MORE THAN ONE OF THE `BOYS'.

Byline: Herbert Mitgang The New York Times

Title: ``The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism''

Author: Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson

Data: Illustrated. 445 pages, Houghton Mifflin; $27.95

Our rating: Four Stars

Reading ``The Murrow Boys,'' a dramatic account of Edward R. Murrow and his fellow correspondents who made broadcasting history during and after World War II, calls to mind the title that Winston Churchill gave the sixth and final volume of his wartime memoirs: ``Triumph and Tragedy.''

After the exhilaration over their youthful exploits, the tales of their later careers leave a taste of ashes. Yet the professional disappointments that nearly all these CBS News stars suffered make for a more telling book about radio and television, yesterday and today, than one that simply repeats the familiar iconography of Murrow and his colleagues as dashing young gods with microphones.

The Murrow Boys, who covered the rise of Nazism and the war fronts, included William L. Shirer, Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, Larry LeSueur, Winston Burdett, Richard C. Hottelet and Bill Downs. The postwar correspondents Murrow also hired - Alexander Kendrick, David Schoenbrun and George Polk (who was murdered in Greece in 1948 and after whom the Polk Awards are named) - were equally respected.

Until she resigned to marry a diplomat in 1940, Mary Marvin Breckinridge, a photographer turned reporter, was one of the boys for nearly a year. Murrow's casual instructions to her help to explain why his own style was so vivid: ``When you report the invasion of Holland, or I report the invasion of England, understate the situation. Don't say the streets are rivers of blood. Say that the little policeman I usually say hello to every morning is not there today.''

Murrow's main recruiting ground for his boys was the United Press, the chintziest of the wire services in everything but courageous reporters. He hired print journalists because they could write and report, not for their hairdos or their voices.

Although the point isn't underscored in ``The Murrow Boys,'' the least-qualified journalist was Murrow himself. He went to Europe not as a reporter but to enlist others to do radio talks; instead, he invented himself as a daring and instinctive broadcaster.

Above all, he earned the loyalty of his boys in the field, a fact lost on many a problematical network news chief in later years. Murrow never asked any of his boys to risk anything that he wouldn't himself, from going out on bombing missions to witnessing the horrors of the concentration camps.

The transition from radio to television affected several correspondents in the same way that talking movie screens caused the decline of some silent-film stars. Sevareid, always nervous before the cameras, said, ``In the radio days, two men with a microphone, a typewriter and a telephone could put more substance on the air at one-hundredth of the cost.'' Early on, Murrow himself grumbled that he wished television had never been invented.

From the Age of Churchill to the Age of William S. Paley, broadcasting changed radically in the postwar years. The book emphasizes that with commercially sponsored television, the financial stakes soared and began to influence the presentation of the news.

Reporting the war against the Axis dictatorships had been a black-and-white affair; villainy could be described analytically and even angrily by Murrow and his boys, as well as by their more seasoned forebears in the press.

But now Paley, the network chairman who deserved credit for supporting Murrow and his golden boys as paladins of truth under fire, looked over their shoulders and microphones. Memos began to fly against editorializing; internal censorship proliferated and outspoken programs were dropped, especially when their ratings fell.

Most demeaning and dangerous of all, beginning in the '50s, CBS caved in to sponsor and government pressure and forced its news staff to sign loyalty oaths.

All of this is well-documented by the authors: Stanley Cloud, a former Washington bureau chief for Time, and Lynne Olson, a former White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun.

In ``The Murrow Boys,'' they perform a strong historical service for listeners and viewers who wish to remember the way it was and might be. A greater appreciation of the glories of broadcasting can be gained by reading their book than by observing the reporting and interviewing styles of such current news personalities as Diane Sawyer, Sam Donaldson and Charlie Rose, not to mention Rush Limbaugh and Geraldo Rivera.

Where the authors make their most original contribution is by following the fate of those Murrow Boys who were pushed aside, denigrated for outspokenness on and off the air or forcibly retired.

Smith was told that his too-liberal ideas violated rules of objectivity and should be peddled elsewhere; Shirer was accused of editorializing; Collingwood was passed over for major anchor roles he richly deserved; Kendrick, a sophisticated reporter, didn't have the right look (too-thick glasses) for documentary producers; Sevareid and Burdett, two of the best writers, found themselves with little to do toward the end of their careers.

What of Murrow himself? After long struggles with management - the authors say he was ``bitter, depressed, purposeless, perpetually exhausted'' - he took a year's leave of absence in 1959.

Returning in 1960, he found there was no longer any real work for him to do. He said to Collingwood: ``You're only important around here as long as you're useful to them, and you will be for a time. And when they're finished, they'll throw you out without another thought.''

In January 1961, Murrow accepted an offer from President-elect John F. Kennedy to become director of the United States Information Agency. After Murrow's 25 years of triumph and tragedy at CBS, his wife called the opportunity to leave ``a beautiful and timely gift.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: ``The Murrow Boys'' details the triumphs and tragedi es of Edward R. Murrow and his fellow correspondents who made broadcasting history.