Hard Facts of Television Journalism

...Circumstances are beyond our control in a much greater sense than implied in Friendly's title...

...The problem is not as simple as that...

...In his producer days, the issue was usually the program????the subject, how it was treated, the demands of the aggrieved for "equal time...

...But the necessarily limited place of news in commercial television has been clarified...

...And Producer Friendly fashioned an offstage role for himself...

...Anyone who has been associated with Friendly in a production under his imprimatur will not soon forget the searing process by which miles of film, shot without a clear advance scenario, were reduced, in overtime sessions in the cutting-room, to a sharply-accented narrative driving home a message that may or may not have resembled the correspondent's original premise...

...Perhaps it was this, as much as the dispute over the Vietnam hearings, that prompted me to get out while I still could...

...The impression of the eruption is vivid, but not conducive to detachment...

...A favorite anecdote around the shop is of Friendly, seeking to insure that a program on the Volga filmed by Soviet cameramen did not appear too favorable, asking whether the Volga was polluted and, if so, whether that could be written into the script...

...Occasionally there was the ordeal of Friendly feeling called upon, in a crash operation of revision, to "rescue" a program which, some associates feebly protested, did not need rescuing...

...He spent something short of two more years managing the whole news department, which involved him in greater responsibility and a more direct relationship with the cbs corporate structure, and ended in his resignation amid a blaze of publicity...

...Protests over civil rights programs were not handled by a rule book, but, as Friendly records, by previewing the programs and enabling Southern stations to make up their minds about broadcasting them...

...Behind the Friendly drama is the more generalized drama of a tail trying to wag a dog, of news struggling to find its identity in a medium which gives it the greatest audience and the greatest impact it has ever had while seeking, at the same time, to impose limitations based on criteria foreign to it...

...Friendly's subjective account of his 16 stormy years in commercial television casts some illumination on what, after much discussion of personalities, he finally calls "the System...

...Friendly spent 14 years involved in controversy over controversial programs as producer of See It Now and its successor, CBS Reports...

...The desired result was a "blockbuster," and Friendly produced in his time more than his share of blockbusters...

...The search also skirts the real problem, which is not how something is discussed, but what is discussed, whether the subject is sensitive enough to cause trouble to the company...

...But television dictates harsher terms to journalism...

...The gathering and processing of information are no longer the sole, nor always the primary, consideration in success...

...This paradox played a part in conflicts surrounding Murrow, and it led to the resignation of Howard K. Smith in a dispute over his cri de coeur on civil rights, which the company insisted on excising as over-editorial...

...But it is a relatively small and money-losing appendage to a giant industry...

...The stakes were also high in the final conflict that led to Friendly's resignation...

...But there is one more difference between printed and electronic journalism????the most vital difference of all...

...But I ran into serious trouble????with Friendly, as it happens????when my report on Senator Goldwater's plans for a visit to Germany in 1964 stirred the Republican candidate to anger...

...Lee Loevinger, Federal Communications Commissioner, has stated, ironically, in a speech: "The major discovery that deserves to be associated with the name of Fred Friendly is the theory . . . that a principal purpose of commercial television is to make a profit...

...The "actuality," even when every effort is made to avoid staging, becomes less actual when the lights and camera are turned on...

...Friendly had reason to be upset...

...The broader issue was the place of news in television...

...None of this is sinister, if not abused, for it is done in tacit understanding with the audience that tactics of illusion are being employed in a strategy of truth...

...For a newspaper or news magazine, news is the stock in trade, the raison d'etre...

...The narrator slips into his role—usually the voice of American conscience...

...Never mind...

...If I do not achieve objectivity, it is because, in this business built upon the clash of egos, no one ever really does...

...Trouble can come when the substance of a program incenses sponsors or segments of the public with influence over sponsors...

...It led to repeated efforts to clarify the rules of objectivity, one of which was a guideline from Executive Friendly that might have caused Producer Friendly to smile????permitting interpretation "short of making up viewers' minds on a recommended course of action...

...Film editing can turn a wordy bore into a pithy sage...

...We must live with the fact that some of the techniques are, in fact, forms of deception????the Teleprompter, giving the impression that the commentator has memorized a script which he has not...

...The ambivalence expresses itself in many ways...

...Elements of conflict, tension and suspense are selected and heightened...

...As he moved into the position of president of cbs News, the fight shifted more to the conflict over air-time...

...Or, as an acute form of the latter, it can come in a dispute over pre-emption of scheduled programming for a special event if those who measure financial losses are not persuaded of the overriding importance of the event...

...Television, where emotion is the thing, requires that all connected with it make some emotional impact...

...In the Gold-water case it was no small matter because pre-eminence in coverage of the political conventions affects relative network prestige for months, and perhaps years to come, influencing ratings and possibly even the value of a company's shares on the stock market...

...No rule book could solve the problem that a reference, say, to "cantankerous old Adenauer" would generally pass unnoticed, while a reference to "cantankerous President Johnson" would not...

...For television, news is a public service item, a prestige item and often an item of sentimental enthusiasm among some of its top executives...

...The gop convention in San Francisco was his first important test as president of cbs News, and Senator Gold-water took reprisal by cancelling a scheduled interview and barring cbs cameras from his hotel suite, thus placing cbs at a competitive disadvantage with the other networks...

...It is instructive about the special problems of news in television that news so often depends on the cooperation of its subject, thus laying it open to pressure...

...Reviewed by daniel schorr CBS News, Washington A cbs News correspondent reviewing Fred W. Friendly is like a dweller on the slope of Mount Etna writing a critique of the crater...

...Friendly notes that, in contrast to all the trouble he had over domestic subjects, life was easier "when we produced a report on a foreign subject like "The Trials of Charles de Gaulle,' in which David Schoen-brun commented on Algeria, or an inside look at East Germany, in which Dan Schorr's comments on the drab, sterile look of Communism did not require equal time balancing...

...The stakes in television have become too high for judgments based on ordinary news criteria...

...Or it can come in the simple competition for the rationing of air time...

...the "reverses" of questions and facial reactions, filmed after an interview to be inserted at appropriate places...

...Information is molded into a clash between protagonist and antagonist...

...Friendly's vast achievement, in association with the late Edward R. Murrow, was a grasp of the medium????a flair for translating information, of which he is not a master, into show-busi- ness, of which he is...

...Foreign subjects not only permitted freer scope for a sharp pen, but, to the extent that they attacked Communism, they helped to refurbish credentials for fending off Right-wing criticism on domestic subjects...

...In such a process, roles are assigned????hero, villain, grand lady, underdog????not by Machiavellian intent, but because of the television imperative...

...One is the paradox of a television corporation embarrassed by the kind of personal expression which television itself demands...

...and something technically called "cheating," which amounts to looking in a somewhat different direction from the one that is indicated...

...The gesticu-lator is favored over the wooden-handed...

...Because it is an entertainment medium, dramatic values are unavoidable...

...Because "space," translated as time, is more limited, selection becomes a more critical factor...

...I can better understand Friendly's anxious examination of subsequent reports from Europe during the election campaign when they made reference to the Republican candidate...

...Once he occupied the position of top news executive, with no buffer between him and the corporation, there was less audacity in program content...

...I enjoyed considerable latitude in reporting from Europe, and a critical attitude from Moscow was applauded...

...Little David tilting with a world of Goliaths...

...I venture to suggest that the search for abstract objectivity in television will never succeed, for it would end in blandness and impersonality, which television abhors...

...This he is frank enough to admit...

...The medium may not be the message, but the message can be effectively conveyed only by mastering the medium...

...Anyone who has come to broadcasting, as I have, from the press soon learns that this is a very special brand of journalism...

...Friendly ran the gamut of these conflicts...

...The method is somewhat akin to allegory...

...In another trade, turning out the most effective product of its kind would be success by definition...

...The immediate issues were time for broadcasting a Senate hearing on Vietnam and the interposition of a new echelon between him and the top management...

...During those two years, he says, "I tempered my news judgment and tailored my conscience more than once...

...The issue that he raised?who decides what news event merits the expensive disruption of scheduled broadcasting????has not been resolved in any philosophical sense...

...There results an unstable marriage between news, whose purpose is reality, and television, whose business is illusion...

...Television journalism can be a source of trouble even????sometimes particularly????when it reaches the zenith of triumph in its own terms...

...Or it can come when covering news turns out to cost more than the amount doled out for the purpose...

...Personality and controversy are the stuff of television journalism, and that applies not only to the participants on the stage, but to the commentator on the apron, and even to the producer in the wings...

...Effectiveness also depends on voice, delivery, appearance, the accompanying pictures and how they are edited...

...Because the audience is larger and less differentiated, simplification is essential...

...And this writer, who has felt the glow and sometimes the sparks of Friendly's volcanic stewardship, will try to add a ray of understanding to the dilemma of journalism in television...

...And, while television news thrives on controversy, television does not...

...With an appreciation of how much was involved...