He`ll be somewhere away from the office, perhaps on a plane, when someone asks Roger Mudd, ”What are you doing now?”
Too prideful to admit chagrin, he`s also too candid to deny the query`s inevitability. After all, that might have been him-not Rather, Jennings, Koppel or Brokaw-doing journalistic star turns in Baghdad last week, or in Berlin, Beijing or Moscow before that.
Mudd, 62, long one of the biggest names in a medium whose values and management always left him uneasy, is around-informed, engaging, tough, prickly and cynical as ever-as congressional correspondent for public televison`s ”MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.”
The nightly show offers him enviable professional independence and a clout-heavy audience ”in the west wing of the White House or over at the State Department,” says Mudd, as he sits in his small office inside a small public TV station, beneath a 1904 photo of sheep grazing by the White House of Teddy Roosevelt.
But that audience is in what amounts to a much smaller theater than Mudd was once accustomed to. Ratings for MacNeil/Lehrer are puny compared with the newscasts of the big networks. He labors honorably but not at center stage anymore.
He was, after all, a stalwart at CBS News when it was the profession`s pantheon-an aggressive reporter-anchor who left in unseemly, if
understandable, circumstances 10 years ago when he was passed over in favor of Dan Rather to replace the retiring Walter Cronkite.
And he was, after all, co-anchor, with Tom Brokaw, of NBC`s ”Nightly News” during a subsequent seven-year stint at the rival network.
On Wednesday, one can see the latest work of this independent-minded newsman with a country gentleman`s air when a two-hour education special, reported and hosted by Mudd, airs at 8 p.m. on WTTW-Ch. 11.
”Learning in America: Schools That Work” follows a PBS series he did last year that underlined-as have a roomful of studies-the sorry state of American education. The new, and exemplary, effort accentuates the positive, spotlighting stellar elementary schools, and perhaps jogging memories of earlier moments in the host`s own impressive career.
A Washington, D.C., native, Mudd was graduated from Washington and Lee University and earned a master`s degree in history from the University of North Carolina. He taught history to 7th, 11th and 12th graders-and coached football-in Rome, Ga., before getting his first journalism job, at the Richmond News Leader, in 1953.
The education environment has changed radically since his teaching days, with everything from the breakdown of family authority to the incursion of television proving divisive forces, he says. The teacher`s role is far more complex and frustrating than when he tried his hand at it.
What he found ”doesn`t fit the standard definition of `news,` but we felt obligated to report it,” Mudd says. ”We felt it might be a modest body of knowledge about the public school system. We decided to turn the camera on and let it run, without heavy input from a correspondent.”
That lack of intrusion is notable in an era when the omnipresence of scripted correspondents is so common. It`s a far cry from the days when Mudd got into the business, which helps explain why he exudes a certain contentment these days.
After his newspaper stint, Mudd worked in radio in the Washington area and, in 1961, joined CBS News. He displayed a top newspaperman`s instincts, with a taste for competition and a penchant for rigorous analysis. He fashioned a reputation as one the most astute observers-in print or on TV-of Congress back when Washington news thoroughly dominated network newscasts.
He was, recalls a CBS correspondent, a ”take-me-or-leave-me guy, always direct, tough, with a good sense of humor, but also occasionally nasty.”
In 1964, when three new CBS reporters were hired out of radio`s ranks-John Lawrence, Ike Pappas and Reed Collins-Mudd was downright standoffish, not talking to at least one of them for about five years.
Though also given in public to courtly grace, warmth and humor, he could be impatient with behind-the-scenes technicians and aloof with management. He wasn`t big on doing promotional spots or interviews. His wife and four children were paramount and he didn`t like disrupting family vacations for the sake of the company.
Still, he was so adroit, so admirably versed in such complex subjects as the workings of the U.S. Senate, that he rose to be an indispensable correspondent and a regular substitute for anchorman Cronkite.
”After Cronkite and Eric Severeid, he was the most important correspondent we had, and the best pure handler of a news broadcast,” says William Leonard, who, as CBS News president, chose Rather over Mudd.
Mudd won many awards, did memorable documentaries such as ”CBS Reports:
The Selling of the Pentagon” (1971) and, eight years later, ”CBS Reports:
Teddy,” which was just as stunning in a different way.
On that telecast, he asked a simple question of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy:
Why did he want to be president? Kennedy unraveled. The interview set in motion a dynamic that proved fatal to his bid for the Democratic Party nomination.
In 1980, Leonard proposed solving the Cronkite succession problem by teaming Mudd with Rather. Mudd wouldn`t have it. And though he was the better pure anchor, Mudd was seen by Leonard as not having quite the ”same appetite, same endurance” for a job that was beginning to change. With increasing frequency, network anchors were leaving the studios in New York and the nation`s capital, venues that fit Mudd like an old shoe.
When the coronation of Rather was announced, Mudd left CBS in a huff. He resurfaced at NBC. He again did fine work, again proved to be alternately warm and distant. This time, however, being an outsider, Mudd found himself mistrusted by many colleagues within tradition-bound NBC.
And, again, he upended a politician. In 1984, he asked Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart, ”Why do you imitate John Kennedy so much?” and ”Why do you think, Senator, so many politicians are phony today?”
Headlines, and debate over Mudd`s aggressive methods, ensued.
It typified a turbulent tenure that included his removal as co-anchor of
”NBC Nightly News” because of poor ratings. In 1987, he joined ”MacNeil/
Lehrer,” where he continues to labor with grace and wit but realizes that he is not the ”player” he once was, not as ”engaged in events as before.” The business has changed. In his beloved Washington, reporters become promoters and celebrities in their own right, hustling TV appearances and parlaying them into big-money speeches, all of which doesn`t ”have anything to do with your calling,” Mudd says.
”We (reporters) all talk too much. We make no secret of our personal views. We have turned into an industry of selling opinions and, in a mad competition, talk shows become as outrageous as Morton Downey. Otherwise rational people feel compelled (on the air) to yell at one another.”
Then came the Age of the Anchor: ”It got to the point where the anchor had to be everywhere, declare his opinions on everything. He became a traveling billboard for the news department . . . a piece of news
merchandising.”
Mudd never liked doing ”standups” in faraway places, reading words written by others whose accuracy he was never sure of.
Last November, Mudd and Leonard, having run into each other at the funeral of the wife of a former colleague, decided to have lunch together for the first time in a decade. They recall the conversation the same way.
Given changes in the business, and Mudd`s views about celebrity and self- promotion, he conceded that Leonard had probably made the right decision in picking Rather.
”The physical and global demands of the job were ones that he doesn`t care for,” says Leonard, now a CBS News consultant.
One wonders what Mudd would do today if he were finishing a post-graduate teaching stint and looking to get into journalism.
A part of him, he says, would be inclined to join National Public Radio, where he could ”write, report and have freedom.” But he knows that the appeal of a job at a big network might be hard to resist. ABC, he says, has the best news division these days, ”with the most bench strength.”
”I`d probably send my resume to (ABC News President Roone) Arledge,” he says.
A friend from Mudd`s CBS days, who remains there, finds it ”a great loss that Roger is not working for a commercial network.” Yet given Mudd`s values and outlook, the rifts with CBS and NBC, and an apparent burning of bridges at ABC, his arrival at public TV may have been as inevitable as the questions posed on airplanes.
Competition, Mudd believes, has not necessarily improved commercial TV. It brought us, he notes, ”network anchor merchandising.”
No, he doesn`t have the stature he once had, but, says a seemingly serene Mudd, ”I am getting older and public broadcasting is somewhat above the fray.”
