Reporting on history: CBS World News Roundup marks 75 years

On the evening of March 13, 1938, legendary CBS radio newsman Robert Trout reported from New York that the Nazis were "driving with all their might to bring Austria under complete Nazi domination."

Moments later, in a watershed broadcast moment, Trout stopped talking so listeners could hear the live dispatches of correspondents throughout Europe. Reporting from Vienna was a CBS executive making his on-air debut: Edward R. Murrow.

"Everything is quiet in Vienna tonight," Murrow reported. "There is a certain air of expectancy about the city, everyone waiting and wondering where and at what time Herr Hitler will arrive."

Seventy-five years after that ground-breaking broadcast, CBS World News Roundup remains on the air waves, making it America's longest-running news program on radio or TV. In those early days, millions of Americans listened to Murrow's radio dispatches from London, including a report on the Allies' D-Day invasion of Normandy. William L. Shirer and Howard K. Smith were among other war-time correspondents who rose to prominence through newscast.

"The coverage of the Second World War was absolutely riveting," said Charlie Kaye, executive producer for radio at CBS News. "The broadcast originated from every major event you can imagine - from changes in popes to shuttle launches to inaugurations - you name it."

12 Photos

World News Roundup's 75th anniversary

World News Roundup remained an indispensible source of reporting during the Vietnam War. While television still had to wait for 16 mm film to be processed and flown back to New York for broadcast, World News Roundup was able to go live every morning from the war zone.

The broadcast not only reached millions of listeners, it became an unlikely means of communication for the highest levels of government. John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state under President Eisenhower, listened to the newscast every day while vacationing on his telephone-less summer home on Duck Island in Lake Ontario. When Washington needed to reach him, the State Department would alert World News Roundup, and the anchor would include a coded message to Dulles in the on-air broadcast: "This news will be of particular interest to Secretary of State Dulles." That would signal Dulles to return to the mainland to call D.C.

• Listen: CBS Radio's Sam Litzinger looks back at World News Roundup

No such telephone barriers exist today, and World News Roundup has evolved with technological breakthroughs. Correspondents who used to rely on short-wave radio and unreliable phone connections can now turn around high-quality reports in seconds, routinely incorporating natural sound and other elements of modern journalism.

An original CBS "ribbon" radio microphone in the lobby of the CBS Broadcast Center in New York.

/ Stephen Smith/CBS

"Almost everything is studio quality now, you rarely hear telephone audio quality," Kaye said. "Anyone who has a Skype connection and an iPhone can file studio quality audio."

The technology may have evolved but the news program's pioneering early days have a permanent spot at CBS News. In the lobby of the CBS Broadcast Center in New York is a display case holding a vintage "ribbon" CBS radio microphone used by the likes of Murrow and Trout.

World News Roundup, which has won the Radio Television Digital News Association's Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Newscast in two of the last three years, was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1995.

[mjfinlay]

I remember the last days when news was just news. It wasn't leaning anywhere, except toward the American viewer or listener.

[BobEnger]

WNR and the CBS Radio hourly news broadcast are a true resource, even today. They provide facts and information in a condensed, unadulterated form. No BS, no happy-talk, no spin. What a pleasure compared to TV news outlets.
I wish CBS affiliates carried the full hourly broadcasts; many stations (even those owned by CBS itself) only carry the 1st three minutes.
CBS radio hourly news is succinct and to-the-point. I wish more news outlets operated that way.

Happy 75th anniversary. Thank you for providing a high quality product.

[kch886]

I agree emphatically and strenuously with the desire to hear all five minutes of the hourly broadcast. Even though the practice of broadcasting only three minutes has been almost universal for many years now, I still get angry every single time it happens. Even the CBS News website has only the first three minutes! I have listened to CBS News for more than 55 years, and since the first news stories are everywhere, it is the last 30-second segment that is most interesting to me. I have heard innumerable very interesting and often valuable things in the last 30 seconds. To CBS: Would you please put the entire hourly news broadcast on your site? Even better, please put the complete script of each one on the site. BobEnger or anybody: KCBS usually has all five minutes, but not always. Do you know of any other station streaming on the Web that usually or always has all five minutes?

[venusvegasvada]

Imagine growing up since 1987 (When the GOP eliminated our Truth in Broadcasting laws, which had previously banned lying on news broadcasts) and never seeing the news in the US as it was before.

Honesty and integrity. Young people today have no idea what they lost in the idiotic rush to strip our news outlets and convert them into entertainment or propaganda vehicles for private agendas. Opening the floodgates to outfits like Fox "News".

Opinion and spin comes first. Then the story is written to obtain the desired result. The "news" is now broadcast to tell you what to think.

[cbs3lover]

I remember my father listening to Dallas Thompson on the CBS World News Roundup at 8AM EST in the mid- to late 70s on the car radio while he drove us to school as well as listening to Douglas Edwards at 6PM with The World Tonight. We listened to them on 96.9 WFPG-FM in Atlantic City (known as "FM 97" back then).
Sure, the news is not the same as it was before but CBS News was born on the standards developed by Dr. Frank Stanton that made it an absolute cut above the rest. In fact, CBS was the first television network to televise a live news anchor in 1948 when Edwards anchored the CBS Evening News while the other networks ran newsreels.
The high standards of news that it once was is history today. But CBS News showed everyone in the past how it was supposed to be done.

[alphaa10000]

Continuing its leadership, CBS was the first major network to introduce reader / viewer forums, in which news coverage was opened to frank criticism.

Of course, readers did not always take the hint to criticize CBS journalism, and indulged in partisan one-upmanship and flame wars, instead.

But the CBS example quickly drew attention for its success, and other networks followed suit.

[sepa2]

it is a misnomer - almost all news is natioanl

[EvolvedLiberal]

I really miss the days when the media was responsible to the viewer. When the news was simply reported and the viewer was able to form his own opinion. Today all we see is news slanted or manufactured to market an opinion and too many viewers have become intellectual lemmings willing to believe anything a pretty smile has to say.

[jeffinpa1234]

aaaahhhh back in the day when CBS reported news and did investigative reporting......no spin or politicizing.....can it ever be again?

[CarsonCitySteve]

Now look at them. Government shills. My how things have changed.

[ballwyllo]

How far they have fallen......(:<)