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No Bulk. They believe it despite all the lingering aspects of show business. Resentful as TV newsmen are of the very word "show," the smell of grease paint still clings to their programs. Last week CBS announced that its newsmen would be making one-shot appearances on entertainment shows to publicize their election-night broadcasts. Thus Cronkite, among others, will soon make his debut on I've Got a Secret and Captain Kangaroo.
By now they will take it in stride. Television news knows its power. It has come a long way since the days when pencil journalists demonstrated their contempt for their upstart rival by carrying clackers to news events to foul up sound tapes and by unplugging the cables of the TV equipment.
The networks, Cronkite is happy to say, have shown considerable restraint and responsibility in not stooping to a tabloid treatment of the news, the crime and sex coverage that he is sure could quadruple their audience. They are moving, he believes, not in the direction of sensationalism but toward greater professionalism. The widespread use of communications satellites, he says, will cut down the high costs of landline charges; and with the savings, he hopes, the networks will build up their news-gathering services. Further miniaturization of equipment will make TV teams less obtrusive when they go out on a story. One man equipped with a pocket or lapel camera will be able to replace five. "He won't attract attention," says Cronkite. "He won't make news by just being there. A source will talk more easily when the lights and the big eye are not on him."
However much television news im proves, though, Cronkite is convinced that it can never replace printed news. Though he feels that a half-hour news program is the equivalent of the front page of a very good newspaper, he realizes that all those other pages are still missing. "We do such a slick job," he says, "that we have deluded the public into thinking that they get all they need to know from us. And the people, if they are to exercise their franchise intelligently, need a flow of bulk information. We can't give it to them."