Trouble in the House of Murrow
FRANK, REUVEN
On Television Trouble in the House of Murrow By Reuven Frank WITH ANY LUCK, this could be your last exposure to the saga of Dan Rather, the mythic broadcasting hero brought down by a...
...Walter Cronkite, whom Rather replaced as anchor of the CBS Evening News, also spoke to Auletta, and even more extensively to Wolf Blitzer on CNN...
...his superiors gave him the benefit of any doubt...
...Schieffer had just been named to temporarily fill Rather's seat so the powers could keep hunting for a substitute...
...Here are a few culled from Auletta's list: "If a frog had side pockets, he'd carry a handgun...
...As such, the report is less than fully credible...
...In today's 24/7 news world, where regular news cycles are a romantic memory, the New Yorker article and its revelations were sweeter meat to the cable channels than a car chase on a Los Angeles freeway...
...It surprised quite a few people at CBS that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, they tolerated him being there for so long...
...So the report, besides being unnecessary, was inadequate...
...he did receive special treatment...
...By the standard practices of such work, he surely made dozens, if not hundreds, of portrait shots offering a range of Rather's moods and angles...
...In the case of Westmoreland, a chairman named Thomas Wyman was upset lest his news division's troubles prejudice the company's lobbying of Congress and the FCC to deregulate network broadcasting...
...another colleague, volunteered that Rather considers anchoring "a dumb job," adding, "To gain some credibility, they all feel obliged to go out and stand in the wind...
...Then it was shamefacedly conceded that the documents were questionable...
...But the general sense around the business back then was that he had the anchor chair pulled out from under him to make room for Rather, who was thought to be having friendly talks with ABC News...
...It is one of Auletta's skills to get people to say things to him they later wish they hadn't...
...There are people in the business who faithfully watched the CBS EveningNews hoping to catch the moment when Rather blew his top...
...MOST news organizations, there is someone called an investigative reporter, usually a person of sallow mien searching for overlooked footnotes in the Congressional Record, meeting questionable individuals in questionable places...
...other lawyers from Thornburgh's firm who apparently did the bulk of the interviewing and taking of testimony...
...Soon thereafter, however, the report was caustically criticized by another lawyer, a prominent one, James E. Goodale, retired vice president of the New York Times, and the paper's law department chief during the government's attempts to prevent the publication of the Pentagon Papers...
...They will bring fleeing criminals to daylight...
...DESPITE THE TERM'S wide, cliched use, there is such a thing as a corporate culture...
...The report was signed by Boccardi, Thornburgh and seven...
...and occasionally slips into down-home country metaphors of the 'that dog don't hunt' variety...
...So, where are we...
...Morale at CBS News is at its lowest point since 1986 when the late Lawrence Tisch, philanthropist but also "investor," bought control of CBS and brutally slashed news budgets, bureaus and personnel...
...Now comes the O. Henry ending, or, if you prefer, a denouement like the one in Guy de Maupassant's famous short story "The Necklace": The espose, the scoop, wasn't worth it...
...No one disputes that something had to be done...
...It is now CBS' official version that Cronkite quit in 1981 because he was approaching 65 and wanted to move on...
...Often they do good and necessary work...
...But anywhere else a reasonably senior editor would have been told to look into it, and if obligated to write down his conclusions, would have done so in a few days and in four or five pages...
...It had happened thus at least once before, when General William C. Westmoreland found reporting by CBS News about his military leadership in Vietnam insulting and injurious to his good name...
...Someone might have been fired as visibly as possible, a televised apology would have been tendered, and the buzz would soon have faded...
...There are those, not only at CBS, who collect them...
...So it was only logical that when a public scandal occurred a High Commission of Inquiry was solemnly named to gather evidence and formulate conclusions...
...And it engaged Richard Thornburgh, a former United States attorney general, and Louis Boccardi, a former Associated Press president, to head a panel that would conduct an investigation...
...He, or sometimes these days she, has more than one telephone into which he or she often speaks furtively...
...The management of CBS has taken control in this pivotal situation away from the news division...
...Just as President John F. Kennedy was given to inventing ancient Chinese proverbs, Rather gloried in coining traditional Texasisms, what Dunne called "downhome country metaphors...
...This time, Leslie Moonves, who is CBS' chairman and copresident, as well as co-chief operating officer of Viacom, which now owns CBS, feared he might lose out in the battle to be its ultimate boss...
...It also advanced Rather's retirement from his Evening News anchor chair from the scheduled 25th anniversary of his assumption to the 24th, on March 9,2005...
...He told them both that, although Dan had done "a great job," he should long ago have been replaced by Bob Schieffer, anchor of CBS' Sunday Face the Nation show...
...and right now it's the only tamale that counts...
...During the wait, the New Yorker dispatched its media reporter, Ken Auletta, to spend time with Rather in his aerie at the CBS Broadcast Center on Manhattan's West 57th Street...
...No one familiar with network doings could miss where authority lay...
...MORE THAN ANYONE doing similar work, Dan Rather has evoked strong feelings among those who watched him...
...It got wide attention in all the news media, not only from Right-wing bloggers, and its publication date went down as a bad one in the not inconsiderable history of CBS News...
...On Television Trouble in the House of Murrow By Reuven Frank WITH ANY LUCK, this could be your last exposure to the saga of Dan Rather, the mythic broadcasting hero brought down by a human failing plus a news event roughly coincident with (and more heavily covered than) the Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt breakup...
...And surely it is no surprise that Bush, along with innumerable others, may have explored every avenue to avoid or mitigate the effects of the Vietnam War draft...
...Such are the gems that will henceforth be denied to the American viewer...
...It was clearly Moonves who called the shots, who hung Dan Rather out to dry, who moved him to 60 Minutes Wednesday, while offering, sotto voce, that its ratings were terrible and it was unlikely to survive...
...Andy Rooney...
...Shouting matches are common...
...Some got fake eyesight reports...
...On the 60 Minutes programs, the on-air reporters are in effective control of their stories...
...A newspaper copy editor immortalized him with a column break: "Gunga Dan...
...Not surprisingly, the report's tone was lawyerly almost to the point of scholasticism...
...Almost ignored was the fact that CBS had suffered a selfinflicted wound...
...Following several months of interviews and inquiries, a 224-page report was issued that rebuked CBS News for inadequate sourcing of documents, sloppy and hasty research methods, and additional inattentions...
...It never occurs to them to ask, Who cares...
...His most public previous connection with his news division was marrying Julie Chen, who gives the news on CBS' Early Show, in 2004...
...Justified or not, the kind of public outcry caused by the Bush story could not be ignored...
...Mike Wallace, Rather's longtime colleague at CBS News and on 60 Minutes, told Auletta that Rather was "not as easy to watch as [Peter] Jennings or [Tom] Brokaw...
...Having come up through the ranks starting as an actor and then as a movie executive, Moonves moved to CBS in 1995...
...there has been gossip about thrown furniture and at least the threat of physical violence...
...Rather was left to make an unusual public apology...
...But it cost Dan Rather-for whatever his flaws an honorable man-a fitting close to a long career...
...They will topple governments...
...The late novelist John Gregory Dunne wrote of him: "Rather has always seemed one of the more dubious of the network news stars...
...Instead, in concordance with the current status of journalism as a cheap and easy target for sour bellies of the Right (and of the Left), the report was widely quoted and discussed...
...Surprisingly," wrote Goodale, "the panel was unable to conclude whether the documents are forgeries or not...
...Some went back to school for doctorates...
...But in both instances the interference from the chief executive officer of CBS went far beyond what CBS News was used to in its glory years...
...He accoutered himself like a 19th-century British explorer to penetrate the perilous fastnesses of Soviet-ruled Afghanistan...
...They will expose huge thefts...
...One of those separated from CBS has received a reported "high six figures" to write a tell-all memoir, which has already leaked into the gossip columns...
...But that was more than a generation ago...
...If the documents are not forgeries, what's the reason for the report...
...CBS News considers itself an institution, and its work a calling, not a craft...
...Those were other times, of course, under different leadership...
...He turned to them especially when covering a live event ad lib...
...Much was made of the fact that the documents in question were copies, and that a search for the originals had been unsuccessful...
...A book about 60 Minutes describes the atmosphere in its offices as "toxic...
...After that account was broadcast, Right-wing bloggers attacked it as based on false or forged documents...
...His interviewing style is that of a crusading DA running for re-election in Wharton County...
...The blogging commandos of the Right were hailed, and hailed themselves, while the once proud banners of CBS News were trampled, muddied and reviled...
...His daily radio commentarieshe did them too-would go into theirprogrammed break with his admonition to "please" listen to the commercials...
...It is a tawdry, star-chamber technique designed less to elicit facts than to imply malfeasance...
...These people live only to surpass Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein...
...If California is the big burrito, and Texas is the big taco, then Florida is the big tamale...
...On an election night: "This race is as hot and tight as a too-small bathing suit on a too-long car ride home from the beach...
...A high-priced name photographer accompanied Auletta...
...Only the TV columnist for the Washington Post, Lisa de Moraes, was indelicate enough to exhume the history behind Cronkite's rancor...
...The answer is: To criticize the newsgathering practices of CBS...
...After nearly a quarter of a century, Walter Cronkite landed the final punch," she wrote, noting that he "sounded like someone trying to take a few whacks at a guy who had KO'd him...
...While CBS management flounders to find the right new formula for the evening news, the CBS publicity department is noising it about that Bob Schleifer is much more successful-in the Nielsen ratingsthan had been expected and will stay put...
...From Rather's first broadcast of the report on Bush's war record, public statements came from Moonves, not from CBS News President Andrew Heyward...
...His forceful onair persona seemed too intense for the neutralizing TV tube...
...Others liked to hoot at his exaggerated mannerisms, his clumsiness during those earlier years when he wore a sweater under his jacket to look more folksy...
...With the first public announcement being the creation of a high-profile panel, the ruckus was given an almost endless life...
...If it ishidden, they will make it public...
...They purported to show, among other things, that when President George W. Bush was apilotin the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, he refused a direct order to undergo a physical examination, missed duty more often than allowed, and availed himself of preferential treatment...
...Cronkite went on to tell Blitzer: "I think there was a general feeling among quite a lot of us around the CBS shop, and, indeed, some of the viewers, that Dan gives the impression of playing a role, more than simply trying to give the news to the audience...
...He affects a military bearing and courtly Southern manners...
...From the beginnings of the original program in 1968, the producers have felt frustrated at having their creative contributions and their journalism unheralded...
...Some fled the country and forever gave up their citizenship...
...How many partners can dance on the head of a pin...
...For publication, the fullpage picture was cropped so that on all four sides his head was within millimeters of the margins...
...That of CBS News is prim, self-regarding, still glowing in the effulgence of the memory of the sainted Edward R. Murrow...
...Even if all the documents were authentic and the facts irrefutable, the story was undramatic and not at all uniquely revealing...
...They should either accept their role as a news reader or become a reporter...
...One of Rather's more trusted producers-the woman who first located the photographs of prisoner mistreatment at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and won him this year's prestigious Peabody Awardbrought him some damaging documents...
...Bush did not take the physical exam required of all pilots...
...The salient facts are these: Besides being the CBS Evening News anchor and therefore the network's designated face to the public, Rather was a star of the CBS News "magazine" 60 Minutes Wednesday...
...Forno discernible reason the magazine, which mirrors (and sometimes sets) the tastes and aspirations of the Brie and Volvo set, elected to disparage poor Dan Rather...
...All other media, predictably, followed happily along, and the prospect of a S7 million anchorman being piled on by his colleagues was the newsless news for days...
...They often lacked grace and made less sense than they should have...
...Hard, short, rapidfire questions that demand yes or no answers, punctuated with the pregnant pause...
...He's uptight, and occasionally contrived...
...CBS fired one of the production people involved and asked three more to resign...
...It was a dishonest system and Bush was better situated than most to take advantage of it...
...His criticisms got little attention...
...All this for a news espose that was not much of an espose, nor even much news...
...Some joined the National Guard...
...But there he was, musing for reporters what evening news programs should look like now that Rather and the other old guys were going: perhaps something "revolutionary," maybe four anchors, and on and on...
...Of those, the one the editors chose was a head-on picture showing him with a facial expression that seemed to be hiding pain...
...True, Rather's producer got Ben Barnes, Texas' long-time Democratic lieutenant governor and political fixer, to concede on camera that he had helped get young George W Bush into the state's Air National Guard...
...But almost every one of them lacks perspective...
...From the supermarket tabloids to the magisterial editorial pages of the New York Times, all this is chewed over as the "end of an era," the portent of a new kind of journalism, a threat to information, or a whiff of the future...
...Although CBS News and Rather insisted for days all were genuine, the drumbeat in the blogosphere pounded on and seeped into the general press...
...But the work is done by producers, who establish the facts, supervise the picture-taking and assembling, organize the interviews, all while remaining virtually anonymous...
...It looked like a cross between a "Wanted" poster and a passport photograph...
...Goodale wrote, "Lost in the commotion over the authenticity of the documents is that the underlying facts of Rather's 60 Minutes report are substantially true...
...His lips were parted, his teeth were showing, but he was not smiling...
...He had live television spats with Presidents, and with his own management...
...The eyes were gray, the whites pink, and they glistened...
...Writing in the New York Law Journal and the New York Review of Books, Goodale pointed out that the charges against Bush had not been disproved, that the panel used unrealistic standards for verification, and that it generally did not understand the processes of journalism...
...This much later, what do the details matter...
...Heyward's principal role was to agree...
...Each reporter has a clutch of producers assigned exclusively to him and rules their lives...
...Another set of tensions has stemmed from passionate competitions among the high-profile news stars and temperamental executives...
...They will unmask misfeasors...
...Having been notified to wait for a report, the interested, the inquisitive and the howling pack alike were stimulated to keep asking impatiently when it would appear, to speculate on what it would say, and to pounce on it once it was published...
Vol. 88 • May 2005 • No. 3
