The Pushy Guest in the Hall Takes Over

By Thomas Griffith

NEWSWATCH/Thomas Griffith

Television has no duty to make a convention more interesting than it really is, Eric Sevareid philosophized on the air one dull evening last week. His boss, Dick Salant, president of CBS News, had already said precisely that in his instructions to CBS's sizable army of anchor men, cameramen, and floor reporters wearing pointy-headed antennas. Good professional counsel by both men, but hardly how the networks, in their commercial heart of hearts, felt about it.

For the only real contest at the convention--the only passionate one involving money, reputation and suspense --was between two closely matched news organizations, NBC and CBS (ABC, listening to its own mercenary heart, looked in at the convention from time to time, but preferred to play hookey with the likes of the All-Star game and thereby gained in the ratings). So much future prestige and so many advertising dollars were at stake that NBC, for example, is spending close to $10 million on the two conventions. That's a lot more than either party is spending on them. The result was a little bit like a state fair photographed, choreographed and given pace by those professionals up in their glass anchor booths.

Not that the politicos didn't try to put on a good television show--shortening the speeches, banning parades. So bulky was the television camera platform in the center of the hall that the best seat was in anybody's home; any delegate whose podium view wasn't blocked by the camera platform found it blocked by the restless aisle parade of guards, guests and reporters. Chairman Robert Strauss did everything for TV except drop a handkerchief every few minutes to signal a commercial time out.

Even so, the lordly fellows in the booths turned away from the platform at will, as usual feeling no need to carry every seconding speech or prayer. They might announce "gavel to gavel" coverage, but they felt free to ram in all those commercials or just to chat on-camera. Television, once the pushy guest in the hall, has taken over. Such a development used to disturb political scientists, who remember how influential was television's 1968 crosscutting between demonstrators outside and an apoplectic Mayor Daley inside. This time television was guilty of only minor attempts at hype (TV reporter to a Carter man: "How can you now ignore Barbara Jordan for Vice President?"). There is something about encasing reporters in head rigs connected to the anchor booth, then sending them pushing through crowded aisles in pursuit of quickie interviews, that is a degrading process, bringing out whatever is unappealingly aggressive in anyone.

Some critics have argued that television has a duty, instead, to focus relentlessly on the podium, or else be guilty of misrepresenting the event. Television properly replies that speeches are only one facet of a convention, and refuses to cover the ceremonies with the hushed reverence of the BBC covering a coronation. Other critics contend that this great political rite should not reach the public filtered through rival network superstars. But men like the lone Cronkite, or Chancellor/Brinkley (who make a better matched pair than did the earlier Huntley/Brinkley), show a welcome lack of showboating. When one NBC reporter, on turning the mike back to Chancellor, said "Happy birthday," Chancellor cut him off with a brusque "Stick to reporting, Oliver."

But the old question of whether or not television brings you the "reality" of a convention is now academic and irrelevant. Television is part of the reality. It is not so much a witness as a participant in the process. In one of those eccentric evolutions so characteristic of American politics, the national convention, which has seemed in danger of becoming as anachronistic as the Electoral College, has now evolved into something else. A convention no longer takes place in a hall; it happens in a wired convention city. The action on the floor often only ratifies decisions taken offstage, with television cameras on hand to make the action public. And the final apotheosis of a convention is now a televised spectacular, "Meet Your Next President." Television and the political party are thus engaged in a reluctant arms-length collaboration that exemplifies television's odd split personality, combining private enterprise and public service. Television begins the week as a persistent inquisitor and ends up as the patient conduit of a celebration. As solutions go, this one is ramshackle, Rube Goldbergishly American, but has its merits. The print journalists, though second-class citizens on the sidelines, are the true independents who give the convention whatever coherence and reflectiveness it gets.

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