You Have to Be Neutral to Ask the Questions

By Thomas Griffith

Considering the animus that still exists toward the press, it is surprising how universal is the agreement that in the forthcoming debates, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter should be cross-questioned by those paragons of impartiality, journalists. In more paranoid times, anchor men were accused of covertly liberal inflection, and the rise of David Brinkley's eyebrows came under particular suspicion. John Chancellor once locked himself in his bathroom and tried to read a piece of copy before the mirror in ways that would give it different slants. He says he never finished the experiment because each time he broke up laughing.

Network anchor men--men of vast influence but little power--are ideal moderators. Their job has evolved curiously. Ambitious people lust after it. To be an anchor man is to be sought after by hostesses and courted with wary deference by politicians; to cause a stir in restaurants; to be highly visible and highly paid. The nice-guy qualities needed--a pleasing presence, articulate spontaneity, neutral manner--seem easily imitable but are not. Each year local television stations clone platoons of handsomely competent news readers, some of whom are expensively promoted to the big time but do not make it. They do all right as long as they just read, but when forced to describe an event at length themselves, they prove uninteresting because their minds are uninteresting; in interviews, they lack the knowledge or the dexterity to cross-examine.

The skilled anchor man does not palaver, as time-filling radio broadcasters used to, but rarely does he say anything memorable either. His talent is to roll out endless spools of language that inform but do not rile. It is a strange, self-limiting role for garrulous, confident men. Opinionated candor must be held in check; the impartiality that a writer achieves painfully at his typewriter has to emerge instantly, toothpaste-clean, from the anchor man or commentator.

Self-restraint is a must in television interviewing also. Mike Wallace began as a hard-edged, on-camera prosecutor, but has since developed an effective backhand--a disarming, disbelieving smile when confronted with obviously unpersuasive answers. The thoughtful Edwin Newman is so self-effacing that at times he seems to be turning away from the camera. Barbara Walters often offers a quickstep apology for asking a sharp question, then zeroes right in. Bill Moyers is a moralizer whose imponderable "big" questions sometimes drive his hapless subjects to embarrassingly hasty profundities. But all of these interviewers know that their job is to draw out a person. It is not, as in the quite different Firing Line assignment of the agile William F. Buckley Jr., to debate as an equal.

Television's neutrality is a little less than it seems. As Paul H. Weaver points out, television tends to condescend to politicians. This may be because "neutrality" permits a commentator a great many negative remarks about politicians hungry for office, aiming their speeches at some bloc, making a poor showing or taking desperate measures. But neutrality bars a commentator from saying bluntly "That was a brilliant speech," "I agree with him," or "He acted courageously."

Some of Washington's best print journalists--Peter Lisagor, David S. Broder, Hugh Sidey and Elizabeth Drew--who appear often on TV panels, also understand televised neutrality. They too should do well in the upcoming quartet of Ford-Carter and Dole-Mondale debates. Earlier this year, when the League of Women Voters televised discussions among the scramble of Democratic contenders, a different kind of questioner presided. Hoping to avoid the journalist's presumed superficiality, the league turned instead to specialists in such subjects as energy, foreign affairs, welfare and economics. They did not work out well. Some were too selfconscious, professorially superior and downright argumentative, rejecting a candidate's argument scornfully as if they were grading an undergraduate's exam paper.

Press questioners know better how to ask the brief, pertinent question, then get out of the way. But they would all be well advised to come equipped, as Lawrence Spivak dourly used to do every Sunday on Meet the Press, with index cards to quote from whenever the candidate says something that contradicts an earlier stand.

The debates should provide fine spectator sport: valuable for the chance to judge the candidate's character by his demeanor under pressure. But very little real news may emerge. Having campaigned all year, neither Ford nor Carter is apt to be surprised by an unexpected question. Both will be briefed and crammed; both are unfazed at repeating by rote positions previously taken. The likeliest result of such an equal facing-off, as it was in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, is to make the argument of inexperience suddenly lose much of its force.

A careful, neutral television commentator would not make that flat a prediction. It might not work out that way this time, he would say.

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