On Television

...It's no worse than the visiting around that has been occurring this winter on cbs' entertainment shows, like Family Affair, My Three Sons and To Rome with Love...

...Because there are a few people I did very much want to bother, and I hope I have...

...I've never heard of anybody being hired at a network news department because his outlook differed radically from the executive producer's...

...The amount of hard and soft news (or gossip) that Cronkite and Colling-wood managed to worm out of their teammates during the hour-long grillings could be written on the head of a transistor...

...After all, Gallup polls consistently show that roughly 80 per cent of the American people agree the Vietnam war is the most important news story every year...

...The title was a little different last January, when the show was called "Projection '70...

...To make room for Reasoner on The Evening News with Howard K. Smith and Frank Reynolds, abc had to eliminate Frank Reynolds, one of their better newsmen...

...In fact, this has become a ritual all three networks indulge in at the turn of the year...

...This hasn't been the case...

...He could never break the habit of repeating everything the director said through the intercom and finally left the field a broken man...

...But I'm not going to suggest that I'm completely happy about what has happened to me...

...But a study of available records reveals that for two consecutive years the program was called "Projection '66" and nobody seemed to notice...

...The network news departments are convinced they are doing a fairly top-notch job covering the news--they have shelves of Emmys and Dupont-Columbia Awards for excellence in journalism to prove it --and they never argue with success...

...The director barked into the earplug, "What's going on in your area...

...It took the shuffling of two of the most courageous newsmen on tv to finally bring a little honest talk to television network news...

...Agronsky several times the same week...

...Every young man who dreams of becoming a network journalist discovers, usually early in his career, that there are only three networks...

...Some authorities remember a "Projection '58...

...On Television PROCESSING THE NEWS BY MARVIN KITMAN In the early days of tv journalism, it was fairly common to tune in a news show for enlightenment and discover a correspondent like nbc's Hugh Downs interviewing nbc correspondent Martin Agronsky on, say, the meaning of the national elections...

...Whatever the case, poor Roger Mudd, whose Washington beat overlaps many of his colleagues' areas of special interest, was left with the Judge G. Harrold Carswell case...

...He asked each correspondent what, in his opinion, had been the single most important news story of 1970...

...But I prefer to think the failure was merely a bit of innocuous deception practiced on the television audience...

...nbc's massive intranetwork press conference on January 10 was titled "Projection '71...

...Cronkite opened "cbs News Correspondents Report: Part I--the Nation" by stating that his exclusive group would offer both "opinion and comment" on the year's news, something I can never get enough of on television...

...They still had some privileged information they were holding back from us...

...Downs interviewing John Chancellor, who himself used to interview Mr...

...Was this one of those coincidences, or was it just a thinly disguised device to make sure the program covered the whole year's news...

...For some reason the juicy stuff slips their minds at the year-end wrap-ups, and it makes one question the individuality of our various television journalists...

...Everybody is washing the other fellow's hands because it's a cheap and easy way to produce a show...

...I also watched Mr...

...Downs interviewing Mr...

...The turnout was somewhat smaller than usual because two days later Charles Collingwood did the same thing for foreign affairs on cbs with a panel of such hard-to-get correspondents as Richard C. Hottelet, Marvin Kalb, Peter Kalischer, Morley Safer and Eric Sevareid...

...Agronsky and his remarks appeared in no newspaper...

...Nobody on the panel commented on the fact that each correspondent seemed to have selected a story from his own particular beat...

...One poor fellow--a terrific newspaperman--recently tried to make the transition...

...The remarkable symmetry of network journalists is not difficult to explain...

...His first assignment was to cover a parade in Washington...

...His farewell address the night of December 5 was a landmark in tv journalism: It was the first time anybody ever suggested on the airwaves that there might possibly be two sides to the news...

...The implication behind all the visiting around on the news shows is that the correspondents had been coy with the public during their regular stints on camera earlier in the year...

...All that was needed was the right incisive interviewer to loosen up their tongues before 30 million viewers...

...When the correspondents sit around a bottle of scotch at a bar, they inevitably have a fund of interesting stories to tell about all the things they weren't able to say on the air...

...Well, I have too much respect for you to try to pass off such a large dose of hypocrisy, all by itself...

...It's a perfect cycle...

...He is a master at using a lot of verbiage in his regular news-show commentaries, which are always quite profound even if we are often not quite sure what he's trying to tell us...

...Come to think of it, network newsmen tend to be rather alike in important things, such as diction, phrasing, make-up, and the way they look you in the eye on camera...

...The ex-newspaperman's commentary on the parade began, "What's going on in your area...

...Networks go to great expense to bring the correspondents home, but what it adds up to is a lot of moving furniture around pretending that it is a change of view...

...The truth is--it has been wonderful at times and, of course, there are many people who have made it possible and to whom I shall always be grateful...

...For all its talk about printing all the news," Trillin observed, "the New York Times has never thought of sending James Reston out to interview Harrison Salisbury...

...Mistakes have been made here, and for each one, I am sorry, but as inadequate as most of us in this trade know we are, we also know that you have the right to expect, at least, honesty on this side of the box--and I leave now satisfied that I have given you that...

...If only the differences mentioned by Reynolds had been more discernible to the viewer's ear while he was still on the job...

...The job does require a certain amount of skill...

...And it's a shame...

...So titles aren't that useful a research tool...

...I suppose I ought to say I hope I have not offended anyone in the last two and a half years, but that's not really the truth either...

...On the scale of possible Weltanschauungen their differences seem to range from eins to zwei...

...The standard script on an occasion such as this calls for some breast-beating about how wonderful it's all been," Reynolds' last 60-sec-ond commentary began, "and how much is owed to all the wonderful people who have made it possible...

...Like most prisoners I was put here against my will, and like most prisoners I would prefer to pick my own time to leave...

...For it is also the truth that I don't like it one bit, and see no reason to pretend that I do...

...Sevareid's appearance on both panels is understandable...

...It was always an exclusive interview," explained Calvin Trillin, a New Leader reader I interviewed on the meaning of the phenomenon...

...However, such matters are decided elsewhere, and I have no quarrel with the judgment that it is time for a change...

...When the families on the first two shows suddenly appear at John Forsythe's apartment in Rome, followed by the Forsythe family's visit on the other two shows, well, there has to be a master plan...

...That no two cbs correspondents could agree on the same top story may be viewed by some as evidence of incompetence...

...Agronsky, when he couldn't get Sander Vanocur, who was often busy preparing for the questions he thought Chet Huntley might throw at him...

...At any rate, the high-level talks at the networks began this season on December 27, when cbs' Walter Cronkite managed to corral such top names from the world of tv journalism as Roger Mudd, Dan Rather, John Laurence, Daniel Schorr and Eric Sevareid, who came in for an hour of recapitulating and analyzing the year's national news...

...I saw Mr...

...They also bear a striking resemblance in minor things, such as their orientation toward the news and their opinions...

...Indeed, to protect it they tend to hire people who have received their basic training at network affiliates, where everybody is affecting the same plastic style of reporting in hopes of hooking on with one of the three teams in the big leagues...

...This brilliantly simple device of having your correspondents grant interviews to each other was one of television's major contributions to journalism...

...All differed, the answers ranging from My Lai to the November elections...

...He brought to abc's news department a little more wit and style, but not much that is different in the way of news values...

...Before long, of course, the idea of one correspondent interviewing another was improved upon by having one correspondent interview five or six correspondents at the same time...

...No other network snared Mr...

...A major advantage of the system is that top tv newsmen can shuttle from network to network with ease...

...Harry Reasoner of cbs went across West 52 Street to abc in December...