Sunday, March 14, 2021

His Name was Mudd - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

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.”

 

-30-

No comments: