Television was still testing its power when CBS introduced a documentary that changed the way Americans thought about TV, altered the way broadcasters thought about journalism and, not least, opened the country’s eyes to the plight of the migrant worker.
“Harvest of Shame” (1960) was Edward R. Murrow’s last documentary for CBS, under the banner of “CBS Reports.” It’s the one people remember (and still buy from Amazon).
Honestly, if you look at it now, it’s tough to see what all the fuss was about. Grainy visuals, pedantic narration, a stiff and awkward style, it hasn’t aged particularly well.
Yet watching a third-gen documentary on the subject, airing on NBC under the banner of “Dateline,” is cause for another kind of update.
The “Dateline NBC” titled “Children of the Harvest,” at 6 p.m. Sunday on KUSA-Channel 9, revisits an award-winning Dennis Murphy report from a decade ago on migrant workers. This time, the focus is specifically underage workers.
Murphy’s new effort, an insightful bit of reporting, offers the opportunity to think not just about how the migrant worker story itself has changed with the advent of farming technology, pesticides and genetically modified vegetables. It underscores how broadcast journalism has changed, too.
Technology has changed so much, the machinery is so portable and less conspicuous, it’s made the style increasingly intimate. Even the process of being interviewed seems second nature to subjects.
The video is better. The storytelling is better. Yet the pressure to make everything ring with dramatic tension and to arrive at each commercial break with a mini-cliffhanger, is worse.
Sadly, 10-year-old minority boys are still doing the back- breaking work of clearing rocks from fields, missing school to work alongside parents according to the cycle of the crops.
And older, white, male network correspondents are still doing the well-meaning work of interviewing them. At least credit Murphy with staying in touch with this family since his last documentary drop-in.
The video chronicle has changed, for better and worse.
If you like life-threatening drama, there’s can’t-miss footage here. A camera mounted on a dashboard caught the moment when a tire falls off the migrant family’s truck, the fender strikes the pavement and sparks fly as the tire bounces across a highway. The drama is so eye-popping, the scene is replayed a half dozen times.
Six times. Please.
When Murphy did his original “Children of the Harvest” report a decade ago, cameras were too bulky to fit on a dashboard.
“El Roundup”
The correspondent probably couldn’t have guessed then that one of the biggest threats to the migrant workers’ health and livelihood in 2010 would be the over-abundance of weed killer. One veteran fruit picker sings a song about “El Roundup, killing off the weeds and this old cowboy.” Scotts isn’t mentioned by name, but the makers of the glyphosate- laced herbicide know who they’re talking about. Murphy doesn’t have time here to go into the fact that American farmers’ use of Roundup has led to the rapid growth of resistant new superweeds.
Instead, he sticks to facts about the dropout rate of migrant workers’ children (four times the national average). While a decade ago, a worker claimed he was the “happiest man in the world” as a migrant worker, things aren’t so cheery this time.
In the customary tiptoe of “Dateline,” always seeking balance so as not to offend, the report concludes that things are tough for migrant workers, but some are getting high school and college diplomas and returning to foster better educations for the next generation.
Murrow famously signed off: “The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do. Good night, and good luck.”
Murphy winds up with a nod to “the invisible hands in America’s food chain.” Is he advocating for particular legislation on child-labor laws? He’s not telling.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
