A Word on Words; 2718; Robert Macneil

well once again welcome to world words i guess you recognize that phrase welcome robin you were great idea to talk about breaking news this this new novel you've written your third novel you must be pleased of this measure do you see the new york times book review section relieved well unless they are is not only a compelling some ways spooky accounts of what's happening to the television news and all of this today as we move through more flesh impression little heightened tripe we also is a it also is the story of that creates fictional characters all this country and people trying to second guessing romney would really talking about when that he created grantland raul and the other characters where talk a little bit about the first of all what has happened what is happening even as we

speak to the news as we have known i was a network correspondent and written an acronym for nbc in the sixties those were the days when it was pretty easy to be responsible we're all very full of our roads as the television equivalent of the kind of journalism you were practicing serious journalism and witcher call at very seriously we hope not too seriously but but and i think the public accepted that but there were only three networks ninety percent of the american people because of the great events that were happening in those days tuned into one or other of those programs in the evening now thirty four years later here we are with so many channels you can't count the many dozens of them competing for the attention of american viewers at supper time and all around the clock trying to attract the eyeballs of people who have so many reasons to be distracted who don't have the compelling anxieties of the cold

war period feel i must consume serious news and as a result those same network news programs which used to be the standard are gradually eroding their values because they're in competition with people who are either feeding at the bottom of the trough or who are making the news very entertaining include sous you described and many people because they're more relaxed about it because were in a time i think of indulgence in the nation any way a kind of more relaxed time about the world or maybe we're not watching these shows so the question is as we come to the end of this generation of anchor people and we all know who they are they're all either about to be sixty or into their sixties clearly in a few years is going to be a generational change these guys are trying to hold on to the values and we don't know what's going to happen when the younger donor to generation takes over and my mom tries to symbolize this situation i'm a painting painting a sympathetic portrait of one of these a man who could be

any one of these recommend without being specifically or literally any one of them you know we are having this podcast from the first amendment center it's the first time in twenty years that shows little year our regular viewers will notice that the backdrop is different all the promotion for breaking news would not have been there had been in the studio ha ha let me money and before we go inside a book pressure little further on only an issue of what's happening to our conventional news standards while those three major networks were on near you and jim lehrer were hosting they programmed every night an hour long program that dealt with news in debt throughout the life of that program there were many americans iowa many millions but millions

who went to your program for depth because they felt even the network news as we considered it they're more conventional more traditional was in their minds to superficial now with so much glitz and so much tabloid news finding its way in mainstream news organizations both print electronic there is i think many lives almost disgust at what they see wrong on their on their traditional television screens now there are also other options and it is a more relaxed time but talk a little bit about the changes and substance oh i think thea incidentally the newshour it's still there isn't program i watch every evening and as anders and does a wonderful job and curious enough if you added together the typical

audience i had seven pm eastern time when his first servers goes on the air to give the audience that although for all news channel's get msnbc cnbc fox and cnn you might come out with about half a million viewers on a typical evening on a bad even gym gets five times the number of viewers and sometimes it's as many as seven times a three and a half million people so it shows that a lot of people are willing to invest in our of their lives in a serious program that requires concentration of detention but i think the turning point for me really came within that works when a couple of years ago before j simpson story was running and night after night a couple of those networks those famed old network news department cbs and nbc lead with oj simpson on their nightly news show and in fact what that would say look the american people this is the most

important thing that happened today where the journalist didn't believe that mean they're serious people they know and certainly the public didn't think it was except some small sections of the public who were rabid about and obsessed by the oj simpson story it was a great story but one little tiny change in the situation or a bit of speculation each night didn't constitute the most important strength that they were afraid not to do that because they were afraid that the cable channels that were competing with them who were going oh gee it all the time we're going to suck audience away from them and i think the stark reality one network abc whose show was on top of the ratings at that time did not do it nearly so much they felt confident not to do that i think it's interesting that was really a turning point to me because that was network news with that syria's standards being sucked down into the tabloid world by the bottom feeders and how you how you evaluate the coverage

that follows of the clinton scandal princess di was another is it is it is a new phenomenon in into broadcasting world i think and i really could trace it back to the gulf war and maybe even back to the hostage crisis at the end of the seventies until then most mainstream journalism had not campaigned on one story occasionally get you know it's a local scandal a newspaper would go after day after day after day we know from the early days of tabloid journalism in this country william randolph hearst did on cuba and the spanish american war but in our time and it was very unusual for responsible journalist to go day after day minute after minute hour after hour on one story this is something new it is

virtually since the story broke one of the first things that the thing that opens my book is my anchor man gets up to speak to the radio television news directors association forty years after ed murrow made a comparable speech to the same organization and really blasts them for the way they've been treated he argued he really blast them and dump and you know the tom brokaw and then peter jennings and dan rather are all admirable job are great great great tradition or an aunt and great that they've established great traditions for the network and they are traditional journalists us senator and they are men and everybody is going to wonder is right monroe than a peter o'toole no he's not he's not as he shares a generation with jim and he shares typical

stories that cover crops as maya command grant role has been to vietnam dan rather was there and peter jennings was there for awhile broker wasn't i wasn't maya command is pro is present as a student who gets picked up by a network at the building of the berlin wall when it first dart i happened to be there for nbc and i can use that i hope convincingly as kind of color say now is no i what i like to think that i have a little more sense of irony about myself and i have a lot of unrest but the big question is if you mention all these people who were who were angry with you have mobile journalists and they are trying to hold the line as he is we get a perspective out your perspective to give some suggestions from him i had him being cover and the situation in the businesses that provoked by

his outburst at the beginning of the book the parents lining up and i and the time magazine assigned to write or to do this you get all of the time writers take on he starts out by thinking these guys are empty suits and they're overpaid mannequins and why should anybody pay any attention to them and he's gradually drawn in and more and more impressed by not only in a professional but how smart and interesting grammar always at the same time he has an ability to see a more objective way which grant doesn't the country so you know at it today the fasting part about the story is is the band is that you have created a circle of characters around when they really couldn't run he is a giant he controls as much of the continent that show as is possible you give him a young feisty producer artie tough

minded arun mean spirited and in a constant fight with him to tear down the standards that means so much regret never know martin sure oh sure but even while he's innocent in a way because he's doing what he was hired to do that's his job is job to get ratings that show up and he's doing it in the best profession away he knows because he has the backing off the head of the news department all the rationalizations air rationalization for why they're doing it the way that i did and the head of the news department will say we're doing it this way because the corporate people are now this network is owned by a corporation that has many other and many other constituents are and that network has to play the role of all of the constituents in feeding the bottom line of the corporate and so everybody keeps saying but this is where we have to do it and each state

to have to do it including a member of the board of the corporation there's a guy i kind of like if you need a lawyer has there's been an advisor to presidents and governors and been a diplomat a politician and earn and we will know well and people like that in our time people like clark clifford who just recently died and this is a man who is kind of like grab them over the years and lives in new york and he's been available to him as a kind of mentor and advisor so listen so arun but grant and one of the other themes in the book is that the network is negotiating with and trying to bring in the woman anchor of one of the very successful magazine programme on another network and gavin his agent fear that what they're going to do is bring this magazine run at five nights a week the little hard news on top of it and let the nightly news with her away as the audience as it is and you create a real scandal in her life to make it

more of a more inviting to all of the readers or reverse as treasury ah well there is some cities in the book as a matter of fact the reds old veteran advisor at one point says look i just don't interfere with these matters like you know i could drop a word and the word is yeah i hurt one of my grandchildren stories and i would then order that very end there was a mystery as well as a story about the corruption it ended i think we all we were all frequently park jon and i and others in the business there are frequently part of these seminars that go on endlessly about what we're doing wrong and how we could do it better and i think it's referred to and here is what it comes down to

is ownership i think these days it is it is what are the motives of the people who are different organs in the media now some of them are still owned by family trusts or corporations and they can they want to make money and they want to they want to be they were to fulfill whatever the terms of a trust or others are owned by giant corporations for whom journalism is not the fundamental business there and may have had nothing to do with business there i originally nbc which of course grew up out of rca and was still family owned until fairly recently is now owned by general electric in general electric makes many things besides newspapers and blogs and broadcast journalism and we're in a situation where and i think this is where the heads of corporations whether at the local level or the national level have to ask themselves if they see something that embarrasses them and their wives and their children on television that evening but they own that network what is the hot is the ethical dilemma

work out in their minds today too in the next day and say we can't have that that kind of trash on our network and the other members of the board said well yes but as chairman mr president that's what is good says the rating in that time period and that's what increases the advertising right there and that's what's made this division successful in this quarter an end so who stands up at one point the time magazine guys trying to figure out how to ease as any writer a long piece that's as you reported you're gradually sifting the material as he says sifting the black earth for diamonds looking for metaphors and ways of encompassing story before you began writing it and he's worked on morning he wakes up in his thinking how do i get at the sky he calls the effect was hero the guy who goes through everything that seems untouched by it all who complains about the terrible situation and the way his guardian is going to cover the lewinsky story but nothing changes and he's lying there and

is remembering that are now being interviewed or when his book came out and he was so apologetic about having been so much against the vietnam war and they're an eye for one and i've used that in the year in the book here the time magazine guy remembers it's like when they asked him would you ever consider resigning nobody ever resigned there's nobody nobody resigns how many people in the media today have resigned on a matter of principle because they can't stand what is being done to cite the one in the book and then jerry springer and you know trite as it is set in the book when it emerges as the iraq up and whatever happened right should in your job though another job about her career change here well right well it's funny it's the externally appears to be a solid sick you

so confident unshakable but he is barely torn internally by this challenge to him and his own network is leaking information that may be first of all a young bill donovan the start our white house correspondent you maybe be that he may be the next in line and grant maybe you made them a bear retirement just around on air then this young woman emerges only and the network begins in a ghost would negotiate with her dog and he has badly shaken other disease you find his agent is not only his agent are many years but is also the agent for the young guys only discovered for the younger replace the profile political agent and the job of sinister characters are they aren't immediate pigeons legend fresh without the plans for iraq agents play a major role in this industry when

barbara walters became the first person on national television used to be paid a million dollars a year when she went to abc as the thing it was because an agent said to a network but clear this woman is bringing as many viewers do you all those stars in your primetime sitcoms she's worth as much as they are on a million dollars into a little nowadays many the characters in my book grabbed rowe has paid six million dollars a year and they're trying to get more and they're and the woman they're wondering is getting eight million dollars a year on the magazine and they talk about fourteen so that they can get a man and the agents are very much involved for instance when dan rather replaced walter cronkite on cbs there was a heavy involvement by various agents there and we've seen the same thing in the end maneuvers for other well known stars that they say well you know abcs after dan rather and that only counts by ken

auletta and others of that change over which made cronkite very unhappy and i'm saying nothing negative about them rather he was well qualified and prominent guy but we're partly as a result of cbs is fear guided by the agent that they were going to lose them rather do abc and of course the agents can play the press and leave things to gossip columnists and build up the suspense and it is widely assumed in the young and the written accounts of some more historical considered accounts of that significant change at cbs that agents have a great deal to do with it yeah now that they were lying exactly i don't mean that they were lying or not telling truth but they were playing they were playing field of these guys a license to your agent to live here and at it i'm very happy that the that the only program we've ever done outside of the dc and tv three years was your first moments and with this book with a freer press is part of what the first

moments about and this is the first listener and a free press and its rights and responsibilities at play in this book in the most fascinating way now there's an irony that i found and i know you wrote it this way but it it that but you don't be delivered here is the time writer committed to conventional journalist dedicated to find out well and right is really is good news he says he is does he really think there's one that he had the guts to stand up against against the wind and he's deep into the store and suddenly the young woman who is on the horizon becomes the big media story as she takes an interview that right flatly is not interested in and his network's only wants and the timeline is awakened in the morning

and use tow truck grant and go for her crash on mr miller right not grant and we're going to do it next week and so you got to forget this in that story and go full of life and drive here and then he does work and he does the desert every journalist doesn't in the situation ok and that and they have a i think quite a professional conversation there to the editors of what i need to do this but i what i don't want to be caught up with the news about this big star and you've got and we've got a profile has been an irreversible is now has been a very well and he symbolizes all these sort of bewildered die at the center of all this and the other guys is a guy i know and he says or maybe you were somebody autism and other ways to

ensure a little bit about it you know the other the other they're interesting aspect of it is you put it on an airplane and there is a young fly to democrat and he remembers when i used to go through this right by young deborah is just all over again once im all over her as it is about his ensemble proposition eight in television news anchor i'm sure you have many of those just in that way i was convinced when he resisted the temptation that he was a superman that he was true blue and then you broke my heart you haven't confessed to win over his wife are in a very moving and i think that's the other great value of the book i didn't feel manipulated at any moment i was caught up in the story very long story and that confession came out thought oh all right so that not only you know you lose jobs bill is a wife

and i don't tell you when he lost his job with the audience that the book and find out but that would win over the very strong character issues <unk> her pee pee these pieces apart in their deliberately because when i said i wanted to do something that i wanted to do you think two things i want to do it to get let people inside the lives of these people and and you know they look all powerful is gonna make sixteen bucks a year he's cobb snobs the presidency to call up anybody and get them on the phone in interview anybody he wants to he can when he sees in his travels a library in a house that belongs to rigid but seaney the italian writer and roma he loves that the library that is created and so they can afford it he gets an architect ago there get permission from our sunni copies the library has the library installed in his apartment which probably cost more many americans would pay on their home and he knows that he knows that his father who was a

high school english teacher as probably in his entire life because he died fairly young or maybe two hundred thousand dollars in total and he's deeply ashamed that he's earning so much money because it's a shame what his father would be thinking about a fortune by his father for his father does now but i wanted to bring to demonstrate these apparently all powerful people to whom looked like movie stars to people like this young flight attendant if you know right from the beginning the book everywhere he goes he is deferred to every restaurant he goes through no matter who is with they give this oh yes mr monroe it's so nice to see you and we give you a better table i am every year there's a scene at the arab spring dow of the new york city ballet and he goes through the crowd you know all kinds of henry kissinger kitty carlisle hart gives him a kiss on the cheek it's that kind of an understandable but this idea that everywhere you go the cold waters open before him yet he's heavily the model really

is odd anomaly a little fashion of challenges coming just did moses that's right liane the earthy and antecedents to signal the vulnerability he has many hobbies this guy he's a sailor and he has a fine bow to my house in maine he also has a vineyard in california that is run by no no