Bill Downs

Who was Bill Downs?

William Randall "Bill" Downs, Jr. was a Kansas City-born American broadcast journalist for CBS Radio from 1942 to 1962 and worked for ABC beginning in 1963 until his death, spending almost 40 years as a correspondent. He was best known for his work with Edward R. Murrow and was one of the original Murrow Boys.

Downs covered a wide variety of battles in the European Theatre, later going on to cover the Bikini atomic experiments and the Korean War. He was among the most insistent members of Murrow's circle to press for Murrow to use his platform on See It Now to criticize Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunism campaigns.