In Black America; News Anchor Tony Cox and ABC News Correspondent Kenneth Walker

I'm sorry... In the tough world of television news, you will find very few blackmail anchors. I am John Hanson, join me this week on in Black America. And when I'm in that seat, and I'm on the air, there are certain things that I can communicate that aren't written. Okay, that aren't on script, I can communicate them by an expression. Television news anchor, Tony Cox, this week on in Black America. This is In Black America, Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society. People in television are a lot different than people in radio.

Well, in radio, you do everything basically yourself. You collect your own tape, edit your own tape, write your own story, and that's it. You put it on the air. In television, you have to have somebody else shoot the pictures for you. Somebody else, collect the sound for you. Somebody else, edit the pictures that you want, edit it. Somebody else to tell you where in the show is going to go. Somebody else to tell you how they wanted to look. So by the time a television story gets on the air, you know, ten people have had their hands on it. And you can't always control what these other people are doing. In fact, very rarely can you control it. So it's a committee effort and that makes television a lot more cumbersome as you have to get other people to cooperate with you to get the job done. Tony Cox News Anchor with KTTV Television in Los Angeles. Each weeknight at 7 and 11, Tony Cox presents the top news stories of the day

to over 2 million viewers in Southern California. As an anchor of an evening newscast in a major television market, Mr. Cox belongs to a very select group. Today in the land of television news, there are not that many black male anchors. When any on-air talent moves into the prestigious Anchor Chair, here she can usually look forward to a large viewing audience and a salary to match and a lot of exposure. Yet, many blacks in the industry feel that too few blacks are giving a chance to serve as weekday or night anchors. I'm John Hanson. This week, ABC News Correspondent Kenneth Walker and Fox Television News Anchor, Tony Cox in Black America. I think that they are for the most part serious and try to be credible. I think what happens particularly to the young black ones when they get here

and if they're from a smaller market, if they're from some small place in the Midwest or in the south, they're overwhelmed by all of this attention that they get. They come to town and people want them to speak and they want them to MC programs and they have a chance to be in the movies as a television person. You can forget that you're not as important as you think here. I mean, it's easy to happen here and a lot of young black people that happens too, I think. In the tough world of television news, you will find very few black male anchors. In fact, the number of blacks broadcasting the new isn't increasing. The numbers are decreasing. A lot of community pressure and federal pressure to hire blacks is off, and few attempts are being made to find qualified black persons. One black man who has worked hard to make it to the top of the profession is Tony Cox, an increment with KTTV television in Los Angeles.

When he first entered the business, Mr. Cox not only had to work harder because he was a black male, he also had to make some sacrifices. Mr. Cox was born and raised in Los Angeles. He has a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in theater arts from UCLA. He began his broadcasting career back in 1969 and an all-new station in Los Angeles. Seven years ago, he began working for KTTV television as a talk show host. I needed a job, basically, and I was a junior in college and I went to the employment office on campus, and I answered a ad for a student worker at an all-news radio station. That was in 1969, and I started working there, and I started liking it, and I ended up working at that station for 13 years. And what was your first job at that station? First job, as I said, as a student worker, and a student worker's job is to, you know, answer the phone.

Go for basic, go for the thing, answer the phone, make coffee, tear, clean the wire machines, and also at that station, student workers were allowed to write some stories, fire stories, you know, small stuff. You're currently at the Fox affiliate here in Los Angeles, KTTV television. How did you happen to become an anchor at that affiliate? Well, it's kind of a long story, but to make it short, about six years ago, seven years ago, I got interested in doing television while I was still working at the radio station, and I started. My first television job was at KTTV, which was owned by Metro Media at that time. I was a talk show host for a couple of years while I was working at the radio station also, and then I left there and I went to another station to work as a television reporter, and then when that contract was up, the offer came to work at KTTV as a weekend anchor and reporter.

So that's when I went over there a couple of years ago. And then about six months ago, one of the primary anchors left, and I took his place. Was it that much difference making the transition from radio to television? Yeah, it is. It's quite a transition, not so much from the standpoint of the work, but from the standpoint of the people. People in television are a lot different than people in radio. And examples. Well, in radio, you do everything basically yourself. You collect your own tape, edit your own tape, write your own story, and that's it. You put it on the air. In television, you had to have somebody else shoot the pictures for you, somebody else collect the sound for you, somebody else edit the pictures that you want, edit it. Somebody else to tell you where in the show is going to go, somebody else to tell you how they wanted to look. So by the time a television story gets on the air, you know, ten people have had their hands on it.

And you can't always control what these other people are doing. In fact, very rarely can you control it. So it's a committee effort, and that makes television a lot more cumbersome because you have to get other people to cooperate with you to get the job done. What is it like working out here in Los Angeles, Hollywood, being a black journalist and being a black news personality? Is it difficult to do the two, or is it more show than business, or how do you perceive it? Well, Hollywood is not like other parts of the country. Anybody that's on television here on a daily basis is given a certain status. That would be the way to say it. And you're recognized, you know, in the streets and people, if they like you, of course, they, they, a very, what's the word I want to use? They, not respectful, but they kind of look up, they look up to you. The difficult part is separating what's real from what's not real on camera. You see what I'm saying?

Of course, we're in Hollywood, but the news is not Hollywood, the news is real. And sometimes it gets real difficult to separate that because the techniques that Hollywood uses, you know, the news tries to use also. And it gets to be really messy sometimes. Have you found that the young black journalists coming into Los Angeles, bitten by Hollywood, are they serious journalists, particularly black journalists, trying to be credible and doing a good job? I think that they are, for the most part, serious and trying to be credible. I think what happens, particularly to the young black ones when they get here, and if they're from a smaller market, if they're from some small place in the Midwest or in the South, they're overwhelmed by all of this attention that they get. They come to town and people want them to speak and they want them to MC programs and they, you know, they have a chance to be in the movies, you know, as a television person.

You can forget that you're not as important as you think here. I mean, it's easy to happen here. And a lot of young black people, that happens too, I think. I'm in the country and I'm quite sure you're aware of it, particularly black male journalists doing on-air anchor are slim and none. Your particular perception of some of the problems for why that is. And you're one of the fortunate few who's able to be on television in a major market to hold their own. Our news directors, organizations, still reluctant to hire black males. There are a lot of female anchors, but black male on-air on a weekly basis is fueling in between. Yeah, there are few. You know, that's a real puzzle to me. Why they don't want to. You know, the obvious reason is that they don't want to and that they don't think that they would rather not have us there.

Why I'm not clear. You can't say it's because we can't do the job. You can't say it's because other people won't watch black anchors because that's not true either. What I think it is, you know, is that that's a powerful seat. And when I'm in that seat and I'm on the air, there are certain things that I can communicate that aren't written. Okay, that aren't on script. I can communicate them by an expression. I can communicate them by all sorts of things. Physical movement. I'll give you a good example. Last Sunday, we were on the air. We were talking about, you know, I have a white co-anchor and one of the music critics is white. They were talking about Bob Dylan. Oh, Bob Dylan's great. Bob Dylan's great. He's just the greatest, you know, don't you like Bob Dylan? Aren't you a Bob Dylan fan? And so they turned to me and said this.

Now, you know, lack of role in stone was a great song, you know, but I don't have any Bob Dylan records. On the air, I said, he's all right. Right, which is natural, which is natural. But like, you know, I crush one of the great white gods almost. You understand what I'm saying? So that's kind of an example of how different we are. And if you begin to have black people on the air and dominant roles, we begin to tip the scales a little bit so that other things are put forth for people to consider. And I think that in the grand scheme of things, people who are in charge of stations want to reach a certain group of people that they cater to. And those people don't want to hear that. That's what I think. Do you have any input or limited control of what particular news cast would be? Some stories that you made them important that the director or assignment editor may not necessarily think is important on that particular day. You have those battles on a daily basis. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

The problem is one person, even an anchor, can't do it alone. For me to have a story that I want on the air a certain way, then I need to have a writer who can understand what I'm talking about. I need to have a videotape editor who understands what I'm talking about, a producer who is sensitive to what I'm talking about. Because these are the people who will physically put that story together. And if we aren't able to communicate then, how am I going to get what I want unless I do it myself and I can't do it? I can't do everybody's job. So it's very hard to sit up there and demand that a story be done a certain way when you're not able to do it. The only thing you can do is you can make sure sometimes that stories that have been done the wrong way don't get on the air. And there have been instances where stories on a show that I anchor. I co-anchor a show early in the evening and I solo anchor another show later at night. And on that show I have more say so about what goes on.

And if I see something that I know is wrong or that offends me in a way that I know would offend a great majority of other people who are like me, then I'll have it killed. I have and I will continue to do that. That causes other problems though. Because you know who's in charge. And I'm not in charge. Anchors are not in charge. Managing editors, news directors, station managers, station owners, they are in charge. To those who's listening to this program, there's a lot of news that's been coming out Los Angeles in the last weeks and months. And particularly the gang problem in Los Angeles. Of all the stories we read and hear or see from the majority, white news media, an accurate portrayal of what's happening as far as gang activities in Los Angeles. Yeah. Yeah. The problem is they're not complete but they are accurate in the part that they tell. The gang problem is a major, major, major problem for particularly minorities.

Particularly young blacks, young black males, 12, 13, 14 years old. You're forced into a situation where sometimes you have to be in a gang just for your own protection. These guys kill. They rob. They steal. They kill. They shoot. They have no regard for life for their own or for others. And there's just no doubt about it. They are well organized. What you don't hear by the media is who organizes these gangs. You see, the gangs have now moved into. They have the primary drug dealers. Now, these guys, you can see them because they all drive the same kind of car. They wear the same kind of clothes, the same kind of clothes. They got gold, big, big rope gold. They have telephones in their cars. They got beapers. I mean, you can spot them. You can spot them. And they got a pocket full of money. And they don't care because they're making money.

Now, the stories that you hear about them on the year are fairly superficial. I'm occasionally you get someone that'll infiltrate a gang, but not really in terms of what the root and cause problems of the gangs are. That you don't see too much. How has Mayor Bradley ran the city of Los Angeles? Is he well respected among black citizenry out here? I would think so. I think Tom Bradley has, he has been mayor for four terms. And he's running for a fifth term. The first black mayor the city has ever had. And under his tutelage, you would say a lot of young people, black and other ethnic groups, have had an opportunity to experience things that under the previous administration to him, there was no way in hell that that would ever have happened. I think that as with any elected official, after time, things began to change. And he's been in a long time. And they say, familiarly, everybody breeds contempt.

And I think that there is a certain level of that. And I'm not sure that it's reflective of people saying, well, Tom Bradley didn't do a good job. I think it's reflective of the fact that, you know, how long should a person be in office? And the same spirit that got him into office doesn't exist now. You know what I'm saying? It was 1969 when he first ran for office. I mean, that was in the height of the black consciousness movement when people were trying to do things. And now, people don't so much care if you're a black mayor or a white mayor if you can answer what their particular needs are. That's what I think. Tony Cox News Anchor with KT TV Television, Los Angeles. Make it in the world of Network News Correspondent is a task that ABC News Kenneth Walker has mastered. He is the White House correspondent along with Sam Donaldson for ABC News.

Mr. Walker has also provided reports from South Africa with the ABC News Program Nightline. I recently spoke with Mr. Walker about his career. I didn't choose journalism when I was coming out of high school in the mid-60s at the height of many of the riots and I had won some writing contest in high school. My counselor suggested that I visit one of the newspapers in town to try to get a scholarship. I did. And the publisher said a very interesting thing to me. He said that the riots had forced the publishers of the newspapers to re-evaluate their commitment to the community. They had decided to increase their investment in the community. He gave me a scholarship and a job. And that's how I got into journalism. It was different in going in with television, certainly with Nightline, because you go in with a whole entourage. A lot of color blue.

And you're not as, you cannot be as inconspicuous as you can for a newspaper going in one individual. You can put your notepad and your pencil in your pocket and move around pretty freely. So that was different, but it was still with a sense of excitement because the issue had become more urgent both in the United States and internationally. So the time was right for Nightline to go there. While at the Washington Star, my series that I wrote may have been read by a half a million people, nine or ten million people, saw Nightline. And I think that for people who were just beginning to focus on South African, that the weak Nightline spent there, was a very good primer for the issue, what the controversies were, who some of the major personalities are, and the details of a party. I think that it was very instructive for a lot of people as South African became a critical issue in this country.

Is it a concern of yours, the American policy towards dealing with South Africa? Well, I suppose I have to limit myself to professional judgments. And certainly I see and am bewildered by contradictions in the U.S. policy, U.S. government policy towards South Africa. However, I am heartened by what I think is a very clear understanding among Americans generally, the people, about what's going on there and what the U.S. rolled out to be. This conference is the eleventh annual, what do you foresee of the strengths and weaknesses of Black Journalists across the country? Well, the primary weakness is still racism, and that is to say how Black Journalists deal with that may be a primary strength. And that is that we're constantly being tested by fire in order to survive and certainly thrive in this business.

You have to find creative ways to deal with very traditional old obstacles, mainly based in race. So I think that our resilience, our determination may be our biggest strength, and the weaknesses may be still the barriers that we face. I think that Black Journalists need to the extent that they can to diversify for a number of reasons, not only because they become more expert in different areas, whether they be broadcasts, different kinds of different kinds of broadcasts, but because when all of our eggs are in one basket, when we work exclusively for one individual organization, if that organization or individual happen to be white, we sometimes can get, we receive relatively little positive feedback, so we consequently discount or devalue our self-image professionally and personally.

So diversification in addition to making us more well-rounded professionally also gives us a more balanced perspective of how we fit in the world and what our real talents are, so that we don't come so much to rely upon, in many cases, the biased judgment of one white supervisor. One of your other assignments is also covering the White House. Could you give us a behind-the-scenes look at covering the White House and the President? Well, I have covered the White House in print and now for ABC, and it's very different now than it used to be. This White House, the Reagan White House, is perhaps the most expert at controlling the news, putting their particular spin on the coverage. So I think that in many ways, this administration has not had the kind of critical examination that other administrations have had to contend with, and that's a problem.

On the network level are minority journalists considering the same vein as the majority journalists in your opinion? Well, the networks don't operate in a vacuum. They are American institutions, among the most segregated of American institutions. And it should not be expected that minorities should fare any better at American networks than they do at other American institutions. Ken, are you comfortable or satisfied with the assignments? Well, one is never truly or at least completely satisfied with what one does and what always does. What you enjoy covering the majority of the assignments that you receive.

It has been my personal fortune to be able to get most of the assignments that I want to do at ABC. Do you enjoy the travel involved in your work? Oh, no, absolutely not. The travel is excessive. Sometimes I guess before going to the White House, back during the last presidential campaign when I covered Reverend Jackson's campaign, I'd have to look at hotel matches to figure out what city I was in. And so the travel disrupts your life, disrupts yourself in terms of your biological clock and all that. And you need to, it takes a tremendous adjustment to be able to deal with it and frankly I do far more than I care to do. You worked in both mediums, print and now in broadcast. Is there a difference in the two medium in writing for the two mediums? Well, for sure, although there should not be as much difference as there is.

In broadcasting, obviously, you have to write for the ear. People are listening to you. And in print, I think you also ought to write for the ear, but many print reporters don't. Because when people read, in my view, they read to their ears. And whether or not something is written conversationally makes a big difference in how they are able to digest the information. But yes, you have to write to pictures. You have to consider pictures, whereas you don't print. Television was a lot more collaborative. In print, you can take your pad and pencil and go off by your lonesome and report your story and publish it. Well, in television, you need five, six other people just to move around.

So that poses an additional challenge. But the essential responsibility anyway is the same. And that is to find out what's going on and to report it in an intelligible fashion. There's a lot of young journalists attending this year's conference as in years past. Any advice for those listening to this program about climbing that ladder, dealing with some of the racist attitudes in the newsroom? Well, I have two observations about that. The first one is that I think that many young people, Black and White, entering the business, really are not so much interested in journalists. Many of them just simply want to be in show business. I think that more particularly for Black correspondents, that it is extremely important that Black journalists take away the issue of competence from their potential adversaries. It is vital that Black journalists be able to perform and defend their performance, if need be.

And because they'll face all too many problems, because of racism, and if they can protect themselves by their competence, they can deal with the rest of it. Any aspirations on moving into news management? I prefer a news ownership, actually. ABC News Correspondent, Kenneth Walker. If you have a comment or would like to purchase a cassette capitalist program, write us. The address is in Black America, Longhorn, Radio Network, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 787, 12. For in Black America's technical producer, Cliff Hargrove, I'm John Hill Hansen, Jr. Please join us next week. You've been listening to In Black America, Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society. In Black America is produced and distributed by the Center for Telecommunication Services at UT Austin, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin or this station.

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