Broadcast anchors ared different from cable anchors.
Edward R. Murrow is generally regarded as the model of a network anchor man even though he never played that role. He became famous delivering his deep voice, slow delivery and objective statements of fact while broadcasting from the London Blitz to American radio listeners. Later on, in the Fifties, he presented half hour and full hour programs about current topics, including a squelching of Joe McCarthy and an exposure of the plight of migrant farm labor. What were known as “Murrow’s boys”, including Eric Severied and Charles Kuralt, carried out that tradition but the most serious version of that as anchor was when Walterr Cronkite became the anchor for the CBS evening news and what he said was law. When he announced that the election campaign someone had been elected President, that was that, CBS having in the back room calculated the votes. A young man I knew scoffed at letting the networks decide that Biden had been elected President in 2020 but should wait until the legal challenges were resolved, but that had been the way it was done. Also, when Walter Chronkite returned from a visit to Vietnam and declared that the war had been lost, that meant it had been subject only to the removal of our remaining troops.
Other network radio reporters were lesser lights. I do remember H, V, Kaltenberg’s distinctive voice declaring that Dewey would win and my then turning off the radio and going to sleep, as was Harry Truman, who was surprised like me to awaken and find that Truman won. And I remember Gabriel Heater who diminished himself with the tagline that he was reaching “all the ships at sea” terrifying me when he revealed in the late Forties that the United States was developing the Hydrogen Bomb, a weapon far more devastating than the A-Bomb. Following the news was well worth hearing.
NBC was a little late to the star anchormen.That came with the appointment of the twosome of Chet Huntley, the straight man, with the wry and skeptical David Brinkley as the mordant one, to start by covering a quadrennial presidential convention meeting when those events might show important decisions taking place as it was happening and in public, before the duo went on to the nightly network news. I particularly remember the Democratic presidential convention in 1972 at the Dural Hotel in Miami Beach where George McGovern had confronted a meeting of a group of his young anti war supporters in the coffee shop and I thought he had acquitted himself admirably, not showing himself at all radical, while Brinkley had merely said that he had not given way to the young people.
Anchors changed their demeanors when they shifted from broadcast network to cable network, They became advocates rather than objective relaters of events perhaps because their audiences were more specialized as conservatives or liberals or because tastes had changed so that people wanted to hear more opinions rather than facts or because gthere were so many hours to cover in all day to an eleven pm newscast that there was just so much news to convey unless networks expanded to including NPR topics about the fate of the Seychelles or urban expansion in Lagos. Too expensive to cover and so stick to the political blotters of the White House and Congress and soon to be announced election campaigners. It makes for reporters to have a well organized family life rather than made up of raffish single front page types. CNN for a while made its mark by covering disasters all over the globe, like the trapped underground miners in Chile, but now is closer to mainstream coverage, just a little less left than MSNBC, though then again everyone seems left if it just covers the Trump shenanigans. Only Fox remains loyal while any respectable journalist would have been fired for having lied about what he or she knew to be the truth, not just Tucker Carlson, and he was fired for racist remarks rather than for lying about the truth.
A good way to see the switch from network to cable anchor is to follow the fate of Brian Williams. He had anchored NBC’s Nightly News, the premiere program, until he got into hot water for having exaggerated his vita, which seems in retrospect a minor matter. So management reassigned him to a late night program on MSNBC plus additional duties on big issues. He did that until he retired last year while tube very commendable Lester Holt who now anchorxs NBC’s Nightly News does not have the star power that seems to me to command the stage back through John Chancellor and all the way back to Cronkite.
The three topics of the day during Wednesday, May 9th was the conviction of Donald Trump in a civil suit against sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll some twenty five years ago and also the meeting of the congressional leadership with President Biden to deal with raising the limit on the national debt and, third, the impending indictment of Congressman George Santos on as yet unspecified charges that would be laid out the following day. Network news, cable news and the New York Times, what still seems to me as the gold standard for news reporting, covered much the same information, though each in their particular styles.
All three types of information sources were outspoken about the details of the rape, including in the New York Times, which still presents itself as a family newspaper. Everyone lingered on the difference between penetration, for which Trump was exonerated, which would have made the crime rape, as opposed to abuse, which means forceful groping. Noone discussed whether a charge of so long ago should be charged or whether so serious a crime as rape should necessarily be a criminal charge where conviction is on the basis of “beyond a reasonable doubt” rather than “a preponderance of the evidence”, this lower standard for civil suits. The general view of the verdict was clear. Noone on the panels discussing the matter on cable news whereby they fill out their hour length programs by repeating what the anchor says, did not demur. The panels do not have varied opinions while the Sunday talk shows on the networks cling to the idea of including both Republicans and Democrats, though only respectable Republicans like Chris Christie on ABC’s “This Week”, which means distanced from Trump.
Lawrence O’Donnell, on MSNBC’s “The Last Word”, specified each of the particular points of the verdict, perhaps because he has so much time to fill and so he and other cable anchors like Rachel Maddox repeat themselves over and over again for emphasis. O’Donnell also had time to refer to his interview the previous night with the renowned legal scholar Lawrence Tribe who now thinks that Biden can override the debt ceiling with the Fourteenth Amendment and that Biden was now considering that move even though it might lead to a lot of litigation, and so, I think, more of a threat than a good plan because doing so would still unsettled budgetary matters and rattle the stock market and world wide trust in the dollar. But viewing Triube’s view was worth doing so as to show possibilities even if a special interview on MSNBC was self-serving when O’Donnell pointed out that the White House might be listening in.
There was not much to say about the well advertised meeting of the principles about the debt ceiling. McCarthy said that the two sides had articulated their positions and would meet again next week. So what was achieved? Neither network nor cable could say and the Times on its digital version has become annoying by putting up brief paragraphs on the breaking news as if there were some. Better for the old days when a newspaper put together an article of what had happened in the last twenty four hours. The cabled networks are also pushing for breaking news even if there wasn’t any. MSNBC declared that George Santos would be indicted the next day on charges not yet developed. Is that news until it happens? It was just a teaser of things to come, the future event rather than a current event. But creating a frenzy for the insatiable demand for news is what all news outlets do because otherwise they might be seeing Marvel movies instead. I prefer to think there is always new news to cover if reporters got out of the White House or a courtroom and just filmed what neighborhoods and cities looked like, more like travelogs than newsbreaks. That would inform American life.
The most important news of the day yesterday was not delivered by a newspaper or an anchor. It was a press conference with the president standing firm that the debt ceiling had to be raised without conditions, that his budget proposal reduced the deficit considerably, and that for unspecified reasons he was more optimistic about resolving the debt ceiling issue than he had been before his meeting that day with speaker McCarthy. Perhaps McCarthy had indicated that he would pass a higher budget ceiling onced he got his ducks in a row.The other take away from the news conference was that Biden was sharp and concise and responsive to the questions even if his voice is weak and he walks like an old man. We will have to get used to that if the people are to vote for him in 2024.
So what are anchors, anyway? They and the journalists who support them, are people who offer the topics of the day by providing those same people day after day so as to create the idea that there is a continuity in the unfolding events because of some continuing personality, just as happened when the federal government declared Arthur Godfrey and Jimmy Stewart would be the national spokesperson should there be an atomic attack on the United States. An anchor is a noble duty in that the person is to be trusted about events both larger and small. But anchor people relate stories that are largely political and are largely knowledgeable about politics (and war when that happens), unschooled in other matters of other contexts, such as literature or social science. They are news junkies.Anchors are long on charm and short on depth, The result is that what they offer about tube issues of the world, like abortion or climate change, is just the common opinion, the fads of the day, rather than a deeper insight into these subjects. So be it. Understand their limitation to list topics rather than analyze them even if occasionally someone goes beyond listening only to other journalists and political operatives and someone hears, for example, from Michael Bechloss, an historian of the Presidency, who can provide the long view. It is difficult to believe that charming and articulate academic experts could not be found to supplement the ranks of the anchors and reporters who filter and present the news that is ever unfolding in front of us.