If the now-retired David Brinkley needs to raise some fast cash by shilling for the Archer Daniels Midland agribiz conglomerate, that’s his business.
Yes, his ADM television commercials soil a reputation 50 years in the making. Yes, the deal hurts other journalists because Brinkley always represented the best among us. And yes, it’s especially regrettable to see him in bed with ADM, an unabashed influence trafficker and confessed illegal price-fixer.
The greater travesty, though, is ABC News’ decision to air the spots, much less to air them during what for 15 years was “This Week with David Brinkley.”
Rejecting the ads, which exploit viewer confusion about Brinkley’s role, was so obviously the right thing to do that pointing it out seems ridiculous. Instead, the once proud and triumphant news organization, which now seems to lurch between bizarre programming moves and periodic ethical lapses, welcomed the spots.
The network’s failure to ban the Brinkley/ADM ads recalls its failure last year to publicly censure correspondent Barbara Walters for violating conflict-of-interest rules: After secretly investing $100,000 in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway production of “Sunset Boulevard,” Walters profiled her business partner on the air and used the play’s set in one of her prime-time specials.
The only mea culpas: Walters admitted making a mistake, and ABC News, in a remarkable bit of contortionism, apologized for not disclosing what it didn’t know that Walters hadn’t revealed.
Over on the programming side, meanwhile, a ratings dip at “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings” has provoked a sober reassessment: On Monday, a newly news-heavy newscast began originating from a now-working newsroom, populated with working news people.
For one memorable segment, Jennings sat with his legs dangling over the edge of a work table next to a huge video screen, bringing to mind Lily Tomlin’s Edith Ann engulfed in a gigantic rocking chair: “And that’s the truth. Thzzzzbb!”
Among the correspondents now reporting in are Sam Donaldson, back on the White House beat he left in 1989, and Cokie Roberts, back covering Congress. Roberts presumably now stands outside the Capitol for real, rather than being electronically inserted into the shot by producers, as she was in a regrettable incident a few years ago.
Donaldson, in a bit of puffery at the end of last Sunday’s “This Week,” described the reassignments as “back to the future.” Indeed, at a network where producers are also being brought back to programs and positions they’ve outgrown or abandoned, the phrase seemed oddly appropriate. A network that tries to find its future by re-creating its past is a network in trouble.
Speaking of “This Week,” the program’s title is now officially “This Week with Sam and Cokie,” which, I’m sorry, sounds like a 1950s puppet show. Imagine when Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank makes a guest appearance: “It’s `This Week with Sam and Cokie’ and their special guest, Barney!”
Geez. Sam and Cokie and Barney? And Kukla and Ollie and Rootie and Kermie and Mr. Hankey? And maybe Mickey?
Given recent changes elsewhere in television and the network’s apparent, ahhh, openmindedness about news, ethics and commercialism, maybe ABC should consider “This Week with Norm Macdonald”: “And now, the fake news since your Sunday papers went to press.”
At least the comedy would be intentional.
