N.Y. to Washington: DROP DEAD   

Many staffers at network Washington bureaus say their New York bosses have turned their backs on news from the nation's capital.

There is no love lost between the New York headquarters of the big three television networks and their news bureaus in the nation's capital. To New York, Washington reporters are a provincial lot who think anything that happens inside the Beltway is, by definition, important. To Washington, Manhattan decision-makers are an incestuous bunch whose horizons are bounded by the corporate dining room and the front page of the New York Times.

The creative tension ensuing from this perpetual misunderstanding is magnified by the mammoth egos (with salaries to match) of more than a few of the anchors, correspondents and producers who are responsible for the "news product" broadcast each evening over more than 600 outlets of NBC, CBS and ABC.

All three networks have undergone radical changes in management since being taken over in the mid-1980s by new corporate owners. The most violent repercussions have occurred in the news divisions, where the commitment to providing a public service has been overpowered by budget and staff cuts, bureau closings, and the concept of making news a "profit center," just like soap operas, sitcoms and other entertainment that used to generate huge revenues.

Nowhere has the downsizing of network news been felt more keenly than in Washington, where the NBC and CBS bureaus have been sliced in half, and ABC is beginning to experience minor surgical cuts. The three now make no serious attempt to cover Congress, have slashed the number of stories from the State Department to a minimum and have de-emphasized analysis of Supreme Court decisions.

Seventy-five members of the big three's Washington press corps were interviewed on a not-for-attribution basis for this article. Their desire to get the word out was matched only by their fear of retribution for doing so. Most had the same thing to say: Morale at all three Washington bureaus has plummeted. Journalists there not only fear losing their jobs, they worry about the future of network news. They fear that Manhattan news producers believe the conventional wisdom that says that everyone out there in the hinterlands hates Washington. To hear some correspondents and producers tell it, the philistines in New York want to ditch as many stories emanating from the nation's capital as possible in favor of "viewer friendly" features that won't tax the attention span of a dwindling audience ready to switch to the Comedy Channel or M*A*S*H reruns.

Revenge of the Bean Counters

The budget hits in Washington have been absorbed most heavily at CBS. When CBS fired 53 staffers 10 days before Christmas in 1991, it all but eliminated Washington as a production facility. CBS had already forced out Deborah Potter, whose environment beat has not been filled, hired no replacement for Lesley Stahl when she went to New York to join "60 Minutes" and moved the medical beat to New York when Susan Spencer left to cover the White House.

Morale is lowest at NBC, where General Electric's heavy-handed management style, along with widespread disdain for the New York production executives in charge of the third-place "Nightly News," compound apprehension over the uncertain future of network news. In the spring of 1991, longtime Supreme Court correspondent Carl Stern was taken off the beat, his salary cut in half and the producer slot for news from the third branch of government eliminated. The network also dismissed Jim Polk, an investigative reporter, and Gerry Solomon, executive producer of "Sunday Today" and "Meet the Press." (Solomon had the misfortune of being quoted in Ken Auletta's book, "Three Blind Mice," making derogatory comments about GE's commitment to good journalism just as his contract was up for renewal.)

In specific terms, the Washington correspondent corps at CBS and NBC, which in times past approached 30 each, has now been reduced to about a dozen apiece. These two networks today have a combined reporting staff that is smaller than the Washington bureau of the New York Times.

In the ratings race for the all-important No. 1 spot among evening news programs, ABC's "World News Tonight," has led since December 1990. (CBS finished first the week in August Dan Rather flew to Florida to cover Hurricane Andrew, then returned to its accustomed position as number two.) While not exuberant, the morale at the ABC Washington bureau has reflected its position at the top of the heap. ABC is the only news division showing a profit, thanks to the success of "20/20" and "PrimeTime Live," as well as "Nightline" and "This Week with David Brinkley," both broadcast from Washington.

ABC's Washington bureau is twice as large as the bureaus of the other two networks. Roone Arledge, ABC News president, has always been known as a collector of talent; he raided the other networks in a bidding war in the glory days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Last winter, however, ABC owner Capital Cities moved in its own handpicked watchdogs of the purse. In the past year, seven correspondents and three off-air reporters have left the Washington bureau, including Sander Vanocur, Jeanne Meserve and Steve Shepard, who among them had once covered the White House, Pentagon and State Department and reported from overseas as well. The deputy bureau chief's job was also eliminated. Though it was the last of the Washington bureaus to feel the sting of editorial dismissals, staffers say the morale at ABC has been slipping due to the sudden and sweeping nature of the cuts.

It is not only the shadow of another budget ax about to fall that has hurt morale. As far as Washington television journalists are concerned, their masters in Manhattan couldn't care less about government news.

"New York has a very anti-Washington attitude, although what happens here affects everybody's life," says one NBC News staff member. "They don't always cover the most important news."

"How would I describe morale around here compared to five years ago?" asks another. "It's like asking the people of Holland how they liked the Wehrmacht. The pressure by General Electric is to improve profits. If you are a professional, you feel despised."

Staffers at CBS' Washington bureau echo those sentiments. "There is a feeling that the people in New York don't care about Washington, don't understand Washington and believe that the audience out there feels the same way," says one. "They came up through the affiliates and the network news traditions don't mean a thing to them."

Even at ABC, staffers are hardly upbeat. "People are being judged these days by how much product they get on the air at what cost," says one. "Correspondent contracts are related to the number of appearances they make on broadcasts. This means that the costs of really digging into a story are two-fold: not only the bottom-line cost of doing the piece, but the risk cost to both the producer and correspondent of taking time off to follow up leads. Things that take time to dig out are simply not going to get done."

"I deal with New York because I am on the air so often," explains another. "Under this team there is a tremendous desire to control the broadcast. Washington is only an outpost. You have to remember that there are a bunch of people in New York sitting around the same table every day, having their discussions and working off the rough edges of any disagreements. Some poor devil who calls in from the outside is in for some rough going."

The gravity of the situation is much deeper than usual bureaucratic and corporate grumbling. There is a crisis among some sectors of the Washington television press corps over the waning of a proud tradition.

It is stylish for critics to claim that the networks' evening news shows were never much more than a 22-minute headline service. But that argument masks the importance of television news in setting the public agenda, as well as the fact that in an era of stagnant newspaper readership, television news is the primary source of information for most of the 25 million U.S. households that tune in daily to Peter Jennings, Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw.

In subordinating public service to private profits, corporate network managers have closed down bureaus in China, Africa, Europe and the nations comprising the former Soviet Union. There is little or no network reporting presence in many regions of the United States between the eastern and western seaboards. Smaller bureaus in Washington miss stories and have cut back on travel in favor of "voicing over" visuals sent in by local affiliates or international video services.

A disillusioned Washington correspondent explains: "Washington is the most important capital in the world. It is a big, powerful city. It has to be covered and should be covered minutely. But the network doesn't use reporters anymore. They run together a lot of tape. It doesn't necessarily involve writing. It is all editing and voicing. Packaging the news. I was interested in reporting the news. That's why I got into this business. I'm not the least bit in love with television news anymore. I don't even watch network news myself."

A Washington producer adds: "The elimination of news bureaus here and abroad means that you have less control over the news product. You have to rely on local affiliate and foreign broadcast services. Fewer people are covering the same expanse of territory.

"We had three [correspondents] at the White House. Now we have two. We had several covering the Hill. Now we have one. There is less interest in policy stories, more demand for features that 'relate to the average American.' We led the broadcast the other day with a story on contaminated fish."

Journalists vs. Packagers

The networks' Washington bureaus are experiencing a cultural clash between two generations. One, idealistic and traditional, mourns the passage of a "golden age" when the networks covered the world and the nation with their own reporters. Correspondents prided themselves on their ability to "crash" spot news stories on short notice and cover events with well-written, insightful analysis. These old pros decry the breach of the wall between the business side and the news side of broadcasting. They are dismayed by the diminished presence of "hard news" and knowledgeable reporting.

Another group, pragmatic and reconciled to the "realities" imposed by competition from cable, local stations, VCRs and independents, prides itself on its skills in video packaging. These journalists are persuaded that a new style of evening newscast is dictated by the loss of the networks' monopoly. They take pride in their "broadcasting" abilities, their skill at projecting ideas beyond a simple recitation of facts.

These differing schools of thought are expressed by two Washington correspondents who have had long careers in network television:

The "traditionalist newsgatherer": "There are still 20 or 30 million people looking at network news to find out what is going on. We fought hard in broadcasting to be recognized as legitimate reporters. In our own operations at NBC we still put out a 16-ounce package on the 'Nightly News,' but it only contains four ounces of journalism. The 'Nightly News' is a fraud when it pretends to offer viewers a comprehensive summary of the day's happenings. You have to spend a little money to gather news. If Boeing built airplanes the way we do the news, they would be out of business.

"Reporters don't go somewhere and gather a story on what they saw. Everything now is assembled. Nobody went to North Carolina when the chicken plant burned down. In the David Duke election, a Washington correspondent did a stand-up over tape from the affiliate. When Ross Perot held a press conference in Texas announcing his withdrawal as a presidential candidate, not even the local affiliate showed up.

"The pictures merely illustrate stories already decided upon. New York calls and tells them what pictures they want. The reporting function has been dropped for packages masquerading as reporting."

The "pragmatist broadcaster": "Good producers make good money, in the six figures. I get more because I am a good communicator. Television news has a lot more to do with the presenter than the material being presented. We all have about the same material. The facts and quotes we work with are about the same. The good communicator will get on the air more. As long as I can do strong journalism and get on the air, I'm happy.

"There are two realistic facts of life around here. First, the money crunch and second, some local reporters are nearly as good as network reporters and network pieces are only a little better because they are produced better. Doing a network story is like pulling a lot of string together and presenting it effectively. That's what we are good at. I can go to Little Rock and the local reporter will know more about the story than I do. But I can do it better and faster. That's why they pay me so well."

The two points of view reflect the attitudes rather than the abilities of those who fall into one camp or the other. What separates them is the depth of their misgivings about the accommodations made to the demands of a changing marketplace.

Laissez-Faire FCC

Behind the pragmatists is a third force, the marketeers, who dominate network headquarters in New York. Although New York producers have always determined what is reported from the capital, Washington journalists say the current crop of absentee editors is overly sensitive to the suggestions from corporate managers that entertaining dwindling audiences is more important than educating them.

Those corporate managers have been given the green light from the government. Although the networks' stations have a federally mandated responsibility to provide for the public interest (after all, the airwaves are supposedly owned by the public), the Federal Communications Commission no longer exercises much influence, direct or indirect, on network obligations to use the public airwaves responsibly.

"I think it would take only one speech by the chairman of the FCC to improve things," says one news staffer. "They used to say that a broadcast license was a license to steal. Nowadays it is a license to make pretty good money. But since deregulation, broadcasters no longer fear the FCC. There are radio stations on the air that don't even have a news program. Cable channels don't have to do news; they can be all movies, or whatever. If the public choice is between medicine and a malted milk, which do you think they are going to choose?"

"I have been complaining for 22 years about the networks dumbing down the news," says another veteran. "The bar used to be way up here. Now it has come down in the search for [an] audience. The situation is analogous to what happened in radio after the great pretensions to [high] culture in the early years. [NBC's David] Sarnoff and [CBS' William] Paley learned that low culture attracted advertisers. The news division used to be the cover for the business that was being conducted in the back room. The heat is off in the deregulatory climate. There is nobody left to impress with what the news division is doing."

While government pressure has been waning, economic pressures have been severe. Corporate takeovers of the three major networks coincided with a significant drop in the network share of prime time audiences from a once near-monopoly of more than 90 percent to barely more than 60 percent. Network advertising revenues have decreased as audiences have shrunk, a problem compounded by the recession. The large annual costs of network news divisions – $200 million to $300 million per network – were inflated by extravagances during the 1980s, making them an easier target for financial controllers when those days ended. And technology has wiped out the network advantage over local stations: Electronic cameras, microwave transmissions and satellites are now widely available.

"There are no network scoops anymore," says one producer. "We talk now about a 'conceptual' scoop. The question is how to sell a story to our audiences that they may have watched on their local news at 5 p.m. or on CNN. Whether it is true or not, the perception in New York is that spot news is probably old stuff to the audience. I never feel competitive with CNN on a given story. CNN pieces suck. They just aren't as good as those done on the same story by the networks."

An "Irrelevant Rat Hole"

It used to be that as many as seven out of 10 items on the network evening news came from Washington. It was the only line that came into New York directly. Film from abroad and across the United States had to be flown in, and the broadcast often relied on reading wire service bulletins with no pictures. Washington news was cheap, convenient and cost effective. But that changed with tape and satellite technology. And it didn't help that the government's reputation with both the public and television decision-makers had never been good.

"When I would travel around the country, I always got the 'Washington is a joke' speech from local news directors," says one bureau veteran. "These people believe that Washington is an irrelevant rat hole where Americans send their money with no results. The credo of local news is that people don't give a damn about government – federal, state or local – in any form."

"When I was a correspondent abroad and in a regional bureau I always thought there was too much Washington news on the evening broadcast," says a more recent newcomer to the capital. "Washington is not as important as most people here think it is. There was too much insider stuff on the news. The correspondents here are an unbelievable group. Their egos have been so fed through the years that it is very hard for some of them to take 'no' for an answer."

Yet, apart from the New York anchors, the White House beat is still the most prestigious in network television. Two of the three anchors, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, are former White House correspondents. Other past White House correspondents, such as Sam Donaldson, Ed Bradley and Lesley Stahl, host the prime time magazine shows that are becoming an increasingly important part of network news divisions.

Although there have been cutbacks in the broadcast cubicles at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, stories from the White House remain the most frequent fare on the nightly news shows. John Cochran of NBC regularly leads the list of those reporters most frequently seen on network television. Brit Hume of ABC and Susan Spencer of CBS are close behind.

These days the networks tend to use White House correspondents to wrap up stories that were formerly handled on Capitol Hill or at the State Department. "With the other bureaus cut down, the broadcast pretty much depends on a White House piece almost daily," says one correspondent. The evening news broadcasts also look to their White House correspondents on a slow news day, because any Washington story contains a presidential angle. Thus television has become an important factor in focusing voter attention on the presidency. The trend from spot to analytical (opinionated, some say) news is part of the reason the president never feels he gets a fair shake.

At the same time, Congress has been largely ignored.

"We don't cover Congress as an institution. We only cover pay raises and scandals," says one bureau staffer. "There is never a story on how a piece of legislation comes into being. I am always trying to broaden the coverage of Congress, but you can't be selling New York all the time."

"I wonder where the next generation of first-line Washington correspondents is coming from," says another veteran. "My knowledge of issues is deeply rooted in the years I spent doing drudge work on Capitol Hill. I went to all the hearings and learned a lot. It's like adult education. I couldn't do my job at the White House if I hadn't cut my teeth covering the Hill."

Foreign news is getting less attention as well. Along with severe cutbacks in news bureaus overseas, there is less disposition to cover what New York calls "incremental" developments at the State Department. Before Secretary of State James Baker left with his key staff to take over the Bush campaign at the White House, the press corps at State felt frustrated because Baker wouldn't give them much.

But even when correspondents do manage to get hold of a story, it is harder and harder to get it on the air.

"New York thinks people don't like foreign news and have a minimal interest unless forced to the wall," says one producer. "At State it is easier to get on the air when the correspondent is out of the country flying with the secretary than here. There's a tendency to include State Department news in a wrap-up done from the White House. The story [then] picks up the cachet of the White House."

The networks are de-emphasizing their coverage of the State Department at a time when crucial changes are taking place in Eastern Europe, South Africa and the Middle East, and the breakup of the Soviet Union has ushered in a new era of U.S. foreign policy. The focus on the White House, where reporting is even more difficult and the ability to manipulate news – along with the rest of the American public – is strongest, left network viewers in the dark about major developments, such as the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran or the tilt toward Saddam Hussein before he invaded Kuwait. If the evening news can at best be a 22-minute headline service, the gaps concerning U.S. foreign policy may not be noticed by millions of Americans, but they are more than just fodder for Washington journalists' complaints.

What is happening in network journalism, as seen from Washington, is no less than a redefinition of news, driven by financial considerations and ratings. News is what networks feel they can afford to cover and what will get ratings. The role of television news for public understanding, for helping to shape a public agenda, is threatened by the idea that straightforward news standards are a luxury that broadcasting can no longer afford. Washington bureau staffers recognize the difference; they say their bosses in New York apparently do not. l