A Word on Words; 0868a; Fred Graham

it's been a word on we're delving into the world of books and their authors tonight fred graham talks about happy talk heroes for word on words mr johnson on the one publisher of the tennessean an editorial director of usa today leading ladies and then once again was singing its own would regular pleasure i'm going to you know criminal colleague man who is one of the best tv journalists and that's just not my opinion those who live in washington when he was covering the supreme court has said so then fred graham he's written down a new book called happy talk the confessions of the tv newsman

welcome fred grand jury awards last night a job we do go back a long way to go on are more i first came in the national tennessean huge room with just a few years apart but you are already a hardened veteran no longer it's been below mr mark hill i that i really sort of i envied new things you've done in your career because it has saved me that from that beginning in that same newsroom where we were surrounded by race and great talents including your own but halberstam and tom wicker in wallace was twelve so many others so many of the throng that point you hand many others went to the national journalism in a very real sense usually york times and cbs the times where you covered dirt sprinkled in a state's

cbs we've covered the whole have witnessed racial injustice i'd like to begin this interview with with a discussion of love that part of your career it really focused on your your time in washington isn't as national correspondent overseas maybe that it was a hit list and then i had a whole life and when i think about journalists nev influence it strikes me that a journalist assigned the car ministry said just jot a journalist who's that close to the ultimate seed of power and some would say wisdom of the national government it really has more responsibility more challenge more opportunity and journalist at almost any other low i can lincoln ne owes more than that it over and over again in my career there covering the legal scene in washington because i am a lawyer i would find myself let's

say at the nixon tapes trial or at the argument of the roe versus wade before the supreme court our core of the trial of john hinckley and i was say to myself all over again shave they were paying me to do lewis i wanna be your duty free but they will decide an answer you had this this great opportunity to do things that didn't cover a substance that interested in you know jon the league will be in washington to me is the most substantive of all the beats you covered the the white house recovered the year state department whatever and you're covering process to larger your personality but the legal be protective is a supreme court you can get your teeth into that the substance of american life and those who was injured there many aspects of of happy talk a lot talk with you about all this week

and four years for it will be talking next week about his book as well this week we focus on the national scene that place where you were operating in that seat that as you say the most interesting will be its current administration justice the next week will bring you back to our home town of nashville where he returned as a as an anchor major the transition that many of your colleagues in washington won a mate for worldwide debate before you did it make enough and that probably maybe an artist that's not right but i think with an interesting two weeks in a woman by the arm our a regular viewers in our occasional use to listen and i think that we'll be talking about something that has a tremendous impact on our lives television how it works how it works internally that

the terribly yeah challenging opportunity that you have but also that aspect of it that put you on thin ice almost constantly because so much depends on a sexual person on the other side of the camera and then so much more depends on television executives and their perception and the camera of what the perception is only other side why with decades of when you came from the new york times which a and you know let's admit it is some of the year you're trained and some of the stuff here riding in american journalism and suddenly you're thrust upon cbs news pretty gogo seen and you're supposed to have to make it sexy and make a lively and i must say my good quick thing happening or ces i got off to a bad start because they had me right off the new york times come on cbs news and the first day i arrived there was this good looking young blonde was her first day and i was lesley stahl leslie had just come from

an uncle story on a local a local station in boston and she had learned that the chemical can be sexy way of delivering the news we were standing here from the first day and this man comes well meaning and screen and leslie nice cream and wesley leslie you smiley smile well you know no one had ever run into the new york times used the imf and defended stanley was not disallowed city deedee but that no one noticed everybody went on about what i would do it so was clear to me that people screamed and tv newsrooms all the time an hour later that they do because serve that i think bass they feel that they're all is to cover chaos and so they just create little from time to time just keeping practice and what happened was she had done a standup where she stands and looks at the camera and she had given at the little smile here and there well in those days at cbs are supposed to to do your standup with proper salinity and he marched are out to do with it at first timer only time i ever saw lesley stahl couch i was

so traumatized by that experience but for the next six or seven years i could look in a camera and say a thing without looking like i just eat the pickle what happened was that cbs then went and infotainment and they were interested to jazz it up with some fancy movie as an attack ad are done well you know that's that's a great deal or what this book is about the confessions of tv newsman those confessions including grave concerns about this direction that television news has taken is taking at the national level at the local now if i am look at what you did throughout your career seems to me that that you found yourself almost constantly a part of the scene but i'll like a print reporter stan if i can go and communicate what's going on you then become

almost as much a celebrity as the people you cover you know with what i asked i figured out why this was because i noticed shortly after i started on television and people started people who would come up to me say in airports and restaurants and so i recognize you fred graham allison lowe and i realize what they were doing was it but to a lot of people in this country their window to the greater world outside just a little narrow neighborhood is tv that box and they see some of the major people figures of our time the president and others but on that same box in the same size their eye and some of them there seem to feel that in some way they could connect to this greater world outside their narrow environment by somehow connecting with me and people came up all the time and did that and i understood it and it didn't bother me and i thought it was an intriguing and pleasant the other side

of it of course is that you are rubbing shoulders with newsmakers with power brokers with our figures with salaries your relationship for example of millions of record justin for justice brennan so with whom you had a happy and said this relationship just as barker mexico lays out friday and with him and was met by which might just talk about those abilities may give insights into the role of course the supreme court is simply different from any other beat in washington in bad shape it's almost like a priesthood it's very insular and to prepare the priests the justices may do conceal themselves behind the facade old formalities in legalities and they try to keep us at arm's length and they some of them just as chief justice burger chief justice rehnquist rehnquist feels the same way feel that it's almost

subversive for us to try to find out anything person match like a basic what that source which we think course is a legitimate journalistic matter inquiry and yet what i found was that i had different personal relationships with different justices the one thing about the justices that was different than anyone else that i've dealt with in washington create always cinematic cultural shock because were so unusual was they never tried to put their spin on the story in private conversations every politician and watch and suddenly doing that i never heard a justice do that they didn't leak stories but they would some of them give it a little guidance for background potter stewart did that with me i had a very thin still do have a good relationship with harry blackmun lewis powell all i had this interesting relationship or just keep justice berger who really can i hated all journalist delegate by it was assad think john because

i was a lawyer he used to say to me those reporters that have popped up and i think that there was a reporter of didn't seem to rub off because you know lawyers seem to think that if you're another lawyer you're a complete human being and that so are qualified but identify with him although we feuded over the years but after each feud it was over and we were from what i i have a bring up that because they've made it for many people who so you write a report about them think of their own view of the court play a tango also the temple and of the justices as priests and i even even garden robes an unassailable approachable you it seems to me you're able because you were lawyer and a direct and more perhaps than most as easily add more and more

journalists including tv journalist who penetrated mails conte are the lawyers have some legal background well more and more of the reporters now who cover the supreme court are in fact lawyers asked not unusual it was that was very unusual and i think it's a it's a it's the beneficial development the other the other dimension of the national story that you tell as to do the inner workings of television and that drift which has become almost a flood now put into paying infotainment and i'm sure of entertainment and information allegedly it's a world that may be because of the contracts the term contracts that you will require the sun that seems to me to be more of this may be unfair it accommodative more of charged with political

electricity and only corporate political amnesty then say the newspaper world you know it's not the result of those contracts john i think it's the it's the it's the emergence of the almost god like anchorman are all you know the these days you can't have a hat an international develop of the berlin wall to come down without tom brokaw being there and you know and you can't have proved gorbachev can't turn the government over into a multi party system without dan rather presiding over that these people had enormous power it cause problems and cvs because dan rather very unlike walter walter cronkite was one of us he was a journalist and he never attempted to get out of that mold but because of all these dilemmas band became in some sense a sort of a almost adjunct part of management and in some way no me that the jar he says but

he was very close to management had met her karate and it caused some problems because it fun it used to be that ultimately if there was a problem at cbs the ultimate appeal was to uncle walter and you really pick up the follies or walter dean what they're doing it's not writing well and he'd but the problem was that ban was was almost part of the problem because of his closeness to there and it was not as easy to do that and he had his own different considerations and that the whole thing has become too are well let me just say with regard to your friend pamela at the reading your book i really don't like an alum there are some reviewers who've been a sacred graham engaged in rather bash and i don't think any of our views read that book will conclude that your unfair to buzzer to help yeah i really don't think i have anything it is an understatement of a power evolving political odds a

gentlemen no off about him but he comes across as a result of his own statement to me as duplessis and all the line and i had made that may have you may owe on a rushed to his defense but that's what i get from an ottawa go beyond that except in iowa last fall reading for arm for our viewers hear your letter read out i love fidelity let's leave some of that for them from themselves but let me just say this that i say in the book and it's in my judgment fact that dan has changed since he left washington where he was eight cracked report and he seemed so comfortable in that role as reporter we went to washington and became the million dollar man we learned later it was three and a half million dollars a year not not just wanted to arm bands seem to be trying to create a

more sophisticated persona for himself that was not really him and my sense was and i write this that he was posing an acting to a certain extent and that this is caused uneasiness in his own mad about really is and where his values are and what he stands for and i don't think that they have that day and is at the track as contract eve a persona as he was when he was being more what i consider itself i can remember being part of those great roundtable said fred friendly used to put on an answer a hypothetical that open and then was the ioc across the table and some of those his values i thought those days were identical with mine even though he was at the time saying early at the anchor desk thought i would have to now would have to have to agree with you and he is in his intrusion

into action so the bureaucratic politics really offends me as a journalist in the one thing it strikes me about those of us who do what we do is that there has been a commonality of interest then an appreciation of professionalism whatever in the industry does it was gonna do about emphasizing features over hard news in print are our tv and then we have our own movement toward infotainment but it's not nearly as pronounced just as thelma it's interesting what happened here because when dan first took over in the anchor seat from walter cronkite the ratings no state and he was very unhappy about that and cbs was really happy and so they brought in new management to jazz it up and make what and what they call late they interviews to turn out and vote came we were told last what we're going to do and the ratings came back up and and he became

again the top rated network newsman as walter cronkite i've been over a period of years that seemed to go sour with the public and in the mid nineteen eighties bands ratings started to slip again and you slipped off the pinnacle and i have to say that he's i think he was uncomfortable with it all the time although he benefited from and we saw that happen he in fact himself started pushing for a harder news product they got rid of these executives who had done that actually then gotten taller and allen and enjoy it and enjoy this ride and i think that they're the cbs news operation is harder than it used to be but but in the meantime they destroyed in this a certain extent the finest television news organization the world used to be absolutely the top i think now they're all about signed some people think abc is better and the idea was the finest in it and in addition to being fun it also carry on the legacy of morrow

which witch maybe that's been overstated but i think in an awful lot for them if we're going to the people who are there isn't and i tell him that in my book about how when abc approached me in the middle of my career at cbs and they offered me so much more money that i was making and they offered me opportunities that i would never have it cbs because we had so many good people and i've turned them down because i will it'd be in the indie the news operation where the high standards and television and with the best people and all that well ironically a few years later i found they've destroyed those traditions and they deviate from those standards and we fail those of us who came to cbs to be journalists felt betrayed talk about it in a little more detail talk about that sense of the trail it felt in specific terms what was it that seemed to take hold of those who were producing a quality

product which the news which always knew this and and twisted well as i say the ratings were down and they went down at a time when generally speaking all three networks were starting to get into a financial squeeze and john when i went with cbs in nineteen seventy two and all anyone i was going and turn on a tv set and ninety three percent of those sets were gonna be on either abc nbc or cbs today sixty seven percent that's because of the competition of which we all know kate taylor well that process was just starting their revenues were shrinking and cbs had slipped from the top so there were basically two things they told us to do and cbs one was to inject what they called magic moments into tv stories we were to look for lovable children in the cute animals

people with tears in their eyes and put as many of those as we could in the stories we were also to make it move fast it would make a tv network ard producer for a while to see the problem that you and iraq now with just these two towering they said they wanted to see pictures and so it had to be stories that could be chopped into our quick change is what happened it is that a story would come up that didn't lend itself to prophetic moments or to a law picture changed and they say hey forget it and so what was happening was that we were changing the definition of what's a new story to try and put out these infotainment type stories and to get warren burger patty of end up with a fix a deficit problem with it was that nobody at the network really knew what would make

people watch news stories what was entertaining foreman so for a while and they we went through the same way four there was a period there where we were out trying to do all the stories about the fannie farmer we could and then for a while we were doing stories about little children as i said in a name when it sings and it was a kind of vertigo and we were off balance books we didn't really know what wesley warren well done you decided the family and to come home the intersection of events was helpful to you to make in making that decision strained very well run out a cvs even know what the band was so probably a poem that strain found the opportunity in nashville was great and so you took it and next week we'll be talking about that in the inland five minutes we have

left i think the interesting to talk about your future and the present because it ties to me it seemed to tasso directly to their career for which you were trained and it touches on the administration of justice and i think that though that you'll be much happier in that afterlife the new venue maybe you thought you would be when you were local well you know things working in strange ways and sometimes they work out an unexpected ways and this may be happening and i'm not going there but this was happening is that as the network stopped really covering legal news in the way it used to entrap was jasmine and then i'll laugh now what's happening is that there will be a twenty four hour a day cable channel that will show trials and i will be in charge of the program in and the

main anchor time warner his book is doing this in a joint venture with a group called the american lawyer publications was a legal group and time warner and there's going to be a cable channel and analysis would be in charge of the continent and we were going to try as real trials around the country and by using techniques of explanation of a television techniques really make it more understandable and more interesting to the viewers if they were sitting there in court it says it's really what i was trying to do and i think it's gonna really raised to a very helpful well for what top television legal journalism used to be and what is going to be now from how well the administration just have that in a criminal trials have been wealthy are just like so than before and it seems to me that the that god knows when it's also a very real sense the media

and entertainment baby unfold a little thought moulin and that's one of my that's going to be a challenge to me but now i'm going to be at your right and i'm going to have to decide how you know how close we gonna get to the line of of just to be in prison for the superficial here and pandering to go to the excitement do that we can deliver and i'm looking for that but i think you'd be some close mo said to do this you really have to get inside the court room a camera and manet made states and many jurisdictions that possible it's still not possible and sprinkling eyes tight and you know there are no witnesses to be intimidated by cammie witnesses ever are there are no juries to be exposed to a camera with that is a problem and neither of those is approximate the deaths of nine justices sitting there listening to console years old job as a scandal and i write about in my blood know you do i think the reason is they're that the justices are afraid of their own dignity will be lawful and that the fact that

some of them are getting a little too all perhaps is to be on the bench some of maybe ours as quick on the trigger as they'd like but typically they aren't in other reasons of their own that it and to me that the justices would prevent the public from being educated about the lawn the constitution to preserve their own vanity is a scandal you think the scandal is that the that the camera is not in the supreme court though there's this no arguable reason as you just said for not to be and how long before that wall comes tumbling down well you better believe that our new channel that they have really nineteen forty a reason to call the trial channel we are certainly going to be going to the chief justice and the other federal judges and making the case that we should be permitted to show not just the supreme court but the courts of appeals in the federal trial most lawyers in the country would support that one initially but if they look at the states where it's being done no father hasn't

caused any hole and then i think the law and order be on television and the judges would be on top of that would've been most of the courts in ten years and the supreme court in the supreme court and in this oh yes oh well before ten years would i need that happened the dal well is it your view that the justices ultimately then will unanimously fred graham author of happy talk that are gassed on a word on words featuring john second thought of this program was produced in the studios of the bbc in television nashville tennessee