The Trouble with News

In the first years of television, U.S. newspaper editors worried that the new medium would capture many of their readers by covering news as it happened. So far, the worries have been groundless; TV news programs have added little to the technique of reporting, have often been no better than radio newscasts--and sometimes not as good. Last week, in an effort to change all that, NBC launched an ambitious, two-hour global news roundup --with records and special events thrown in--called Today (Monday through Friday; 7-9 a.m. E.S.T.).

All Set. How did the experiment turn out? After squirming through the two hours of the program, John Crosby, the sharp-witted Radio & TV critic of the New York Herald Tribune, decided the time had come to read NBC--and telecasters in general--a lecture of what's wrong with their news programs. Said Crosby: there is a "basic lack of understanding of the purpose of communications, which is, after all, just a conveyor, not an end in itself." Today's narrator, Dave Garroway (kittenishly billed as a 'Communicator") had "the most magnificent array of communications equipment ever put into one room . . . telephones, television monitors, telephoto machines, intercoms, wireless. Everything was 11 set in case anything was happening anywhere." But, for the telecasters, "nothng was."

For example, the ranging TV eye fixed on Admiral William M. Fechteler, Chief of Naval Operations, on the steps of the Pentagon on his way to work. "Can you give us a pronouncement on the state of he Navy?" asked NBC's reporter. "Well,

I don't know," said Admiral Fechteler. "When I left it yesterday, it was in great shape." "Thank you, Admiral Fechteler," cried the reporter triumphantly. Said Critic Crosby: "The fact is Admiral Fechteler hadn't opened his mail yet."

Communicator Garroway went on with his program: "Hello, Ed Haaker in Frankfurt. Tell me the news in your part of the world." Replied Haaker: "The big news is the weather. We had our first big storm of the year. We're really chilly." Said Garroway: "You're not alone. Goodbye, Ed."

Above All ... What was the point in having a foreign correspondent on the phone if he had nothing to say? As for telling the actual news, the program merely gave a brief resume of Page One headlines. By so doing, concluded Crosby, the TV editors relied "much too heavily on the newspapers and news services, much too little on their own imaginations. Newspapers and news services are geared for the printed page, not for this new and challenging medium whose demands are so different. The same news story -- let's say the explosive situation in the Near East-- should not be handled entirely on a spot news basis as it is in the press-- waiting, that is, for the riots, the assassination, or whatever comes -- because when the spot news breaks, television will be in no position to cover it. The cameras should be out there now -- probing, sifting, analyzing and explaining what might come and, above all, why."

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