A License to Penetrate

THE TOP BRASS of network television news gathered at the Kennedy School earlier this year to discuss the way they report and as a result affect political events. Academicians, politicians, and print journalists were invited to question and challenge the TV bigwigs, but discussion revealed few new insights. Almost to a man--and woman--the network anchors, producers and executives defensively closed ranks, apparently too sensitive about their side of the news business to absorb the constructive criticism they supposedly sought when they proposed the meeting in the first place.

But two newsmen reacted differently from their colleagues, willingly debating the pros and cons of their profession. One was NBC anchor Roger Mudd, the other was Robert MacNeil.

Co-anchor of the unique and highly acclaimed Public Broadcasting news program, the MacNeil/Lehrer Report. MacNeil has trekked around the globe as a foreign correspondent. The Canadian-born journalist began his career in London working for Independent Television News, moving on to the Reuters wire service before joining NBC in 1960. He shocked the TV news world seven years later by quiting the network and abandoning a shot at an anchor position. MacNeil said he was disgusted with NBC's news operation and that of its rivals, CBS and ABC.

He wrote a book, entitled People Machine: The Influence of Television on American Politics, which received praise for its examination of how electronic journalism actually shapes public opinion rather than merely chronicling it. Some of these criticism as well as new theories about the industry are included in his latest book. The Right Place at the Right Time, an aptly titled autobiography of an introspective and intelligent foreign correspondent.

Right Place offers more than analysis, however, MacNeil demonstrates that he is a master story teller as he recalls the danger, adventure and Exotica that most journalists only dream about.

MacNeil did better than arrive at the right place at the right time; during his heyday in the 1960s, he was literally everywhere at the right time. He was in the Congo in 1960 during that country's bloody fight for independence. Subbing for a colleague, he was in Berlin the night East Germany began building the wall. He spent the Cuban missile crisis in Havana, residing in a government prison. Once again on substitute duty, he arrived in Dallas in November 1963 and later covered the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He covered the massive civil rights demonstrations and urban riots during the middle and later parts of the decade, culminating in the violence at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

MacNeil does not shy away from expressing his emotional reactions to these experiences--a freedom that the ethics of this craft prevented him from exercising while covering the events. MacNeil emphasizes his continuing, if somewhat ironic, fear of missing the big story, his awe for various world leaders, and his frequent fear for his personal safety. The journalist naturally has an eye for the unusual anecdote MacNeil got directions to a telephone immediately after the Kennedy assassination from a man experts now believe was Lee Harvey Oswald Rather than settle for the stock picture of political strife, he paints a vivid image of a policeman threatening to blow a young organizer's head off with a revolver in a Chicago hotel in 1968.

NO JOURNALIST, not even this extraordinary example, spends his entire career witnessing great events in world history MacNeil explains that along with his press card, a reporter receives "a license to penetrate and intrude into the private lives and rituals of all the people of the earth." And that is what he spent most of this time doing. He "intruded" throughout Europe for 15 years, and he takes the reader on a highlighted tour of the continent. In Tangiers, he tried marijuana at the Casbali, the famous Morrocean sector of the city. He led one of the first camera crews to explore the abandoned French prison on Devils Island. And MacNeil single-handedly brought American television the facts behind the legend of the witch of western Ireland, Biddy Early.

Concluding his book. MacNeil addresses the only major event of the times on which he did not report: the Vietnam War. It was an event which he experienced like everyone else, by watching TV, but it had the greatest impact on his outlook on television news and his own career.

His professional life was "going smoothly," moving "so rapidly that I never really paused to ask myself what it was all about." MacNeil recalls. But MacNeil saw a war being "sanitized" for the American audience in the editing rooms of the three major networks. He charges that this cleansing of the news and refusal to challenge the White House's party line actually slowed the anti-war movement and prolonged the carnage in Southeast Asia.

"I slowly became aware of television's frequent triviality, its distorting brevity, its obsession with action and movement, its infantile attention span and its profound lack of thoughtful analysis," the author says. Turning away from the money and the fame. MacNeil walked out.

For 15 years, he has resisted tempting network offers to return, including the chance to anchor ABC News in the late 1970s. During this time, MacNeil concedes that the networks have improved their product somewhat, providing more thorough, analytic coverage. He compares network news to the American auto industry: lacking competition it produced poor merchandise. Threatened today by cable news and improving local operations, the networks have been forced into doing a better job.

The transition in Right Place from gripping accounts of such events as the Kennedy assassination to philosophical reflections on the news business makes for a rather tame climax. But a book about this unique career in TV news would not be complete without some explanation of why a man would refuse the salary and glamor of the network anchor chair. And in spite of the plodding conclusion. MacNeil's book remains on balance a lively and informative work.