William Randall Downs, Jr. (August 17, 1914 – May 3, 1978) was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He worked for CBS News from 1942 to 1962 and for ABC News beginning in 1963. He was one of the original members of the team of war correspondents known as the Murrow Boys.
Downs reported from both the Eastern and Western fronts during World War II, and was the first to deliver a live broadcast from Normandy to the United States after D-Day. After the surrender in Europe, he joined a press party that toured Asia in the months leading up to the end of the Pacific War. He entered Tokyo with Allied occupation forces and covered the Japanese surrender, and was among the first Americans to enter Hiroshima after the atomic bombing. He later covered the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests, the Berlin Blockade, and the Korean War.
Downs was born in Kansas City, Kansas to William Randall Downs, Sr. and Katherine Lee (née Tyson) Downs. He served as the managing editor of the Daily Kansan at the University of Kansas and graduated in 1937 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. He began his career as a newspaper reporter for The Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Kansan. He soon joined the United Press and worked stints at the Denver and New York bureaus for the next three years. At the end of 1940 he was transferred to London, where he covered the war in Europe as a wire reporter over the next two years.
In September 1942, his former United Press colleague Charles Collingwood introduced him to Edward R. Murrow. At the time, Murrow was in search of a reporter to relieve Larry LeSueur as CBS' Moscow correspondent.
Prior to hiring Downs, Murrow had him undergo two pro forma voice tests, both of which went poorly due in part to Downs's gruff voice, an issue which would affect him throughout his career. However, Murrow was more interested in writing ability when building his team, later recalling that, when faced with complaints from CBS about how his reporters sounded on air, he responded, "I am not looking for announcers, I am looking for people who know what they're talking about." After Downs failed the voice tests, Murrow sent him to Piccadilly Circus and told him to describe whatever he saw. Murrow enjoyed his account and hired him on the spot, offering $70 weekly and an expense account during his time abroad.
Downs became a member of Murrow's team of war correspondents who came to be known as the Murrow Boys, and worked alongside Collingwood, LeSueur, William L. Shirer, Howard K. Smith, Eric Sevareid, Richard C. Hottelet, Cecil Brown, and several other CBS reporters stationed throughout Europe. Downs was soon sent to head CBS' Moscow bureau and remained there from December 25, 1942, to January 3, 1944.
Throughout 1943 Downs delivered intermittent shortwave radio reports on the CBS World News Roundup and concurrently served as the Russia correspondent for Newsweek. He stayed at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow with other Western foreign correspondents along with their secretaries and translators. They faced heavy censorship by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which required correspondents to submit articles and broadcast transcripts for approval. This led to frequent clashes between government officials and foreign correspondents, who were prohibited from filing any reports that might reflect negatively on Moscow. Access to military updates was often limited to official communiqués and articles in government-sanctioned newspapers. Up-to-date maps of the Soviet Union were difficult to obtain, and reporters had trouble gathering basic information from the front lines.
Downs and other foreign correspondents entered Stalingrad days after the Germans surrendered the battle. He described the scene in a graphic broadcast, saying: "There are sights and smells and sounds in and around Stalingrad that make you want to weep and make you want to shout and make you just plain sick at your stomach." Over the next several months, correspondents were gradually given more access to liberated areas, and Downs reported on developments such as the summer Russian counteroffensive on the Central Front. They were shown the devastation in Oryol and Rzhev soon after the occupying German troops retreated in March 1943.
Several weeks after the Soviet conquest of Kiev on November 6, 1943, Downs, Bill Lawrence of The New York Times, and several other American and Russian journalists were escorted by Soviet authorities to the site of the Babi Yar massacres. They came across bits of human remains and old possessions at the site. The SS had attempted to destroy all evidence in their retreat from Kiev. Downs interviewed survivors of the Syrets concentration camp who were forced to participate:
[Efim] Vilkis said that in the middle of August the SS mobilized a party of 100 Russian war prisoners, who were taken to the ravines. On Aug. 19 these men were ordered to disinter all the bodies in the ravine. The Germans meanwhile took a party to a nearby Jewish cemetery whence marble headstones were brought to Babii Yar [sic] to form the foundation of a huge funeral pyre ... approximately 1,500 bodies were burned in each operation of the furnace and each funeral pyre took two nights and one day to burn completely. The cremation went on for 40 days, and then the prisoners, who by this time included 341 men, were ordered to build another furnace. Since this was the last furnace and there were no more bodies, the prisoners decided it was for them. They made a break but only a dozen out of more than 200 survived the bullets of the German Tommy guns.
Many in the press party were skeptical of the Soviet claims at Babi Yar, with Lawrence doubting the sheer scale of it. He later admitted to having "furious arguments" with Downs over how to report the story and wrote that his reluctance to wholly accept the claims resulted from witnessing some colleagues submit unsubstantiated stories. Because of this, their two accounts were markedly different in tone and reflected their own individual perceptions. As late as 1944, some Western journalists remained skeptical of the actual scale of the mass murders.
Downs's descriptions of atrocities at Babi Yar and Rzhev were especially graphic. After returning home from Russia he came across more skepticism and disbelief. He "discovered that not everyone shared his strong feelings for the Russian people and the horrors they had experienced. Some looked at him curiously. Others expressed pity. Still others said he was a liar." In 1944 he received an anonymous postcard calling him a "Russian agent" and threatening his life.
Downs returned to the United States in January 1944 with the score of Dmitri Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony after CBS acquired the exclusive American broadcast rights for $10,000. Prior to leaving Moscow he provided the English narration for the documentary film Ukraine in Flames directed by Alexander Dovzhenko.
Downs found it difficult readjusting to life after Moscow because of what he had witnessed. However, he returned to Europe in 1944, and during that time came to be considered Murrow's "Ernie Pyle." Downs earned a reputation among colleagues for ignoring the Murrow Boys' newfound celebrity in favor of accompanying soldiers on the front lines. CBS came to rely on him heavily as a result. At one point he was the only CBS foreign correspondent covering the campaigns of the First Canadian Army, the British Second, the American Ninth, and the American First.
In June 1944 he accompanied the British 50th Infantry Division in their assault on Gold Beach during the Normandy landings. Fellow Murrow Boys Larry LeSueur and Charles Collingwood also accompanied the invading forces in separate landing craft en route to Utah Beach.
In the days following the initial landings, war correspondents had trouble setting up mobile transmitters and were unable to broadcast live for over a week. In the meantime, Collingwood recorded a broadcast on June 6 that aired two days later, while LeSueur's account did not air until June 18. On June 14 Downs managed to find a working transmitter and unwittingly delivered the first live broadcast from the Normandy beachhead to the United States. It was pooled across all networks at 6:30 p.m. Eastern War Time.