Roger Mudd's Revenge

Former CBS newsman Roger Mudd has written his memoir, and it's not likely to endear him to his former colleagues. Mudd's book, The Place To Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News (Public Affairs, 387 pages, $27.95), is an engrossing and unflinchingly candid account of what it was like when CBS dominated television news in the late 20th century.

That was, of course, before the networks' influence was undermined by power struggles among network executives and their celebrity anchors; loss of viewers to cable TV and the impact of the Internet and the blogosphere, and the popularity of faux TV pundits like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and unabashed partisans like Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and CNN's illegal immigration-obsessed Lou Dobbs.

Mudd is an old Washington hand. A former reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, he joined the CBS Washington bureau in 1961, where he covered Congress and national politics and often subbed for Walter Cronkite until 1981. That year, CBS picked Dan Rather over Mudd as Cronkite's successor, a decision Mudd says left him in "a quiet fury." He left CBS to join NBC, where he co-anchored Nightly News and Meet the Press before moving on to the McNeill-Lehrer Newshour on PBS in 1987, and then to academia and The History Channel in the 1990s. He retired in 2004.

Mudd, who turned 80 in February, planned to write about the decline of TV network news until publisher Peter Osnos of PublicAffairs disabused him of the notion. "Everybody knows what happened to the networks. Why don't you write about how great network news used to be? Why don't you write about that great Washington bureau you were part of?"

Mudd followed the advice with a vengeance. "The stories the bureau was witness to and got to cover enabled us to nearly monopolize the output of CBS News for twenty years," he writes. Indeed, they encompassed a huge chunk of contemporary American history: the 1963 March on Washington and the civil rights movement; the ambitious New Frontier and Great Society agendas; the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King; the tragedy of Vietnam and the crimes of the Watergate scandal.

"That twenty-year stretch was unlike any in our history for the changes it wrought, its political upheavals, the growing distrust of government it produced, and the sheer excitement it generated," he writes. And, he might as well have added, the growing distrust and decline of network TV news.

It's a fascinating story, and Mudd tells it straight on. He spares neither his own feelings and faults nor those of his hyper-competitive and ego-driven colleagues. There are plenty of examples, but some of the best revolve around Mudd's rocky relationship with Cronkite, the iconic CBS anchor, as well as colleagues and competitors like Rather.

Case in point: After CBS was badly beaten by NBC in its coverage of the 1964 Republican National Convention -- which Cronkite covered with Mudd, then a floor reporter -- Chairman Bill Paley decided to replace Cronkite with Mudd and a co-anchor, Robert Trout, at the upcoming Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, N.J. The move proved to be a disaster, and NBC again won the ratings war."The Cronkite loyalists did not blame [Trout] for the unhorsing of Walter," Mudd writes. "They took it out on me."

Mudd's relationship with Cronkite was never the same, and he remains convinced that it led to CBS tapping Rather instead of him to succeed Cronkite 16 years later.Those bruised feelings may account for Mudd's willingness to take potshots at Rather as well as famous CBS colleagues like Eric Sevareid, Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley, Connie Chung, Lesley Stahl, Dan Schorr and Marvin Kalb, which gives the book a certain "you'll never eat lunch in this town again" quality.

Of particular interest is Mudd's account of his famous 1979 interview with Edward Kennedy, when the Massachusetts senator was unable to explain why he was running for president against an incumbent Democrat, Jimmy Carter. The interview helped kill Kennedy's presidential chances and made Mudd persona non grata with the Kennedys, with whom he had been friendly. In fact, with the exception of a supportive call from the senator when Mudd was bumped from NBC Nightly News in 1987, he and Kennedy had no contact until a brief encounter at church on Easter 2005.

Mudd's CBS colleague Bob Schieffer has summed up Mudd's book as "the perfect example of what a professional memoir ought to be." I couldn't agree more.

Comments

[BarryChamplain]

It's funny how some things about certain people that are probably likely to pass through most human beings will make a profound impression on someone else, and define how that person thinks about the subject forevermore.

I can't remember if it was the Sixties or the Seventies, but there was a political convention where some amateur "citizen-journalist" types accosted Roger Mudd with a camera, and asked him an innocuous question about the proceedings and his impression of them. Mudd didn't say one word; he just kind of smirked at the camera, and went back to eating his lunch or whatever, obviously as if to say, "I don't need to be talking to YOU... whatever the hell YOU are..!"

Given Mudd's subsequent tantrum over Cronkite's anchor position, I've always been of the mind that any decent journalism he might have produced was all processed through the filter of his enormous ego. Ego may be necessary in a highly competitive business like mass media, but when it's all about You, it isn't all about the story anymore.

All he had to do was to have been semi-gracious that one time to some fledgling reporters. That did it for me. I've never liked Roger Mudd since, because of that (for what this one viewer's opinion is worth).

[unitron]

I remember the Mudd-Trout pairing because CBS got a case of the cutes and promoted it with the line "What's in a name"? Must have been nice working for a company that makes fun of your name on national television.

As for Cronkite and Mudd losing to NBC in the ratings, as I recall they were up against Huntley and
Brinkley, which was sort of like going up against Uncle Miltie a decade earlier.

[raker]

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are not faux pundits, exactly. They are satirists. Stewart ironically calls his show fake news, but it's a comedy show that happens to be truer and more insightful than anything on network or cable news. Bill O'Reilly - now THAT'S a faux pundit. Russert is a faux incisive questioner. Katie Couric is a faux news anchor. The presidential debates are faux presidential debates. Everything about ABC News is faux. As Michael Moore said when accepting his Oscar, these are fictitious times.

[nyboomer]

I was waiting for a pun on Roger's name and it appeared. I had thought it would be something one of the small minded consercatives would do since they mostly fling such stuff.

I always liked Roger Mudd. He had a gravitas that Dan Rather lacked. I was amazed when Dan got the job because but I guess he spent enough time in Coventry after embarassing Nixon who turned out to be lying when he claimed not to be a crook. Both Nixon and Agnew were crooks. All subsequent Repblican presidents and vice presidents followed in their footsteps. All were and are liars and crooks.

[Honza]

Having watched Lou dobbs afew times, he seems to loose control and come near to having an apoplexy episode. What can one expect from a consevative.

[mamacat]

For what its worth (not even the paper it isn't written on), I think Mr. Mudd was one of the very last of the generation of Great reporters. Not meaning to hurt Mr. Rather's feelings, but I was disappointed when Mr. Mudd did not get Mr. Cronkite's old job. I think it is best to go with the person best qualified for the job, and that was Mr. Mudd.

Mr. Rather really did do his best, sort of like McCain can be expected to do his best if he gets elected, but neither man was or is the best one for the job.

[cpscscs]

The funniest thing I ever saw on The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite happened when Roger Mudd was subbing for Uncle Walter in the late '70's. Congress had just passed a pardon for Dr. Samuel Mudd for treating John Wilkes Booth.
Roger was at the anchor desk with a picture of Dr. Mudd on the back screen. After reporting the facts of the story, Roger said someting to the effect that Dr. Mudd was a distant relative of current CBS reporter Roger Mudd. As he is saying this, a photo of Roger is shown on the back screen over Roger's own shoulder. Try that kind of irony today. It would go over our heads.

Will there ever be anyone in the anchor chair like Walter Cronkite again? He wasn't called "The most trusted man in America" for nothing.

[olephart]

"MSNBC's illegal immigration-obsessed Lou Dobbs"

I believe if you had fact checked this you might have discovered Mr. Dobbs is employed by CNN. Despite his upsetting of some Liberals' views on matters they aren't affected by he is one of the few personalities who regularly trashes the Bush Administration for crapping on America.

[bobbym]

Lou Dobbs is from CNN not MSNBC.

[schwinnrider]

Dobbs rants for CNN, not MSNBC.

[Melissa]

It reads CNN not MSNBC. . This should be a great book. It is not just network news that is reporting garbage. Read the article in the NYT today it is pretty discouraging but what we have come to expect.

[LittleBrother]

which gives the book a certain "you'll never eat lunch in this town again" quality.

___________________________________________

Are you suggesting that in professional circles, from now on his name will be Mudd?