WWII reports brought ex- Ohioan fame

WASHINGTON — As he scanned the names of winners of the Peabody Award for broadcast journalism, a journalism professor at Georgia Southern University came across Cecil Brown from CBS.

Reed Smith conceded he “had never heard of him before.”

It began a four-year effort by Smith that culminated in November with the release of a book, “Cecil Brown: The Murrow Boy Who Became Broadcasting’s Crusader for Truth,” the story of a former Ohio State University student who reached the pinnacle of broadcast journalism during World War II and the Joseph McCarthy era in the 1950s.

Smith became fascinated with Brown’s story — and it is easy to see why. As a CBS Radio broadcaster in Singapore in December 1941, Brown nearly lost his life when Japanese torpedo bombers sank the British battle cruiser Repulse in the South China Sea. Brown was a correspondent on the Repulse.

His gripping minuteby-minute account of the disaster for CBS, which also included the destruction of the British battleship Prince of Wales, earned him the Peabody Award and transformed him into one of the best-known correspondents of World War II.

“There were upwards of a thousand sailors who died during that attack,” Smith said. “He was not wounded during the attack and fortunately was able to get off the ship. A British sailor reached out in the water off a Carley Float (life raft) and grabbed him. Cecil thought he had just about had it. It was pretty miraculous.”

Brown also was known for his legendary battles with Italian and British censors in World II as they tried to block or alter his broadcasts, prompting Smith to describe Brown as “very feisty. He was a big First Amendment guy and he became quite exasperated when anybody tried to curtail his freedom of the press.”

For Smith, 68, it was a case of one Ohio man meeting another. Smith, who holds bachelor's and doctorate degrees from Ohio University and a master's degree from Bowling Green State University, grew up in New Concord. Brown, who died in 1987 at age 80, was raised in Warren and married a woman from Columbus, who is still alive in Los Angeles at age 104.

Brown left Ohio State nine hours short of a degree in 1929 and worked as a reporter for a number of years before Edward R. Murrow hired him at CBS Radio in 1940 and assigned him to cover the war from Rome.

Brown reported in an entirely different era than today, when journalists are under relentless attacks from President Donald Trump and many conservatives, Smith said.

“It tells us the public view of journalism has changed drastically over the past 70 years,” Smith said. “Murrow and Cecil were seen as heroes. They were brave men in the war zone telling the truth for what was going on and continuing to get in trouble for telling the truth.”