C-Span interviewed Roger Mudd this past week, former CBS News weekend anchor and Washington bureau chief for CBS. During the interview, the subject of Eric Sevareid came up. Mr. Sevareid was the highly respected commentator on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. His commentary came at the end of the broadcast, and ran for just a few minutes.
Sevareid was a sage. In running a snippet of the last interview with him on C-Span, Eric said the following about his mission as a commentator on the nightly newscast, which then was the preeminent network newscast, reaching 25 million viewers on an average night. I’m paraphrasing. Sevareid said: I saw my role not as a judge, but as a teacher. My mission was not to advocate, but to enlighten.
There is no one like Eric Sevareid in television news - or for that matter, in radio news - today.
Sevareid was like a beacon of light amidst the turmoil and seeming chaos of the daily news. He was able to shed light on an event, a crisis, a national or world leader - not so much as a critic, or a loudmouthed tattler and gossip-monger - but to put a situation or person in context, revealing the underpinnings of an event, unravelling the complexities of a situation in historical perspective, looking at motives, evaluating a happening or utterance from the standard of high-minded universal, humane and respected values.
Those few minutes with Sevareid was something millions of Americans tuned in to absorb. He was an illuminator and an integrator. He helped make sense out of seeming nonsense. He crystallized complexity into profound simplicity. There was no one like him.
We need a man or woman like that today, especially in the world of ratings-driven network or cable news. But there is no such person. Instead, we have news mixed with commentary. We have Lou Dobbs, an intelligent and able news person turned advocate, mixing it all up simultaneously, in a soup of both news and vigorous, passionate and often angry commentary. Objectivity has been thrown out the window. And we have the plethora of talk show commentators, with their highly subjective and biased views hurtled onto the American consciousness, as if their utterances were gospel. They are not -but the effect is to turn minds without providing context, objectivity, sanity.
We need to have more objective reporting, and respect for commentary not so much as advocacy, but as enlightened teaching. Will another Eric Sevareid ever grace our experience? The way things are going, it doesn’t look good, at least as far as the money-driven news rat race is concerned.
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