MacNeil’s retirement ended one of the most hardy and unusual collaborations in television since Huntley said his final good night to Brinkley. Both unfailingly serious, MacNeil and Lehrer attracted an audience of about 2.2 million people nightly by offering a combination of straight news and lengthy discussions and interview. MacNeil, known as Robin to every guest, great and small, announced a year ago that he would retire this month from the news show. At 64, with a full plate of honors for his work, he told NEWSWEEK, “I know when I’ve done something long enough.” He wants to devote much of his time to writing novels, which has been his ambition since he became, reluctantly, a journalist in 1955. This week he begins promotion of his second novel, “The Voyage,” the story of a love affair that The New York Times describes as including “a heavy complement of twining limbs and noisy orgasms.”
Not what one might expect from the civilized MacNeil. But he is not without fire. He talked last week with NEWSWEEK:
I’m worried. In 1966, when the first national survey showed a majority of Americans got their news from television,the network news departments commanded about 90 percent of the television audience at suppertime. People approached them with trust in their news judgment. These were serious journalists, responsible news organizations. Twenty years later, if those same news programs–two of them anyway [CBS and NBC]–night after night after night say the O. J. Simpson trial is the most important thing of the day in this world, that bothers me. And you know perfectly well the journalists in those shops, if asked, would say O.J. is not the most important thing in the world but, come on, we’ve got to do it.
They’ve had a huge erosion of their share of audience and, frighteningly, where that audience is going is to all sorts of programs that have journalistic credentials or practices that, by our traditions, are very dubious. The “Hard Copy"s, the “Current Affair"s, they’re all in the traditions of tabloid journalism, with their shrill voices and exaggeration and their exploitation of a sensational story. And so the networks are afraid.
They won’t be dinosaurs if the new managements regard their value in something other than bottom-line terms. When Capital Cities bought ABC, it decided a continued investment in ABC News was well worth their while. Whereas since Larry Tisch bought CBS, what has happened to that news department? And since GE took over NBC, has NBC News been as glorious as it was in the past? So, will Disney, an exceedingly bottom-line company [which bought ABC], say, “This is special”?
Clearly it is, to a lot of people. But clearly it is not to those who are fanatically loyal to it and love it and dedicate an hour of their day to it, eat their supper with it, have their cocktails with it. They identified with our little concoction of values, a different esthetic, a rather quieter, more thoughtful program.
I think sometimes “tough” questioning is empty posturing designed often to draw attention to the interviewer, not the interviewee. I think if you look at the contents of our interviews with senior officials or anybody, we are not deferential. So I don’t make any apology for it.
I am not a born journalist. My attention strays and has to be brought back. But it’s not given to many people to be able to create a shop with your closest friend, hire all friends and run it the way you think it should be run with almost no interference or steering from anybody else–and get away with it.
