Television: The Most Intimate Medium

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means that there is a pervading reluctance to take sides on any issue. "I find an almost excessive lack of bias on television," says Howard K. Smith. "We are afraid of a point of view. We stick to the old American belief that there is an objectivity. If a man says the world is round, we run out to find someone to say it is flat." Network executives are also quick to delete any portion of a news program that might offend any powerful segment of the audience. Top management, said the late Edward R. Murrow, "with a few notable exceptions has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the corporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this."

Little has changed since Murrow's speech almost a decade ago. Summing up for all those now who make their livings "dealing with producers, directors, business executives, salespeople, sponsors, agents, set designers, accountants and all others in the new, huge superstructure of human beings hovering over the frail product," CBS's Eric Sevareid was hard put to describe the rigors of putting on a news program. "The ultimate sensation," he finally decided, "is the feeling of being bitten to death by ducks."

Raw & Lively. To be sure, all the tyrannies of TV news are constantly fought against and often held at bay. Few, if any, network producers worried about offending Deep South viewers with their civil rights coverage, for example. ABC earned the nickname, "African Broadcasting Co."; CBS became the "Colored Broadcasting Co."; NBC, the "Negro Broadcasting Co."

Of all the shows on all the networks, it is Cronkite's that most consistently triumphs over the built-in drawbacks of TV newscasting. His reporters have learned to respect his news judgment; his producers have learned that he will back that judgment with a fierce pride. Despite the cost, he will not hesitate to remake the tape of his show when new film or a new story cries out for space—even after the original broadcast has already gone on the air in some parts of the country. He is determined to keep up with what he and other TV commentators like to call the "raw news," the "hard news" of day-to-day events—which is to say, the late-breaking stories that have always made up some of the liveliest stuff of journalism.

For all the lure of news in the raw though, it was wariness born of long experience as reporters that caused Cronkite'and his executive producer Ernest Leiser to hesitate and worry for hours over whether to run the now-famous film sequence showing U.S. Marines in August 1965 burning a Vietnamese village. Were the pictures fair to the U.S.? To the Marines? Or was their message somewhat out of balance? In the end, it was decided that the pictures were simply too good to pass up. So, along with a narration by CBS Correspondent Morley Safer, Cronkite's audience saw a filmed report that represented most of what is best and most of what is distressing in TV's coverage of the war.

Message of Urgency. The very sight of Safer, gaunt and haggard, out there in the midst of battle, brought the war to the screen with undeniable immediacy. It testified to the