CBS sets its course as a news medium not only by the old journalistic myth of "objective" reporting but by another mirage of its own: CBS news analysts are supposed to interpret the meaning of the news without giving their own opinions. By ignoring this lofty impossibility CBS newsmen have won more radio and TV awards than the staff of any other network. Last week, by zealously chasing the mirage, CBS trod heavily on the toes of its foremost commentators, Eric Sevareid, 44, and Edward R. Murrow, 48.
The mirage blinded a CBS Washington deskman named James E. Roper one evening a fortnight ago, as he scanned the script turned in by Sevareid for his nightly five-minute analysis on the radio network. Through a series of pointed questions, the script challenged the wisdom of the State Department's refusal to let U.S. newsmen visit China. "I couldn't pass it; I couldn't defend this one," says Roper. He telephoned CBS News Director John Day at his Manhattan home and read him the text. Day agreed that it should not go on the air because Sevareid's opinion was showing.
Wholly Consistent. As the offending script showed, when it turned up later in the Washington Star and the Congressional Record, Sevareid's observations were fairly mild—and wholly consistent with the network's own views. Like most other major U.S. news-gathering organizations, CBS itself has publicly protested the State Department's policy of keeping correspondents out of China. It was the only network to broadcast direct reports from the Baltimore Afro-American's William Worthy, one of the three newsmen who entered China in defiance of the ban. To top things off, on the very evening Sevareid was edited off the air, a different CBS deskman in Manhattan passed Ed Murrow's blunter criticism of the State Department's policy: "What it comes down to is that we must refuse to allow ourselves to know about China, because if we did, we would obtain the release of ten American prisoners."
Actually, Sevareid's rejected script was much gentler than many others that CBS has aired out of his own mouth. In June 1953 he said: "The country is not in danger of government by fascists or Communists; it's in danger of government by stuffed shirts." During the Truman Administration, CBS even permitted Sevareid the editorial "We." He said: "We think the President has been basically right on foreign policy, including his handling of the Korean war, but we think he's run out of gas on domestic affairs."
Said a perturbed Sevareid: "What is analysis and what is opinion or editorializing? Possibly the differences can never be resolved." His network ruled not only that Roper and Day had been right about the differences, but that Murrow and the Manhattan deskman had been wrong. The Association of Radio-TV News Analysts protested: "Every competent news analyst is bound to express editorial opinion. He does so in selecting topics, in emphasizing their relative importance, and in the tone of voice he uses ... It is hard to understand why CBS still pretends to follow an impossible policy which its news analysts are violating every day."