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Thursday, September 27, 2001
By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Dan Rather's emotional meltdown last week on "Late Night With David Letterman," precipitated by his description of the World Trade Center tragedy, was so remarkable that the incident itself became news.
But it was hardly the first time a reporter or anchor lost his cool on the air. At least Rather didn't do it in a journalistic environment. When President Reagan was shot in 1981, ABC anchor Frank Reynolds angrily barked, "Let's get it right!" after learning a report of press secretary James Brady's death was erroneous.
Rather, anchor of "The CBS Evening News," choked back tears twice while talking to Letterman, but more troubling to some journalists was his declaration that he would go wherever President Bush wanted him to be. It may have been patriotic, but did it fly in the face of journalistic impartiality?
"Dan was not there reporting the news," says his boss, CBS News president Andrew Heyward. "He was there in his role as human being, which he also happens to be, and American, which he also happens to be. Not to be touched by this tragedy would be unhuman and un-American.
"This whole story unfolds against a backdrop of a vicious and enormously devastating blow to the heart of our country, and the people who report the news are victims as well as reporters. ... I don't think that our role as citizens and patriots is incompatible with our role as journalists."
Still, it was a far cry from the Dan Rather who sparred combatively (and got the worst of it) in a live interview with the president's father, the elder George Bush, in 1988. In the 1970s, the CBS newsman sassed President Nixon at a press conference. After Rather drew some applause when he rose to ask a question, Nixon asked, "Are you running for something?"
Rather replied, "No, Mr. President, are you?" Many Republicans and conservatives have distrusted him ever since, accusing him of bias.
Now, questions are being raised about TV news anchors and reporters wearing American flag lapel pins or loops of red, white and blue ribbons and the use of Old Glory in news graphics.
"I would not encourage our people to put flags on their lapels. I think you get into a kind of one-upmanship, a contest who can be red, white and bluer than the next," Heyward says. "But one aspect of it is a love of country, a support of the families who have lost people and the heroes who are trying to bring America back. And a little bit of flag-waving in that context is acceptable to me."
Another network, ABC, has forbidden its reporters to wear flag lapel pins. Spokesman Jeffrey Schneider told the Washington Post, "Especially in a time of national crisis, the most patriotic thing journalists can do is to remain as objective as possible. ... That does not mean journalists are not patriots. All of us are at a time like this. But we cannot signal how we feel about a cause, even a justified and just cause, through some sort of outward symbol."
Usually, such violations of neutrality are less obvious.
It was hard to blame Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite -- "the most trusted man in America" -- when his voice cracked while announcing the death of President Kennedy. But his coverage of Kennedy's space program was so enthusiastic -- "Go, baby, go!" he exulted when John Glenn lifted off for the first U.S. orbital flight in 1962 -- that some accused him of being not a reporter but a cheerleader for NASA.
After a trip to Vietnam following the 1968 Tet offensive, Cronkite proclaimed on the air that America was "mired in stalemate" and that a negotiated peace was the only honorable way out. President Lyndon Johnson watched the broadcast, turned to his aides and said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." Five weeks later, he announced he would not seek re-election.
Cronkite himself has defended Rather. At a press conference in San Jose, Calif., he said, "I don't blame anybody for showing emotion on the air. I don't think I would trust a reporter, male or female, who didn't show any emotion."
Sometimes, reporters become inexorably linked with historic events simply through the enduring excellence of their work -- Edward R. Murrow reporting on the bombing of London during World War II, Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate investigations, CNN's "Boys in Baghdad" at the start of the Gulf War.
As the CNN reporters -- Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett and John Holliman -- described the bombing of the Iraqi capital while ducking under tables in their hotel room, viewers thought about their safety and marveled at their coverage.
It was one of the few times when we remembered that, while reporters strive to be impartial and objective, they are also human and are affected by the stories they cover even more than the rest of us.
That's a bit surprising because, over the past two decades, we have given star treatment to the most prominent network anchors, of a sort once reserved for movie idols.
Cronkite and competitors such as Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and John Chancellor were celebrities in their own way, but we saw them as authority figures who were somewhat above the fray, people to whom we turned for information but also reassurance. With only three networks and no cable, the country came together by tuning in.
The newscasters we actually fawned over then were the ones closest to the audience, literally and figuratively -- the anchors on local stations who tore down the wall between viewer and anchor and became honored guests in our living rooms.
That gave some of them enormous leeway. The legendary Pittsburgh anchor Bill Burns had no qualms about injecting his viewpoint into his newscasts, introducing some items with his insinuating catch phrase, "Now get a load of this ..."
"Bill was the last of that kind of dominant anchor who could allow himself those kinds of privileges and luxuries. I know he went too far," says retired Pittsburgh anchor Adam Lynch. "If he had not been who he was and what he was, he would have been reprimanded. ... I don't think you can ever have that kind of extraordinary star quality in a news anchor that he had, and the total dominance of the marketplace that he had."
But it was a time when Bryant Gumbel's divorce would not have been splashed all over the tabloids, when Katie Couric would not have shared her anguish at the death of her husband from cancer. Before the networks realized news could be profitable, Rather might never have been asked or permitted to appear on an entertainment program.
"There are places where people talk about the news and the rules aren't as strict, and to some extent the anchors participate. And I think they're allowed to be a bit more human and a bit looser in those environments," Heyward says. "That's what happened on 'Letterman.' I think Dan was letting his guard down. He was deeply touched by what happened and was no longer under as much of an obligation to be the unflappable authority figure.
"An average person would see that and say, 'I'm glad Dan Rather is a human being.' I don't want a robot giving me the news or a guy who doesn't feel what I feel seeing 6,000 people dead at the bottom of a pile of rubble in Manhattan."
In fact, CBS received more than 3,500 e-mails in support of the emotional Rather/Letterman exchange.
But where is the line drawn? Lynch, who also has taught broadcast journalism, thinks what Rather did was "not good and not wise. You're running a certain risk. I have no quarrel with an anchor person being interviewed. But it seems to me it is incumbent upon you to maintain a very professional look and sense about you. If he violated that, he is wallowing in an area I find uncomfortable and embarrassing."
But Lynch is old school, and he recognizes that today's TV news reporters are given more latitude than they were in his day.
Current WTAE-TV anchor Scott Baker empathizes with Rather. "I find myself, over and over again in the last two weeks, having the same reaction myself" -- especially after working shifts of 12 hours or longer.
"I don't think it's necessary to hide those reactions, but that's different from wearing them on your sleeve." Yet he worries that the emotions he felt inside were sometimes too evident on the air.
Lynch calls the use of flag imagery and dramatic music "something you have to be damned careful about." He acknowledges there are show-business aspects to reporting the news. "And I have no quarrel with that, doing it dramatically and doing it with flair, doing it with drama."
That became more prevalent in TV news as 24-hour cable stations developed, as broadcast executives stopped treating news like a loss leader and a public service and started demanding that it turn a profit. Coverage became more personal in nature, focusing on people as much as issues.
Rather rode on the vanguard of those changes. When Cronkite retired in 1981 as "The CBS Evening News" anchor, Roger Mudd was the heir apparent. But Rather was being courted by ABC News president Roone Arledge, and CBS, anxious not to lose Rather, gave him the anchor seat and a five-year $8 million contract -- an enormous amount at the time.
A few years earlier, Barbara Walters made headlines by becoming the first female evening-news anchor and the first, male or female, to make $1 million a year. She wasn't covering the story -- she WAS the story, especially after her on-air pairing with curmudgeonly Harry Reasoner (to use a show-biz term) laid an egg.
Today, Tom Brokaw is as famous for his series of books on "The Greatest Generation" as he is for being anchor of "The NBC Nightly News." Willingly or not, he has been cast as a kind of spokesman for those who came of age during World War II, even as the current generation comes to grips with its own Pearl Harbor -- Sept. 11, 2001 -- and faces what President Bush has called a new kind of war.
Some newscasters have had to deal with it both professionally and personally. KDKA anchor Ken Rice lost his brother-in-law, Brian Dale, who was aboard the flight that crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
"I was on the air at the time," he says. "The assistant news director motioned me off the set and told me what had happened." Rice went home, consoled his family and took them to New Jersey, where Dale lived.
"I wasn't on the air for eight days. I thought it would be enough time. But it was horrible. It's still difficult. I'm immersed in it. I can't get away from it.
"Then again, this is what I do. I felt I needed to get back and do what I do. I'm not the only person feeling this."
Ken Rice Lost his brother-in-law on Sept. 11.