Harvest of Shame, produced by David Lowe, was the final documentary in the career of broadcasting news legend Edward R. Murrow. Originally aired on CBS Reports in 1960, this controversial documentary about the plight of farm laborers in rural Florida, some of whom worked for as little as a dollar a day, shocked viewers with its stark images of desperate poverty and the callous greed of big growers. Its stridently nonobjective point of view was denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate and even upset network head honcho William S. Paley, but it also prompted thousands of calls and letters from a sympathetic public. Harvest of Shame forever changed the nature of TV news and set the tone for a generation of investigative journalists....

.....Even in 1960, the exploitation of farm workers in America wasn't a secret, though most Americans outside rural areas probably didn't know about it. Newspaper reporter Van Smith of the Miami News won a Pulitzer prize in 1959 for an expose of "Shacktown," a squalid camp in Immokalee, Fla., where out-of-work migrant families were starving to death. Smith's reports were so shocking that $100,000 in private donations flowed in to feed the migrants, and government officials were shamed into forcing growers to install plumbing and improve conditions. In the spring of 1960, Friendly heard a radio commentary on the plight of migrants, and was intrigued. He assigned Lowe to go to Florida for a month and see if he could develop some contacts with the migrants....

...The documentary got rave reviews from the New York Times and Time magazine, which called it a "muckraking masterpiece." CBS got thousands of calls and letters from viewers, all but a handful positive, according to Miraldi and Johnpoll. But conversely, some hated the documentary. The American Farm Federation Bureau began to attack Harvest of Shame even before its broadcast, questioning even its figures about the number of migrant laborers. It also was denounced by Congress members from farm states, including Democratic Sen. Spessard L. Holland of Florida, who had ties to citrus growers. But critics' rebuttals of the film — such as their assertion that if laborer Aileen King only earned $1 a day picking crops, she must be a bad worker — tended only to make them appear hardhearted. But the film's strongest defense was that it was accurate. In the end, the only factual error CBS had to correct was Murrow's minor misstatement that no child of migrants had ever graduated from college. CBS Network chief William S. Paley, oddly, was among the film's detractors. He told Friendly that he didn't like Murrow's passionate speech at the end, which disobeyed his own edict about maintaining objectivity....

 ...As a result of the documentary, did the plight of migrant farm workers improve?

Somewhat, probably, though unfortunately not as much as Lowe and Murrow would have liked to see happen. In Harvest of Shame, hungry workers are seen waiting in line for handouts after freezing weather had deprived them of a chance to earn money for food. In 1990, a PBS follow-up contained a virtually identical scene, except that it was shot in color. In 2003, the Palm Beach Post reported that immigrant workers from Mexico and Central America, who have supplanted some of the African-American workers seen in the 1960 documentary, often are forced to live in virtual slavery by employers who steal their pay, force them to sleep in overcrowded trailers, and sometimes sexually assault them. The newspaper also interviewed Jerome King, who was seen as a 9-year-old boy in the original documentary, living in a house where rats gnawed at his mattress. More than four decades later, the 52-year-old King was working as a migrant laborer, just as his mother had. King had higher aspirations for his two teenage sons, whom he proudly noted were excellent students.

Excerpts from review of Ed R. Murrow documentary, "Harvest of Shame" originally aired on CBS Reports in 1960.  http://times.discovery.com/convergence/harvestofshame/harvestofshame.html

Note that despite the powerful documentary, little changed for migrant farm workers.  The Senate Immigration Bill has powerful lobbies behind it.  America's corporate elite cares little for American workers, and is more interested in a middle management who has no ties or alliegance or even sympathy for American culture or workers.  This new "multi-cultural" management wants foreign workers, workers who will do what they are told, and work for what is offered, and not complain. 

The shameful disingenous speech by George W. Bush pretty much shows the deterioration of the morality of America's elite. Animal House meets Globalization.