Lawrence
Hall, HSG
His Name was Mudd
First, an
important scientific, cultural, and civic note: the first hummingbirds have
returned and more are arriving. After their incredible flight across the Gulf
from Mexico and because of the scarcity of flowers after the ice and snow they
need our help. Feeders up!
And now: once
upon a time there were television reporters who respected the truth and the
viewer. A young reader may shake his or her head in disbelief, but it’s true.
Last week
Roger Mudd, of happy memory, died at 93. The reader can find his biography on
the InterGossip, and the young among us can marvel that once upon a time
reporting the national news was a highly ethical vocation.
Indeed, there
are many reasons why the viewership of evening news on the formerly big three
networks has decayed, including the reality that no thoughtful young man or
woman will waste time on shrill, biased, and ill-mannered poseurs projecting
the emotional fashions and groupthink of their eastern undergraduate days. Participants
in our national conversation want news professionals who will report the news
as best they can without prejudice, ideology, snarks, and incessant
self-reference.
Early
television newsies were old-school, shoe-leather street reporters, some of whom
had also been combat reporters. Their editors wanted the news yesterday, of
course, with an eye on the hovering deadlines, but they also wanted it right,
and so did the reporters themselves. The wrath of the green eyeshade gods would
fall upon a reporter who faked a story or sources, or who let his or her
personal biases skew the narrative.
Among
the best of that generation was the professional, thoughtful, dignified, and
wryly humorous Roger Mudd. For Mr. Mudd the news was about the facts
as could best be determined, and about the reader and viewer, not about
himself.
Possibly
it was his failure in 1979 to coddle a party-anointed candidate with fulsome
praise, and to carry and pet him through the interview with only poofy
questions that cost him his well-earned promotion at Famous Name Brand network.
Instead
of recognizing Mr. Mudd’s excellence the network jumped up to the anchor desk a
Fisher-Price Play Reporter who was obsessed with projecting himself instead of
getting the facts. His antics and errors and biases, poorly anchored, scuttled
the network’s reputation. Trenchcoat-man was also the first to pose all look-at-me
look-at-me look-at-me how-brave-I-am outside in the wind and rain during
hurricanes. This stunt became a fashion
which seems not to have a needed end.
One
never wishes anyone harm, but surely it would do no harm if some of the weather
reporter-poseurs were hurricane-skidded a block or so on their a(postrophe)s
for not having enough sense to come in out of the rain.
Roger
Mudd never patronized us by indulging in low-prole trick-pone stuff for ratings.
He didn’t have to, and he wouldn’t have done so in any event. In his own dignity
he respected ours.
“Eternal rest grant unto him,
O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon him.”
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