April 5, 2002
The Hard News Smackdown
By CARYN JAMES
 |
| CBS News |
| Ed Bradley reporting on the Middle East crisis from the anchor's desk on the "CBS Evening News" from New York on Friday, when he was filling in for Dan Rather. |
On Monday Dan Rather and his CBS crew passed a checkpoint in Israel where, just minutes later, a suicide bomber's car exploded. On Tuesday Mr. Rather was on camera wearing a blue flak jacket and a sign that said "press" on his chest, the gear so many people reporting from Israel wear today. But for all the drama, he still seemed to be playing catch-up.
Last week when the region exploded into seemingly nonstop violence, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings were already there. While Mr. Brokaw anchored NBC's "Nightly News" and Mr. Jennings, ABC's "World News Tonight" from the Middle East, back in New York Ed Bradley sat at the CBS anchor desk saying, "Dan is off."
Unlike the other networks, CBS had decided not to send its anchor to cover the summit meeting of Arab nations in Beirut. But when that conference was abruptly overshadowed by the Passover suicide bombings and the chain of violence it set off, it looked as if CBS just wasn't trying.
That's more perception than reality. The network covered the story, and Mr. Rather has reported from Afghanistan twice in recent months. Despite all the frenzy of attention to cable news, though, the presence or absence of the big three network anchors is still a major symbol of a story's importance, and the evening news programs still matter.
But why? The recent coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict suggests that the network newscasts remain important by default.
Their audience remains huge. More than 30 million people watch the network news programs each night, while the cable news channels — CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel — would be lucky to reach 3 million in prime time combined. To that large audience, the men so familiarly known as Dan and Tom and Peter are more reassuring than the revolving door of upstarts and has-beens recycling through cable.
And an unexpected detail points to the biggest difference between the networks and cable. Soon after midnight on Friday, when the news broke that Israeli tanks were surrounding Yasir Arafat's compound, CNN cut into its regular program. It was a replay of that night's "Larry King Live" with guests from the television version of "Ripley's Believe It or Not." Mr. King talked to a woman who survived a car crash and now has 200 metal plates in her head.
That juxtaposition of the ludicrous and the earth-shattering represents the plausible future. When dealing with hard news, networks and cable both do a solid, remarkably similar job. (Well, except for the conservative Fox News Channel, where one of its anchors, Diane Dimond, has referred to members of the United States military as "our guys" and the opinionated Geraldo Rivera is playing reporter.)
The significant gap is not between networks and cable, but between real news and the newslike substance that surrounds it, filler that is the equivalent of a cheese-food product vaguely resembling the real thing. On Monday Mr. King interviewed Madeleine Albright, then chatted with Judge Judy. Next to such a whiplash-inducing lineup, naturally the network news programs looks good. In a half-hour minus commercials, there's no time for the weirdos and the shouting confrontations that pass for news on cable.
What the network anchors add is a sense of authority that translates to something more than style. With its anchors in the Middle East last week, ABC and NBC devoted more time to the Arab-Israeli conflict than CBS did. The Tyndall Report, which measures the time these newscasts give to each subject, charted 28 minutes for NBC's coverage of the issue last week and 23 for ABC, while CBS lagged behind with 15. (Divide by five and you get an amazingly short time each night; and that was the week's dominant story.)
What matters, of course, is how those minutes are filled. The extra time on NBC and ABC came partly from their anchors' human-interest, firsthand views. Both started in Beirut then moved to Israel, where they visited the site of the Passover attack at Netanya. Mr. Brokaw walked through the rubble and interviewed a young Israeli man who worked at the hotel where the bomb exploded. "Did you expect it could happen in this hotel by the sea?" he asked.
The Israeli answered: "Of course. It's expected. It's expected when you cross the street."
As they walked inside the hotel's destroyed dining room, the camera observed bloodstains on the floor. Anyone could have done that interview, but the anchor's poignant close-up view set it apart from similar snapshots a dozen other reporters offered.
Mr. Jennings, who reported from Beirut in the 1970's, toured the city and charted its changes through peace and war. The anchors added texture and enhanced the coverage, although all the networks' reporting was essentially the same, with the same equal-time treatment given to the usual spokesmen, an Arab voice here balanced by an Israeli voice there. Watch enough, and even the touching details become common: NBC and ABC included different shots of a single high-heeled shoe sitting in the wreckage.
No anchor has yet done any breakthrough reporting. Dana Lewis of NBC, who was shot at by Israeli soldiers herding journalists away from Ramallah, has given the most visceral sense of a city under siege. David Hawkins for CBS and Dan Harris for ABC have similarly done serious, straightforward, dangerous reporting for their networks. But Dana and David and Dan don't have the same recognition as Tom and Peter and Dan, so for as long as the anchors stay in place the television world will probably cling to their symbolic importance.
Considering the alternatives, that may be just as well. When Mr. Jennings was in Israel, he spent some time listening to a group of men on the street discussing the suicide bombers, a conversation that quickly turned into a cacophony of disagreement. That was his point.
And that unintelligible yelling sounded a lot like CNN's "Crossfire," the model for the screaming heads that dominate cable. A revamped version of the program began on Monday, with two new hosts — James Carville and Paul Begala for the liberals, joining Tucker Carlson and Robert Novak for the conservatives — and an audience at George Washington University.
"New Blood. No Gloves," an advertising line claimed and the opening credits include shots of the hosts in a boxing ring, complete with robes, gloves and fighting names: Leghorn Leftie Begala vs. the Bowtie Brawler Carlson. "Crossfire" may be willing to spoof itself, but the program is seriously close to the Fox network's tacky "Celebrity Boxing."
The other night Representative Robert Wexler (a Florida Democrat) debated Hasan Abdel Rahman, the Palestine Liberation Organization's representative to the United States. "Let me finish, let me finish," was the only line the men had in common as they all shouted over each other. The new "Crossfire" is the old "Crossfire" only louder.
That, of course, is the trend in cable. When Greta Van Susteren moved from CNN to the Fox News Channel, her once sensible manner was as drastically altered as her cosmetically changed face. Now she follows the lead of Fox News's biggest star, Bill O'Reilly, who plays bait the guest on "The O'Reilly Factor."
Ms. Van Susteren, talking about immigration restrictions recently, verbally prodded Pat Buchanan (not a guest who needs prodding). "I would be livid if I were the attorney general," she yelled.
When she went on to Representative Silvestre Reyes (a Texas Democrat), he calmly said, "I don't know what you expect as reactions."
She interrupted: "Outrage! Outrage!"
With headlines instantly available on cable and the Internet, the network news programs long ago added their own fluffy segments, like NBC's "Fleecing of America" or CBS's "Eye on America." But their fluff is healthier; a consumer-friendly report on credit-card interest seems absolutely high-minded compared with the hot air of cable.
And there is no better model emerging for the future. "Nightline," the subject of so much sanctimonious chatter when it seemed as if David Letterman might move to ABC, has seemed tired during the Arab-Israeli coverage. The PBS "Newshour With Jim Lehrer" may be the most thoughtful television news report, but it seems determined to retain its fusty style. And Mr. Rather, who remains in Israel, spent an hour on "Larry King Live" Tuesday, more time than his own network has given him at a stretch. Finding some import in a critical mass of network anchors is backward-looking and symbolic, but it offers viewers stability in this muddled television world where the ever-widening split is between the soporific past and the verbal boxing of the future.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
