The New Walter Cronkite
The rampant civility of the
presidential and vice-presidential debates is enough to make me wanna give
somebody a mouthful of bloody Chiclets. That somebody is debate moderator Jim
Lehrer.
I know my anger is
misplaced. That the debates sputtered rather than sizzled wasn't Lehrer's
fault. He may have pitched softballs, but that's what the ground rules of the
occasion required. And Lehrer can't be blamed for the fact that Dole and
Clinton satisfied themselves by slapping singles when they could have swung for
the fences.
Still, my
irritation is not entirely misplaced. The Dole and Clinton campaigns, having
blessedly dumped the usual panel of preening journalists, selected Lehrer as
sole moderator for a reason. He has become our national icon of broadcasting
probity, and they knew that he would bring the sort of solemnity to the
occasion that would minimize the risk of things getting interesting.
There's a kind of dignity in Lehrer's plodding reluctance
to opine, in his hangdog humility, in his desire to serve as moderator rather
than interrogator. There's also a reward. From his role as the sole moderator
in all three presidential and vice-presidential debates, it is suddenly clear
that we finally have a successor to Walter Cronkite in the semiofficial role of
America's first TV father. Lehrer (age 62) obliquely acknowledged this
milestone when he won the debate assignment. "I see my selection as a tribute
to our NewsHour way of doing things," he said.
Cronkite
retired almost two decades ago, but the chair has remained empty until now.
Who's the alternative? Of the three commercial anchors, Peter Jennings is
Canadian, and has that randy gaze that makes men hide their wives; Tom Brokaw
looks too boyish, and has a speech impediment; and Dan Rather is famously nuts.
Bernard Shaw's got the gravitas and a great magisterial voice, but there's
still something too cheesy about the CNN mise-en-scène . Ted Koppel is
too in-your-face. The retirement last year of Robert MacNeil (another Canadian)
gave Lehrer full ownership of the PBS NewsHour, and his debate-moderator
gig--which made him the one man in America who can lay down the rules to
presidents--sealed the deal.
Lehrer's apotheosis has been two decades in the
making. It began in the early '70s, when he abandoned Dallas newspapering for a
job at the local public-television station. He moved on to PBS, and, during the
Watergate summer of 1973, partnered with MacNeil to parlay PBS' weakness (a
lack of resources to dig for stories) into strength. Presaging the
télévision vérité of C-SPAN, Jim and Robin covered the hearings
gavel-to-gavel from an Olympian distance, mostly letting the story and
participants speak for themselves. An Emmy followed, as did their evening show
that now goes by the name of The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer .
More talk
show than news program, the NewsHour likewise lets people and things
mostly speak for themselves. Each week, dozens of government officials, foreign
leaders, experts, journalists, and voluble wonks descend upon the
NewsHour 's suburban Washington studios for mild chat with the anchors
about genocide and tax policy and abortion and air-traffic safety and other
topics of the day. Lehrer isn't always as flat as he was required to be in the
debates, but there is the same vacant and impassive style, and there are (for
my taste), too many of the same easily answered--or evaded--questions.
Off-camera, Lehrer is a jovial skeptic. Yet, even though he knows that most
politicians, CEOs, and activists who appear on his show are accomplished liars,
he offers little in the way of interruption or contradiction. Like the
Lehrer-led debates, the NewsHour is a low-scoring game of singles,
passed balls, and sacrifice flies.
Many people claim to find the NewsHour stimulating,
but I suspect that what they really find it is soothing. Friction and strife
are the post and beam of genuine journalism, but Lehrer's product is comfort:
first, for his viewers, whom he shields from the passion and fury of the news.
The NewsHour's mini-documentaries don't shy away from distressing scenes
of war and misery, but the panel discussions that follow generally still the
racing heart. Comfort also is extended to NewsHour 's guests--and I do
mean "guests." "He looks at you with those big brown eyes," confides one
talking head who has appeared on NewsHour , "and you know you're going to
be safe."
As on other talk shows,
NewsHour guests are pre-interviewed. (When the '50s game shows engaged
in this sort of coaching, it was considered a scandal.) And like other
talk-show hosts, Lehrer reserves the right to hammer guests with unexpected
questions. But he rarely does. No wonder, then, that the exchanges between
Lehrer and the Cabinet secretaries and senators and law professors and
reporters seem so articulate and poised; that the guests are eager to return to
the show; that Lehrer was a guest at one of Al Gore's pretentious "metaphor
salon" dinner parties in 1994.
Lehrer is
unabashed about this socializing with pols and power, and it has turned him
into one of them. (He runs the NewsHour as if it were a Senate office
and he, the senator, says one veteran of the show.) But Lehrer is not corrupt.
When his friends appear on his show, they get treated no better than some war
criminal with whom he is not acquainted. Or rather, the war criminal gets
treated no worse than his friends. Alexander Cockburn once imagined this
MacNeil/Lehrer segue: "And now, for another view of Hitler ..."
Since Cockburn cracked wise in 1982, the news
business--especially the TV news business--has grown more aggressive and
competitive. The networks and syndicates have expanded news magazine coverage,
political talk shows have multiplied like bacteria, the Sunday shows have grown
more slick, and three 24-hour news channels now clog cable television.
Admirably (to many) resisting this commercial tide, the NewsHour seems
even more civil and staid. A 1994 Roper Poll concluded that the NewsHour
is perceived by the public as "the most credible" newscast in the country.
Maybe so. But credibility apparently isn't everything. About 1.2 million homes
tune in the NewsHour each night, while a combined total of 20.4 million
homes watch the evening news on CBS, ABC, and NBC.
The Cronkite crown, though,
is not awarded on the basis of ratings. "Credibility" is a vital factor, and
Jim Lehrer does, indeed, have it. It's an odd factor, though: Do people believe
that Brokaw, Rather and Jennings--reading scripts written by others from their
TelePrompTers--are making things up? No, it's something more amorphous, like,
"Who do you want to hear it from the next time a plane crashes or a world
leader is assassinated?" Hell, even I might choose Jim Lehrer.
