Who Elected CBS?

By Thomas Griffith

Newswatch

White House people can be sent up the wall when Dan Rather of CBS reports the latest sign of economic recovery but adds that there are still a lot of people out of work--and then switches to someone in an Ohio unemployment line with a hard-luck story. Sometimes CBS does sound like a stuck needle on the subject, but it might answer, why not? Perhaps this is at the heart of the good news/ bad news campaign that Ronald Reagan is waging against TV. But network people think the President all wrong in asserting that good news makes bad ratings. One of CBS's biggest letter getters last year was a warm, upbeat story about Delta employees' banding together to buy a new 767 for their financially strapped airline. The real argument is about what news is, and who decides it.

"I see coming, like a wave out at sea," Dan Rather says, a new attack on the "media elite." Then, with a carefree disregard for consistency of metaphor, he describes such criticism as "the old salami in a new package." Journalists like Rather are always being asked by unsympathetic critics, "Who elected you?" The most plausible answer is that journalists are first appointed by their employers, then get confirmed by the public insofar as they and their employers are regarded as accurate, fair and trustworthy. As the network with the most watched news program on TV, CBS can consider itself elected under Walter Cronkite and re-elected under Rather. There was a ratings dip in between, until Rather learned to bank his adrenaline. Rather's much talked-about sweater did not make the real difference. The CBS News changed its style.

CBS has always had a reputation for aggressive coverage by the best news staff in the business, and for being first in attitudinizing. It has been the network most complained about by Presidents, including Nixon and Johnson. So Rather was surprised by the lack of "any sense of hostility" when Reagan once complained. Still, it's a bit unsettling to be that closely monitored by the White House. The night Anne Burford resigned, the White House called during the Evening News broadcast to deny CBS's assertion that Reagan had asked for her resignation. CBS continued to insist that the White House had "wanted her out."

Decisions like this at CBS are made by Rather and his executive producer, Howard Stringer, a bright Welshman who came to the U.S. out of Oxford in 1965. They have the help of four senior producers. Van Gordon Sauter, president of CBS News in the past year, is often in the newsroom but takes part in decisions only when asked. Rather describes Sauter as a "handson president, something new around here," and says his critiques after the broadcasts are "tough." In earlier days Cronkite thought of his newscast as a headline news service and wanted many items. Sauter sees the broadcast becoming more like a newsmagazine, with fewer stories treated more fully. The biggest change has been to switch the camera away from Washington as often as possible. Sauter wants to shift from congressional hearings to "where the story impacts"; Stringer regards Washington coverage as too often "press releases in visual form." The President finds himself rebutted not by grumpy and ambitious Congressmen but by local people from "South Succotash" hurt by cutbacks, or by shots of polluted streams.

By contrast, NBC News President Reuven Frank, a hardy, commonsensible veteran, thinks of TV news as a "reactive function. We don't feel it our function to dispute any President. We're not the opposition." He does think Reagan's mini-press conferences are too self-serving and was irritated when Nancy Reagan wheeled in a birthday cake at one. "Someone asked me whether we protested," Frank says. "We didn't. We're not a country. We complained."

Still, such differences in attitude are less than they seem. All three networks, despite attempts to manipulate them from many quarters, insist on reaching their own news decisions. They are after all the ones the public holds responsible. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.