周恩来年谱中，1956年12月圣诞节前记载总理访问缅甸，但是没有接受美国新闻采访的记录。
本文来自三本英文书籍中对此事的记录
第一本是墨若（Edward R. Murrow）的传记，Murrow: His Life and Times （by A.M. Sperber Fordham University Press 1998）。墨若是美国CBS广播公司的主持人，1950年代美国人无法进入中国，1956年底周恩来总理访问缅甸，于是墨若知道机会来了，进不了中国，可以去缅甸啊。通过当时缅甸总理吴努按排了对周恩来总理的采访，墨若到了缅甸，在圣诞节前采访了周恩来。这是CBS的独家新闻，也是美国电视的一个突破，同时也是政治上的烫山芋，先斩后奏，制作完了才扔给公司。CBS在新年前一天夜里11：15播放了采访，后面还跟了一个反驳的一组评判（rebuttal panel），墨若对此很不高兴。他本来想自己选几个参与者，比如对中国很了解的白修德（Theodore White），但未获批准。节目播出后有批评也有赞誉，但是主体是负面的，墨若自己也很不满意：太做作，太一本正经，问题都是事先提交的，而且交流还要通过翻译。墨若事后给赛珍珠写信说：周恩来拒绝以私人交谈的方式进行，虽然他理解并能说流利的英文。后来墨若回忆，当时就像是听一张老旧的唱片一样。录制过程中，一次，周恩来一手捂着一个话筒，用无懈可击的英语纠正了翻译的一个错误。在换录像带的时候，他离开了。   
墨若问道：你是否相信美国站在那些为自由而战的国家的对立面？周恩来强烈抨击美国的拉丁美洲政策；另一方面，虽然他否认中苏分歧，周恩来表达了中美恢复关系的希望，乃至对亚洲和太平洋地区的一个包括美国在内的联合和平条约。
六个月后，墨若又采访了南斯拉夫的铁托元帅，谈了社会主义体系之间的区别，毛泽东，匈亚利和中东局势、武器竞赛和和平共处。
与采访周恩来不同，与铁托的谈话很放松，多方位的，两人谈的很融洽。
(20170421)
该书中相关内容原文：
P506 Christmas week of 1956, Murrow interviewed Premier Zhou Enlai of China, flying to Rangoon for a meeting negotiated by Premier U Nu of Burma. It was a first time exclusive for CBS and a breakthrough for American TV. It was also a political hot potato, filmed without so much as a by-your-leave, a fait compli dumped in the network’s lap. CBS ran it after 11:15 PM on New Year’s Eve, followed, to Murrow’s dismay, by a rebuttal panel. The newsman’s attempt to suggest participants, including the knowledgeable Teddy White, met with a thumbs-down. An interview with Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia filmed six months later, was also followed by a panel, less hostile than in the case of Chinese Premier.
.....Stanton himself had negotiated a controversial freewheeling Khrushchev interview over Face the Nation in June 1957 with Daniel Schorr--filmed inside the Kremlin
P507 To Murrow, the praised and damned Zhou Enlai piece was a disappointment--stilted, superformal, based on submitted questions and filtered through an interpreter. “He repulsed all my efforts at private conversation, even though..... he speaks and understand English perfectly. “ He wrote Pearl Buck afterward. “Like listening to a worn and familiar phonograph record” was how he later characterized the interview. At one point in the filming, the Premier, a hand over each microphone, corrected his interpreter in impeccable English, then sat back as the mediated session continued. When the film magazines were changed, he left the room.  
In retrospect, both the Zhou and Tito footage pointed toward the seventies and eighties and the emerging world fermenting between the superpowers. The Chinese leader, answering Murrow’s question, Did he believe the United States was against “those nations.... struggling for freedom,” strongly criticized U. S. policy in Latin America. At the same time, despite a denial of Sino-Soviet differences, the old mandarin expressed the hope for resumed U.S.-China relations and even a “collective peace pact” for Asia and the Pacific, to include the United States.
Six months later, on an island in the Adriatic, Tito of Yugoslavia talked with Murrow of differences in “socialist systems,” Mao Zedong, events in Hungary and the Middle East, tha arms race, and coexsistence as the only alternative, so said the marshal, to annihilation. “But we should abandon the idea of intervening, of mixing in the internal affairs of each other.....If a majority of the people of a country decide to have a socialist system, then nobody has the right to try and impose another system on that people.....”  
In contrast with the Zhou piece, the Tito interview was relaxed, far-ranging, Murrow and the old ex-partisan got on well together, the state photographers snapped stills of the two men in their short sleeves, strolling the ground around the presidential residence....     

第二本，也是写墨若的：Edward R. Murrow, an American Original （by Joseph E. Persico, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1988）  (20170504)
里面说，对周恩来的采访，从新闻角度来说，是历史性的，之前还没有人把红色中国的领导人推介给美国电视观众，但是从沟通交流（communication）来说，这是一次失败的采访。周恩来没有回答墨若的问题，而是利用这个机会，引用标准的教课书式的毛泽东的名言警句。CBS的高层无法否认这次采访的历史意义，因此同意播放，但是在具体处理上，就好象是对付一个麻风病人一样，把它流放到一个星期天晚上的11：15分的时间档。原文如下：
P417 It was a time in which Murrow sought to pierce the East-West veil of ignorance. Intellectual isolationism disturbed him. It smacked of fear and know-nothingism. 
......
In December of that year, he plunged directly into the maelstrom. Chou En-lai was visiting Rangoon. Murrow could not get State Department approval to travel to China, but he could go to Burma, where the Chinese premier was willing to be interviewed. 
As a journalistic initiative, the Chou interview was historic. No one had yet delivered a leader of Red China to an American television audience. As communnication, the broadcast was a flop. Chou did not answer Murrow’s questions so much as use them as cues to recite copybook maxims from the teachings of Mao. But at least CBS management could not deny the historic significance of the encounter in Rangoon and allowed the interview to be broadcast. It was handled, however, like a case of leprosy, banished to the outmost fringe of the schedule,11:15 on a Sunday night. 
第三本是The Haunted Fifties:1953-1963 （by I.F. Stone Little, Brown and Company 1963.）  (20190117)
1957年，CBS还在克里姆林宫采访了赫鲁晓夫。赫鲁晓夫的表现对比周恩来要好的多。虽然中国共产党人显示他们比苏联人在理论上更灵活，但是墨若从周恩来那除了口号和声嘶力竭的宣传什么也没有得到。而赫鲁晓夫表现出来的，恰是周恩来没有做到的，就是在美国观众面前，表现出一种人性。对于和平来说，关键的第一步就是能够看到你的对手的领导和人民身上的人性的东西。
原文如下：
P194 No Competition in Ideas
  The Khrushchev interview was a major event for all who desire a relaxation of international tension. The Columbia Broadcasting System performed a public service by it. Khrushchev’s performance was strikingly superior to Chou En-lai’s when interviewed some months ago by Ed Murrow. Though the Chinese Communists have shown themselves more flexible theorists than the Russians, Murrow got nothing from Chou En-lai but slogans and propagandistic rantings. Khrushchev deserves credit for seizing what Chou En-lai missed, the opportunity to emerge as a human being for an American audience. This humanization of the leaders and people on the opposite side is the first essential toward peace.