Newswatch Five Who Dominate Tv News

By Thomas Griffith

One of the reasons the press seems so conspicuous in the news these days is that so many who gather the news are themselves so conspicuous. On television, with its emphasis on personality, five men in particular dominate the stories they cover. All five are knowledgeable, nimble and bundles of self-assurance. In on-the-air interviews with heads of state and important political figures, they seem to regard themselves as everyman's equal, and no man their better.

These are the five: Dan Rather, Sam Donaldson, Ted Koppel, Mike Wallace and George Will. For better or worse, a composite of them might form the public's impression of what a working journalist is like. But they are not necessarily the best and certainly not the only top interviewers on TV; those outsize, confident personalities are what create the impression.

Koppel, on ABC's Nightline, is a cool, well-briefed and forceful interviewer. To induce his guest to open up, he neutrally plays devil's advocate for the other side. English-born, he questions in the aggressive, direct English style ("May I put it to you, sir, that . . .") and less in the anonymous accusations so dear to many interviewers ("How do you respond when people accuse you of . . .").

Rather, with his tense, incisive delivery and the backing of a better news staff, has a steady ascendancy in the ratings over his gentler anchorman rivals, Tom Brokaw of NBC and Peter Jennings of ABC. (Yet when occasions require it, Brokaw, perhaps as a result of his long early morning servitude on the Today show, is a better interviewer.) The right wing's enmity toward Rather, based on things like the time he impudently sassed back President Nixon, makes some conservatives eager to buy CBS just to control him. Such is the presumed influence of men hired to report the news, not to be the news.

Their personalities seem fixed, but like the politicians they cover, the five do change. Sam Donaldson once gave rude behavior its name; he is still stentorian, but on ABC's David Brinkley show, he questions guests intelligently. His colleague George Will has also changed but believes he has not. Will first surfaced as a conservative polemicist. On becoming a highly articulate TV interviewer, he crowded his guests, suggesting that they were not sufficiently militant about intervening in Lebanon, Syria or Nicaragua. If Will emerged seeming bolder and more candid than the person he interviewed, his guest--a politician, a bureaucrat--usually had the disadvantage of being constrained by policy or responsible for the consequences of his words in a way that Will was not. Nowadays, as a regular commentator on ABC's Evening News, Will finds his allotted 90 seconds give him time only to "cast a little light" and prefers writing columns, where he can spread out.

The most changed of the five is Mike Wallace. The long months of the Westmoreland libel trial had their cost. Millions of dollars were at stake. But when the general and Wallace met inadvertently, side by side, at a courthouse urinal, Wallace had the feeling they were "partners in misery." When Wallace got the flu, the general's wife gave him aspirin and apple juice. Wallace also found it unsettling as a journalist to be "on the other side of the scrutiny," with television cameras pursuing him. He is having what he calls sober second thoughts: "My appetite for the hard question is diminished. I think, I hope, I'll get it back." Several of the objectionable ambush tactics once used on CBS's 60 Minutes are no longer permitted, but Wallace knows that "some of our viewers are crying for the hard stuff." So he must get back in harness. The process has begun: a few minutes after saying all this in a telephone interview, he calls back. "Scrutiny is good for the soul," he says, sounding newly resolute. "The compassion developed over the past six months doesn't take precedence over the need for skepticism."