View source for Fred W. Friendly

{{short description|President of CBS News}}
{{distinguish|Ed Friendly}}
{{Infobox person 
| name          = Fred W. Friendly 
| image         =Fred Friendly 1961 (cropped).jpg
| caption       = Friendly in 1961
| birth_name    = {{nowrap|Ferdinand Friendly Wachenheimer}} 
| birth_date    = {{Birth date|1915|10|30}} 
| birth_place   = [[New York City]], US
| death_date    = {{Death date and age|1998|3|3|1915|10|30}} 
| death_place   = [[New York, New York]], US
| resting_place = [[Kensico Cemetery]]
| resting_place_coordinates = 
| nationality   = 
| spouse = {{plainlist|
* Dorothy Greene (m. 1947; later divorced)
* {{marriage|Ruth Weiss Mark|1968}} 
}}
| children    = 6, including [[David T. Friendly]], Andy Friendly, and [[Michael Mark (musician)|Michael Mark]]
| website       = 
| footnotes     = 
| alma_mater    = [[Nichols College|Nichols Junior College]]<ref name="FREDFRIENDLYPAPERS">[http://findingaids.cul.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_6297812/summary "Fred Friendly Papers, 1917-2004 (Bulk Dates: 1950-1990)"], Columbia University Libraries</ref>
}}

'''Fred W. Friendly''' (born '''Ferdinand Friendly Wachenheimer''', October 30, 1915 – March 3, 1998) was a president of [[CBS|CBS News]] and the creator, along with [[Edward R. Murrow]], of the documentary television program ''[[See It Now]]''. He originated the concept of [[public-access television]] [[cable TV]] channels.

==Early career==
Friendly was born to a [[American Jews|Jewish]] family<ref>{{Cite web|first= David B. |last=Green |title= This Day in Jewish History, 1915 The Man Who Founded Television That Matters Is Born  |publisher=[[Haaretz]]|date= October 30, 2015|url= https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/the-man-who-good-tv-is-born-1.5415052 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|first=Stephen J. |last=Whitfield |title=The American Jew as Journalist  |publisher=[[PolicyArchive]]|url=http://research.policyarchive.org/10113.pdf  }}</ref> in New York City to Therese Friendly Wachenheimer and Samuel Wachenheimer, a jewelry manufacturer. The family moved from Manhattan's [[Morningside Heights]] district (where later, Friendly would teach for a quarter-century) to [[Providence, Rhode Island]], where he graduated from [[Hope High School (Rhode Island)|Hope Street High School]] in 1933. He received an [[associate's degree]] from [[Nichols College|Nichols Junior College]] in 1936.<ref name="FREDFRIENDLYPAPERS"/>

He entered radio broadcasting in 1937 at [[WPRV|WEAN]] in [[Providence, Rhode Island|Providence]], [[Rhode Island]], where he reversed the order of his middle and last names, and began using Friendly as his last name.<ref name="NYT-obituary"/> In [[World War II]], he served as an instructor in the Army Signal Corps and reported for an Army newspaper in the [[Pacific Ocean theater of World War II|Pacific Theater]] (''The CBI Roundup'') before mustering out as a [[master sergeant]] in 1945. His decorations included the [[Legion of Merit]] and the [[Soldier's Medal]].

By the late 1940s, Friendly was an experienced radio producer. It was in this role that Friendly first worked with Murrow on the [[Columbia Records]] historical albums, ''I Can Hear It Now''. The first entry in the series, released on Thanksgiving Day 1948, covered the crisis and war years 1933–1945. It was a ground-breaker in that it used clips of radio news coverage and speeches of the major events from that twelve-year time span. Friendly created the concept after noticing the new use of audiotape in regular radio news coverage, as opposed to wire or disc recordings that had been an industry standard. Periodically, Friendly created recordings of news events when such recordings didn't exist or, recreated ones that were considered too chaotic to use on an album [https://www.npr.org/programs/lnfsound/stories/990709.stories.html]. CBS correspondent [[David Schoenbrun]], in his memoir ''On and Off the Air'', said he once was forced by Friendly to ask [[Charles de Gaulle]] if he would recreate the speech he gave upon his return to [[Paris]] (de Gaulle refused). The recreations never were identified as such, and trying to separate the real from the recreated, continues to be problematic for radio [[historian]]s.

Although Murrow was an established CBS name and at the time Columbia Records was owned by CBS, Friendly's next full-time work came as a news producer at [[NBC]]. It was there that Friendly originated the idea for the news-oriented quiz show ''[[Who Said That?]]'', first hosted by NBC newsman [[Robert Trout]], followed by [[Walter Kiernan]], and [[John Charles Daly]]. The program, which Friendly edited, ran irregularly on NBC and then [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]] between 1948 and 1955.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DyS3t8z6_ckC&pg=PA622 |title=Who Said That? in Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, A Complete Directory to Prime Time Cable and Network TV Shows, 1946 - Present, p. 978|date=19 May 2010|publisher=New York: Random House Publishing, 2003|isbn=9780307483157|access-date=June 11, 2011}}</ref>

Friendly later wrote, directed, and produced the NBC Radio series ''The Quick and the Dead'' during the Summer of 1950. It was about the development of the atomic bomb. It featured Trout, [[Bob Hope]], and ''[[The New York Times|New York Times]]'' writer [[William L. Laurence|Bill Laurence]], who had won a [[Pulitzer Prize]] for his coverage of the [[Manhattan Project]].

==CBS years==
After the success of ''The Quick and the Dead'', Friendly was recruited to work full-time for CBS by news executive [[Sig Mickelson]]. That fall, Murrow and Friendly collaborated to produce a CBS Radio documentary series inspired by their record albums—a weekly show called ''Hear It Now'' that was hosted by Murrow. The show moved to television as ''See It Now'' on Sunday, November 18, 1951.

Murrow and Friendly broadcast a revealing ''See It Now'' documentary analysis on Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]] (airing March 9, 1954) that has been credited with changing the public view of McCarthy and, being a key event leading to McCarthy's fall from power. It was an extension of the duo's continuing probe of the conflict between McCarthy's [[anti-communism|anti-Communist]] crusade and individual rights.

The previous fall, Murrow and Friendly had produced a notable ''See It Now'' episode on the topic, when the show probed the case of Air Force Reserve Lieutenant [[Milo Radulovich]], who had lost his security clearance because of the supposed leftist leanings of his sister and father—evidence the Air Force kept sealed. Five weeks later, Radulovich was reinstated by the secretary of the Air Force. Radulovich was granted leave of his duties that same year, however, when he was forced to move temporarily to Phoenix, Arizona to care for his nephew who had recently been involved in a [[Dog bite|dog mauling]] incident.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://law.justia.com/cases/arizona/supreme-court/1959/6297-0.html|title=Litzkuhn v. Clark|website=justia.com}}</ref>

After ''See It Now'' ended, in the Summer of 1958, Friendly and Murrow worked together on its successor, ''CBS Reports'', although Friendly alone was executive producer and Murrow no more than an occasional reporter and narrator. Their most famous ''CBS Reports'' installment—the probe of migrant farm workers ''[[Harvest of Shame]]''—aired in November 1960 and still is considered one of television's finest single programs.

After Murrow's departure from the [[television network]] in 1961, Friendly continued to oversee several notable ''CBS Reports'' documentaries, including ''Who Speaks for Birmingham?'', ''Birth Control and the Law'', and ''The Business of Heroin''.

Under CBS president [[James T. Aubrey Jr.]] the pressures on CBS News operations arose and escalated. Aubrey constantly fought with Friendly. Friendly felt Aubrey was insufficiently concerned with public affairs and in his 1967 memoir, ''Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control'', recounts one budget meeting at CBS when Aubrey spoke at length of how much money the news was costing the company, being a sea of red ink that could be stopped by replacing news with more entertainment programs. CBS founder and board chairman [[William S. Paley]] supported the news, however, and protected Friendly's division from Aubrey's proposed budget cuts. In 1962, Aubrey ordered that there would be fewer specials, both entertainment and news, because he felt interruptions to the schedule alienated viewers by disrupting their routine viewing, sending them to the competition. Friendly resented this move. To Friendly's relief, in 1965 Aubrey was fired.

Friendly served as president of CBS News from 1964 to 1966.<ref name="ct398">{{cite news | url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1998/03/08/fred-w-friendly-82-former-cbs-news/ | title=Fred W. Friendly, 82, former CBS News president | work=Chicago Tribune | date=March 8, 1998 | access-date=December 6, 2014}}</ref>

===CBS resignation===
In 1966, Friendly resigned from CBS when the television network ran a scheduled episode of ''[[I Love Lucy]]'' instead of broadcasting live coverage of the first [[United States Senate]] hearings questioning American involvement in [[Vietnam]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Friendly Quits C.B.S. News Post In Dispute Over Vietnam Hearing |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1966/02/16/archives/friendly-quits-cbs-news-post-in-dispute-over-vietnam-hearing.html|work=[[The New York Times]] |date=February 16, 1966 |access-date=2008-11-18 | first=Jack | last=Gould}}</ref> Onetime CBS News president [[Richard S. Salant|Dick Salant]], the executive who preceded and later succeeded Friendly in the role, wrote in his memoirs that Friendly's problem was compounded by his inability to make such a request directly to the top CBS management ([[William S. Paley]] and [[Frank Stanton (executive)|Frank Stanton]]), as previous CBS News presidents had. In this case, Friendly had to go through a new supervisor at the executive level, CBS Broadcast Group president [[John A. Schneider|Jack Schneider]].

==Later career==
After he left CBS, Friendly initially worked as a broadcast consultant at the [[Ford Foundation]], a position he maintained until 1980. In this capacity, he initially developed an infeasible plan to allocate revenue generated by communications satellites toward the nascent medium of [[public television]] before he emerged as an integral figure in "negotiations about interconnection that would lead to the creation of the [[Public Broadcasting Service]] (PBS) in 1969". By ensuring [[National Educational Television]]'s subordination to the Washington-based PBS through the merger of NET with New York City's WNDT (and including a $2 million Ford Foundation grant to bolster the station's local programming), Friendly reluctantly placated members of the Nixon administration who perceived NET as a propagandistic front for the [[Eastern Establishment]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sXgwZpaTmEoC&pg=PA288|title=Friendlyvision: Fred Friendly and the Rise and Fall of Television Journalism|first=Ralph|last=Engelman|date=1 April 2011|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=9780231136914|via=Google Books}}</ref>

Despite his relative dearth of formal education—not atypical among contemporaneous practitioners—he was appointed to the tenured faculty of the [[Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism]] as the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Broadcast Journalism in 1966.

Over the next thirteen years, Friendly assumed stewardship of the school's hitherto threadbare broadcast journalism concentration. To the chagrin of some of his colleagues, he often eclipsed other top administrators (including 1970s-era dean [[Elie Abel]], who was personally recommended by Friendly for the post) in the popular consciousness. The non-degree Summer Program in Journalism for Members of Minority Groups (renamed the [[Michele Clark]] Fellowship Program for Minority Journalists following the death of a distinguished alumna in a December 1972 airplane crash) was directed by Friendly from 1968 to 1975, enabling many individuals (most notably media-savvy attorney [[Geraldo Rivera]]) to switch careers during the tempestuous epoch. A proposed "University Broadcast Laboratory" (an experimental Sunday news magazine initially proposed by Friendly in partnership with the Ford Foundation, Columbia, and NET) only manifested in attenuated form, however, as ''[[Public Broadcast Laboratory]]'' from 1967 to 1969; administrative and content circumscriptions imposed by the University trustees precipitated his divestiture from the program and hastened the retirement of Journalism School dean [[Edward W. Barrett]] in 1968. As chair of Mayor [[John Lindsay]]'s Task Force on [[CATV]] and [[Telecommunications]] that year, Friendly revived his revenue-sharing proposal by advising cable companies to set aside two channels that the public could lease for a minor fee, ultimately enabling the development of [[public-access television]].

Spurred by classroom discussions, he inaugurated the Media and Society Friendly Seminars under the auspices of the Journalism School in 1974 as private conference fora on media, law (particularly the Constitution and the First Amendment) and public policy for the edification of professionals from disparate fields. Drawing upon the [[case method]] employed by many professional schools and the [[Socratic method]] for interlocution, these eventually evolved into the PBS long-running ''Fred Friendly Seminars'' in 1981.

Following his statutory retirement in 1979, Friendly relinquished control of the Journalism School's broadcast program; however, he continued to teach and produce the seminars at Columbia as an administrative officer of the University before retiring in earnest in 1992. By the time of his death in 1998, Friendly "was criticized by some working in network news as being isolated in academia and out of touch with the new realities—and limitations—of the business of broadcast journalism."<ref name="NYT-obituary"/> The broadcast newsroom and an endowed professorship remain named for Friendly, attesting to his outsized influence at a critical juncture in the development of the school.

While in academia, he authored several books, including ''The Good Guys, The Bad Guys, And The First Amendment'' (an account of a number of First Amendment court cases and particularly, of the [[Fairness Doctrine]]), ''Minnesota Rag'' (a history of ''[[Near v. Minnesota]]''), ''[[The Constitution: That Delicate Balance]]'', and ''Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control'' (a memoir about his sixteen years at CBS).

In 1986, Friendly was appointed by Mayor [[Edward I. Koch]] to New York City's Charter Revision Commission. Chaired by [[Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr.]], the body's recommendations led to the dissolution of the [[New York City Board of Estimate]] following the adoption of the city's 1990 charter, whereupon the commission dissolved.

Friendly was a Montgomery Fellow at [[Dartmouth College]] from April 9-April 12, 1986.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dartmouth.edu/~montfell/biographies/fellows_by_date.html|title=The Montgomery Fellows -|website=www.dartmouth.edu|date=27 May 2016 }}</ref> He also served as a visiting professor at [[Yale University]] (1984) and [[Bryn Mawr College]] (1981).

In addition to his work with the seminars, Friendly produced and hosted a ten-part series on PBS, ''[[Ethics in America]]'', on which a panel of leading intellectuals debated and discussed modern ethical issues.

==Accolades==
* 1967: Iris Award for Man of the Year from NATPE
* 1986: [[Paul White (journalist)|Paul White]] Award, [[Radio Television Digital News Association]]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.rtdna.org/content/paul_white_award#.U4FBHS8-Ngc |title=Paul White Award |publisher=[[Radio Television Digital News Association]] |access-date=2014-05-27 |archive-date=2013-02-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130225052416/http://rtdna.org/content/paul_white_award#.U4FBHS8-Ngc |url-status=dead }}</ref>
* 1990: [[George Polk Award]]
* 1994: [[Television Hall of Fame]]

==Death==
[[File:Fred Friendly Headstone 2011.JPG|thumb|The headstone of Fred Friendly]]
Friendly died on March 3, 1998, of a stroke, at his home in [[New York City]].<ref>{{cite news |title=TV news giant Friendly dies: Legacy of integrity and highest standards |url=https://variety.com/1998/tv/news/tv-news-giant-friendly-dies-1117468400/|work=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] |date=March 5, 1998 |access-date=2008-07-18 | first=John | last=Dempsey}}</ref><ref name="NYT-obituary">{{cite news |title=Fred W. Friendly, CBS Executive and Pioneer in TV News Coverage, Dies at 82  |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1030.html |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=March 5, 1998 | first=Eric | last=Pace|accessdate=March 5, 2024}}</ref> He is interred in the Sharon Gardens Division of [[Kensico Cemetery]] in [[Valhalla, New York]].

==Legacy==
In 1986, [[Edward Herrmann]] portrayed Friendly in the original [[HBO]] drama ''[[Murrow (film)|Murrow]]''. In 2005, [[George Clooney]] played him in the film ''[[Good Night, and Good Luck]]''.

==See also==
*[[Freedom of speech]]
*[[Television documentary]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
*[http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/friendlyfre/friendlyfre.htm The Museum of Broadcast Communications] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090404092206/http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/friendlyfre/friendlyfre.htm |date=2009-04-04 }}
* {{Internet Archive short film|id=openmind_ep497|name=The Power of the Media, Part I (1990)}}
* {{Internet Archive short film|id=openmind_ep498|name=The Power of the Media, Part II (1990)}}
*[http://www.fredfriendly.org Fred Friendly Seminars]
*[http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9803/04/friendly.obit/ CNN Obituary]
*[http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/fred_friendly.html Columbia University 250: Columbians Ahead of Their Time]
*[https://www.pbs.org/inthebalance/ About the Fred Friendly Seminars from pbs.org]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070821232154/http://www.medialaw.org/Template.cfm?Section=Brennan_Award&Template=%2FContentManagement%2FContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=2796 Brennan Award citation for the Seminars]
*[http://www.gradethenews.org/2006/radulovich.htm How journalism saved one man, and the rest of us, from McCarthyism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100201072203/http://www.gradethenews.org/2006/radulovich.htm |date=2010-02-01 }}

{{1994 Television Hall of Fame}}
{{Presidents of CBS News}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Friendly, Fred}}
[[Category:1915 births]]
[[Category:1998 deaths]]
[[Category:American radio journalists]]
[[Category:American television executives]]
[[Category:American television journalists]]
[[Category:Jewish American journalists]]
[[Category:CBS executives]]
[[Category:Presidents of CBS News]]
[[Category:Columbia University faculty]]
[[Category:Businesspeople from Providence, Rhode Island]]
[[Category:Nichols College alumni]]
[[Category:Mass media people from the Bronx]]
[[Category:People from Riverdale, Bronx]]
[[Category:Burials at Kensico Cemetery]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Legion of Merit]]
[[Category:Journalists from New York City]]
[[Category:20th-century American businesspeople]]
[[Category:20th-century American Jews]]
[[Category:20th-century American male journalists]]