we did early on, 'cause Andrea's career as a sports broadcaster was really taking off right around the time that I started anchoring.

At CBS, we always called it the morning news.

It's had a lot of different titles, but on the inside, we always called it the morning news.

Right when I'm doing the morning news, her career was taking off, and we both were traveling quite a bit.

And the vow that we made is one of us will be home all the time.

And so over a career of some decades, when our kids were small, I think you could count on one hand the amount of times that neither of us was there.

So neither of our sons are in prison as best we know.

You know, you gotta set the bar in the right place, but that worked out.

That worked out for us.

- Yeah.

- That we really tried to make home home.

- So there was a lot of communication between you two then, because I can't see how you can manage this with young children without being able to communicate with one another.

How in these relationships do you communicate with the spouse when you have your own direction for your career and they have theirs?

- It's a lot about space and sometimes it's actual physical space.

So for instance, when Andrea's getting ready for a big event, weeks ahead of time, there's a nook in the kitchen where there's a small television.

She'll have her laptop out.

She'll have her iPad out, she'll have stacks of yellow legal pads, and she'll have cards.

These are all set out, and there's all this stuff coming out at once and she's Zooming with somebody and whomever, whomever.

And if I come home and that's going on, I just go in reverse, right?

Like, that's not... People need their space.

So we've been very good, I think, over almost 40 years of making sure we each had our own space.

- [Sueann] That's wonderful.

- That wasn't the answer you were hoping for.

- Well, no, that's good.

No, it's about sensing each other's needs and space and time.

It's being familiar with one another.

- Well, it's also hard.

The business is crazy hard.

There are so many...

There are amazing highlights, and there are also moments of just, I mean, sheer despair where whatever that thing that you are working toward doesn't, you know, turn out to be true, where the person who you work with so loyally for so long goes somewhere else.

Or, you know, there's lots of...

It's topsy-turvy to say the least.

And so being able to listen to one another during some of those times when you're just like, what are we doing here?

There are moments that are glorious and amazing, but there are also moments that are just darn difficult.

So, yeah.

Well, I don't wanna paint a picture of everything is... Yeah, it's not easy.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- It's a testament to your commitment though, Harry, and your communication skills.

So you mentioned in past interviews how coaches and professors and mentors have helped you, particularly with your writing.

How did they do that and why is writing important?

(Harry blowing raspberry) - Okay, I don't have any hair.

I'm not a haircut.

I'm on TV and I was never a haircut.

When I was in college, two of the guys I played football with, and I had a, like, I think, it was 10 or 12 by 50 trailer that we lived in off campus.

It was just, like, not a good idea.

And yeah, each of those guys got a bedroom and I got the couch.

And it just kind of a rundown, sort of stereotypical bad trailer park on the edge of town.

And the brand new English professor moved in next door.

And I thought I was...

I would do this writing and I knocked on his door one day and I said, "Would you just take a look at this?"

And he said, "Okay."

So a couple of days later, he'd show up and said, "Here you go."

And it was a sea of red ink.

A sea of red ink.

You couldn't even find what was the original, whatever the original scribbling was.

It was just brutal.

And it was great 'cause he never said don't write.

He just said write... And he didn't even say write better.

It was all in the red ink.

And when I got to see... And over time, it was like, especially in local news, I was kind of the writer guy.

And I got to CBS news and there was a... Bill Crawford, for a while, was a script doctor at the "Evening News."

And you would fax your script into him for that night's broadcast.

Yeah, fax.

(audience laughs) You guys can look that up.

The students can look that up.

(audience laughs) And you'd get this call back a couple of minutes later and, "Well, no, the first paragraph should be the third paragraph and the third paragraph, I don't even know why that's there."

And et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And it was like, it was trial by fire.

- Mm.

- And you had a deadline, and the broadcast was going on, but we were at central time at 5:30, whether you get this done or not.

So it was get this done and get it right.

And you'd have conversations with him just about, "You can't say this.

This sentence that you wrote, you cannot say this."

- Uh-hmm.

- Right?

"You don't have permission to say what you wrote in this sentence and explain why."

And unless your eyes and ears were wide open and your heart, you were either gonna learn how to do it, actually learn how to do it correctly or fail.

So, yeah.

- So during this trial by fire, is that how you develop the thick skin to take that feedback?

'Cause it can be intense for some people, particularly students, to be told that this beautiful thing you wrote... - Sucks.

(Sueann chuckles) Right?

- Yeah, it's painful.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So how did you navigate through that to develop your thick skin?

- That's a good question.

I started at CBS as a reporter in January 1, 1986.

And I was based in the Dallas Bureau of CBS News.

There were two other correspondent based there.

And back then, you started as a reporter, had to be earned the right to be called a correspondent.

And I've hit the ground running and I was on TV a lot, couple of times a week right off the bat.

(finger snaps) Just a lot of...

Some of it was work, some of it was luck.

Dan Rather was the anchor of the evening news.

And he was a Texan.

And the Shamrock Hilton Hotel was closing in Houston.

And he said, "I think you should do that story for St. Patrick's Day for the "CBS Evening News."

So I had this commission to go down to Houston to do this story.

And the hotel was built by an oil wildcatter who was still alive.

And we went to see this old guy, and I think we shot for two hours and did not have, did not have one single usable soundbite.

(audience laughs) It was just, (mumbling).

Whatever it was, right?

But this place was a kind of a famous place in its day in the '50s.

Big movie stars would show up there and it just was kind of there were all this black and white footage and it was really kind of a remarkable thing.

It had a real place.

The Shamrock Hilton had a real place in Houston's, you know, sort of Boomtown history.

And I couldn't get the script written.

I couldn't.

It didn't come together.

And whatever I did come together was really crap.

And I had a producer who was looking at, who I was working with, and I was new, I was there two and a half months, it's March.

And I'm looking at him like, "So what do you do now because it's horrible?"

And he's looking at me like, "It's not my job."

He was no help at all.

And so the evening news passed on the story, we sent some piece of garbage to them and got it up on the satellite and they passed on it.

And I realized then that my career was over.

I really thought my career was over, and so I'm in the Southwest Airlines flight going back to Dallas.

And the whole weekend I just said, you know, can I go back to local news?

What's gonna happen?

What's gonna happen?

And I called into Bill Crawford, that same guy I mentioned a little while ago on Monday morning, and he says, "Well, what do you got?"

'Cause we pitched stories directly to him, and I said, "Well, what about Friday?"

He said, "What happened Friday?"

Right, time is... (finger snapping) - It's linear.

- It's a different kind of time, right?

It's today.

What are you gonna do for me tomorrow?

What are you gonna do for me next week?

Friday was bumping along to them, it's end of the world for me, certain it was.

- So you learned how to adjust that sense of the immediacy versus learning your lesson and, "Alright, I know what I need to work on next time," and move ahead.

- I grabbed my shovel, got it go (Sueann chuckles) - Yeah, I like that.

So in your experience though, I mean, this is something...

I think that whole concept of time in the news world is not something everyday people live with.

- Huh.

- What are some other things that maybe misunderstood about being a television journalist?

- One of the very first stories I did on local news at the CBS station in Denver, I'd done a lot of...

I'd lived in Denver for a long time.

I was on the radio, I had a public TV show, et cetera, et cetera.

And I love orchestral music.

And so one of the things I did, like every Saturday night just about, was go to the Denver Symphony Orchestra, right?

And sit over there, sit over there, sit over there.

That was kind of my thing.

And that first day on the job was a strike, the musicians were on strike.

And I knew the musicians and I knew the people who ran the orchestra.

And they said, "Okay, go.

You know, the story, go do the story."

So we go shoot the story.

And I come back and I said, "Well, how much time are you gonna give me?"

And they said, "Minute 20 ought to do it."

And I'm like, "What?"

I knew so much.

And that it was that first test of you have to figure out how to condense it and still have it make sense and connect with people in some meaningful way.

So that's the thing.

I was telling the class that we Zoomed with the other day, you can't do enough homework.

But the real skill of this job in the end of the day is figuring out how to condense it.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, that is a hard concept for folks because there's so much information, especially now.

What's the most important thing?

But you mentioned connection.

So as you have interviewed hundreds of people, how do you have that ability to connect with them?

You draw out stories from them they may not share with their family.

- I really try to listen.

I really, really listen.

You've been an amazing listener by the way, during our chat.

I'm serious, because you're not looking at any of this stuff, right?

Because it's not about that.

It's what you've done your work already.

It's what you know and what you're curious about.

So if the person you are chatting with sees that you're actually listening to them, they're not looking at your notes, you're listening, I'm gonna tell you a lot more than I would've otherwise.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- We make eye contact with one another in this culture.

We give each other moments of silence and space.

- Uh-hmm.

- Because sometimes when you ask a question, the answers don't come.

- And so the other thing that you just did is you punctuate.

Sometimes you punctuate with a nod.

Sometimes you punctuate with a "Yeah."

- Which I've heard you do in the most emotional stories just to validate what the person has expressed.

But it doesn't mean, "Yeah, you're right," "Yeah, you're wrong," it's just I've heard you.

- Uh-hmm.

- So with that in mind, in today's world of journalist perceptions of bias and integrity, how would you explain to a young journalist and a student, especially, how to navigate world between affirming but not having a perception of bias?

- Gotcha.

Good luck.

(all laughs) You know, so many of my stories have not had to do with one side or the other.

- Mm.

- I'm scribbling on my speech that I'm supposed to do tomorrow.

And a lot of it is just about affirmation.

And I'm an e pluribus unum guy.

- Can you translate that for us who don't know Latin very well?

- So back in the early days of this country, it had an unofficial motto.

And it was e pluribus unum.

Anybody know what it was?

You got it.

- Out of many, one.

- Out of many, one.

Exactly right.

- Out of many, one.

- Yeah, right?

- [Sueann] Mm.

- Way to go, go to the head of the class.

No, we're trying to run away from being pluralistic, but we're better off that way.

We just are better off that way.

We're better off knowing our history.

We're better off knowing who our neighbors are.

I'll just say it, we're better off loving our neighbors, right?

So I had the really good fortune for a long time to be able to do stories that could just stand alone and be meaningful and maybe even be almost a parable.

Not in any religious sense, but in a sense of, "Wow, that person is one of us.

That person's in my community."

Well, that person's right over there.

That's amazing what they did.

That's amazing what they did.

And if you are watching that, it's hard for you to be over there or over there and make a judgment about it.

So if there was anything that I think what my storytelling has been about a lot for the last decade or so, I guess that's it.

Is that the answer to your question?

- Oh, yes.

- All right.

- Brilliant.

E pluribus unum.

- Unum.

Out of many, one.

Should I go on?

It's now officially "In God We Trust."

And that didn't happen by accident.

It went on some money first, but in the 1950s during the Red Scares, right, people were so afraid of communism in the United States, touching on Ed Murrow, right?

I mean, all of these things are like this.

They're all interconnected.

And people say, "Well, we're not godless communists."

As communists, they don't believe in God.

They're a bunch of frigging atheists.

So that's how "In God We Trust" got on the money.

- [Sueann] I see.

- And actually became the nation's motto.

I like e pluribus unum better.

- I do too.

- And I have nothing against God, by the way.

- Oh, He's a good guy.

Or gal, whichever, yeah, sure.

- No, it's all good.

- Well, what- - We're gonna get burned down if this thing ever gets shown any place.

- It's on PBS, so if the audience might be small... - They're coming over, coming over the hill with the pitchforks.

They're coming at us.

- We'll have to cut that one, Collier.

But in all fun, that might be a good one.

All right, so back to this.

What advice do you have for all journalists to try to maintain maybe they're integrity?

Wait, actually can we stop that for a second?

I have a better question.

- Go.

- Alright.

- This, honestly, you should leave this on the tape.

- What do you mean?

- This is process, 'cause at the end of the day, this whole thing is about process, right?

And often, what we do... You know, what Donald Trump is accusing CBS is, basically, it's like, "Well, you kind of doctored that, right?

With that section there, that section there.

We don't know what was in or was not in that."

But that is kind of what we do in television a lot is, "Well, let me do that again," or whatever.

And there's nothing wrong with that and in the end of the day, but just to jump ahead to the answer to your question, the more transparent we can be, the better off we're gonna be.

- Harry, I'm glad you said that because the next question is about how you are big with grandmas because a student wanted a selfie and you said, "No, no, no, let's do it.

I'm big with grandma's," 'cause she wanted it for her grandma because she didn't quite know who you were.

- Yeah, oh, the student.

- Yeah.

It spoke to the generational differences, right?

- Yeah.

- Between who she gets her news from versus her grandmother who knew you.

Because some would say that the fracturing of our media right now has been a detriment to our democracy while others believe that it has been more democratized because everyday people can get an audience.

But what I'm noticing is, as traditional media is getting less of an audience because of the perception of doctoring, the younger people are watching TikTok videos that are... ...Transparent.

- Crap.

- Or seem more authentic.

- Sorry, no.

Okay.

- Yeah, let's talk about it.

(Harry exhales sharply) - Listen, there are people in this room who may end up doing their own newscast, but well, they've been trained as journalist as opposed to, I'm a guy in a basement and I have a garage, and this is what I think the news is.

So, I mean, this is an issue.

There's no 20-year-old on this campus who has ever seen one minute of a national news program except the people in this room.

That's just the truth.

'Cause everybody gets their news from TikTok, right?

So... (exhales sharply) Yeah.

What do we know about some of this stuff?

People are on screens.

Our students ages are on their screens eight hours plus a day, and some of it is just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

What do we know from science?

I mean, it's just dopamine.

It's just, "Here's another picture.

Oh, look at the..." And then some of it is so I can share the picture of the woman who fell down and da da da and da da da.

It's just like, it's that hilarious.

It's not funny.

It's not amusing.

It's not anything really.

So we're in a really crazy time, right, right now, in that regard.

And so (exhales sharply) I think part of the problem is you have a certain amount of the would-be audience that has been basically beaten for a lot of years already, that have been told that anybody in the mainstream media is evil, right?

We're the lying media.

We are the lying media.

I mean, to millions and millions of people in this country, anyone in the mainstream media is part of the lying media, right?

And that's just, that's not, nudge, nudge, "Isn't that funny?"

That's just their truth.

And you know what the guy said about repeating a story often enough, it turns into the truth.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Yeah, we are in a really rough spot.

- We're in a churn.

- We are in a really, really, really rough spot.

And so my thought is that when we're out, when we're out doing stories, when we get sent out to do stories, yeah, you have to really, really be prepared.

And you have to do a really, really good job at what you do.

And quite honestly, on a day-by-day basis, that's about the best you can do, right?

And do it right, do it correctly.

Don't go in with a bent, right?

- Yes.

- Keep your eyes and your ears open, and especially your brain.

You know, I used to say a lot that when you're coming outta J school and you're working at some tiny local newspaper, when you get sent to the zoning board to do that story for that nightly newscast that you're pretty sure no one is watching and nobody really cares about the zoning board, your job is to make sure that that story gets told correctly.

And if you're any good, you can even make it a little bit interesting.

- You can make them care with the power of your writing and your words.

Harry, recently, the managing editor of "The Atlantic," Jeffrey Goldberg, was invited to a Signal group chat.

- Isn't that amazing?

That was just crazy.

That was so crazy.

- It's wild.

- Well, what was interesting is how Goldberg went through the process.

- Yeah.

- And as a journalist, I'm curious if it was you who was invited into that, what process would you have gone through as a journalist with that information?

- So the best line I've heard about this whole thing is somebody said he wished he'd stayed on longer so that if maybe if they were kind of gossiping about the president, he could have gotten that part too.

(audience laughs) So it is, it's just darned amazing.

And (inhales deeply) so much of what I've read sort of since then that... And that's just a week ago, right?

We're in this kind of... We get flooded every day with a whole other pile of stuff that's coming outta Washington.

And it's been interesting because when they put what happened with that call, I mean with that text chain versus what other people have done and gotten in a lot of trouble in the past, this is much worse, much worse.

But we live in a time when it was no big deal or so we've been told.

- Hmm.

- I thought Goldberg was genius in the way he handled it, first, very carefully.

And then, you know, the White House said, "Well, we're not gonna say what the rest of it was."

It was, "I've got it, I'm just gonna publish it," right?

No, we're at a crazy, crazy time.

- If you, like, for our journalists here in the room now if they're in a situation where they are getting information that may be very intense and they may not know if it's true, what steps would you have... - You need to pray to God that your news director is a graduate of this college.

(Sueann claps and laughs) - Excellent, yes.

- No, I'm not joking.

I'm not joking.

- That they have the skills and the training.

- Okay, Goldberg is smart.

He's the editor of "Atlantic."

He does his show every Friday night on PBS.

This guy's a smart guy, reads books, writes books, right?

This is that guy.

So he had a sense of where I could go.

I didn't read into, "I chatted with so and so or so and so," but I would not have been surprised if he didn't.

- Yes, he did, he called his people.

- Right, so they're... - So you call your editor.

- That's a very big thing.

And I think especially for you that are younger undergrads here, take history, study the constitution, right?

Take a pre-law course.

I mean, it's squirrelly out there, dudes.

Right, you might as well.

It's gonna help you.

- Yeah, you need the team.

- And some of it is really simple.

You're that person goes out and you are the popcorn of a station, radio station, television station.

Maybe you are a podcaster, I don't know what, but as a journalist, you go to the local county supervisors meeting and if the county supervisors say, "Well, we're going in the back now, we're gonna talk about, you know, this bid for the tarring this road back here."

And you've gotta stand up and say, "Well, there are Sunshine Laws and this is a public meeting.

And if you're going in there, I'm going in there."

You need to know that stuff.

You need to know that, you have a right to be there.

So, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Along with taking every English course you can get your hands on, no joke.

Write, write, write, write, write.

Read, read, read, read, read.

Read books.

Please, please, please, please, read books.

Please read books.

- While you still can.

(Harry exhales sharply) - You said that I didn't say it.

- I know Harry.

(audience laughs) We are in some really interesting times.

- Listen, the little town where I went to college, there was a referendum, a library referendum.

They have a wonderful library.

My sister-in-law's mother was the librarian in this town for decades and decades and decades.

And a group came and said... What do they say... What do they call it when you're trying to... - [Sueann] Oh, a sensor?

- No, no, no, when you're trying to affect some child's behavior or trying to turn 'em or leave them, what do you call it?

- Grooming.

- Grooming.

- Grooming, yeah.

Like this stuff that's in your library is grooming these kids and yada yada.

Or I don't know if even that's what it got to, but we gotta change the library board.

And it was narrowly turned back, but that's in a little tiny town, 10,000 people in Iowa.

That kind of stuff is happening all over the place.

- Yeah.

- Right?

- Which was why I think journalism and journalists are even more important today because of these little things that happen at smaller places, build up.

And before you know it... - Wow.

- Everybody is unaware.

- So here you are at Murrow, right, where there are built-in processes to get journalists out to underserved places, right?

There are built-in processes to get news out.

What do we know about news deserts, right?

Where there's news deserts, where the little small town paper closes, you know, there's usually a police blotter in there, right?

And "Oh, Fred, oh, you know, Fred, that guy down the street, he was turning over garbage cans or whatever."

I mean, it's a lot of that.

But what they realized is that police blotter in that little once-a-week newspaper was a kind of a shaming service, right, to make people say, "Eh, you know, maybe I should call my friend to gimme a ride home from the bar tonight."

- To check on behavior, mm.

- Exactly.

Because they find that crime goes up when the little newspaper closes down.

Study was done out of Northwestern, you can look it up.

- That's good.

- Right?

- Yeah.

- It's just, that's kind of the truth.

And if there isn't that place where, you know, where the girl scout, the girl scout that sells the most cookie gets her pictures, right?

If that doesn't exist, it sounds ridiculous, but that's really part of what makes us a community.

- Yeah, community.

So Harry, as we come to a close, what do you hope- - I apologize for being so passionate.

(audience laughs) - Never apologize for being passionate, ever.

That's what we need.

- Well, I get carried away.

- I'm getting a little verklempt What do you hope future generations will take from your work?

- I was just telling these guys, I said, I don't like having archive, as such I don't have a lot of piles and piles of scripts from 40 years.

I always felt like my work was ephemeral, that it existed in the moment, that it went across, went into somebody's eyeballs, and maybe into their brains, or maybe even into their hearts.

But yeah, you know, that's all we can do.

That's really all we can do.

And listen, when I got the call.

- For the Lifetime Achievement A - Yeah, I said, this is... (laughs) I had a nightmare the other night.

"You got the wrong guy.

You got the wrong guy."

(audience laughs) Right?

- That speaks to your humility, your humbleness though, because the industry often has maybe big egos, but I think that's why your storytelling has been so powerful, is you don't center yourself in the story.

You center the subject matter or the person you're interviewing.

- I told these guys in the Murrow class the other day, right?

I said, "You go out to do this story and you talk to this person and she tells you things that," as you suggested before, "maybe she hasn't said before, or maybe she's just giving you her truth.

Well, once that happens," (exhales sharply) "it's her story.

It's not your story, it's her story.

And everything that she said to you in that 20 minutes or so that you got with her, you can't get that 20 minutes on the screen or in the podcast," or maybe in the podcast 'cause they last forever.

Thats the thing about about podcasts...

I mean, couldn't you just calm down a little bit, editing, what a word.

I like some of 'em a lot, but just, i mean, three hours?

But just to finish the point, it becomes her story.

And that those things that you learn from the homework that you do and the time that you spend with that person, that is going to affect what comes outta your fingers.

You know, you may not even know it as the words are coming down on the page.

Oh, wow, 'cause you felt what that person, as much as another human being can feel that, that's gonna affect this part.

And if it does, it's gonna be a better story.

Old mentor of mine, guy named Bob McNamara, was amazing CBS correspondent, used to say, "Too much television is in one eye and out the other."

And he said, "Our job is to get it to just stick."

(finger snaps) If you can just get it to stick (finger snaps) even for a second, right?

- You've done a good thing.

- You've done a good thing.

- And you may even win an Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award.

(audience laughs) - You got the wrong guy.

You got the wrong guy.

(Harry and Sueann laughs) Sueann, that was great.

- Thank you, Harry Smith.

- You're so good at this.

- Thank you so much.

- Yeah.

- I really appreciate your time.

- Yeah.

- And thank you for joining us, now Harry's gonna answer some questions from reporters and students.

Thank you for tuning in to "Northwest Public Broadcasting."

(audience applauds) (upbeat music)