CAN NICE NEWS FINISH FIRST? : A Lot of Reporters Today Sing a Different Tune

There’s a new kind of journalism running around loose. I don’t know that it’ll catch on, there being a lot of negative people around. It’s Nice News. Done by nice people.

For example, Tom Brokaw, who anchors NBC’s nightly news, is clearly nice. In mid-December, he was called upon to host a network entertainment special, “Christmas in Washington,” what with Danny Kaye coming down ill and unavailable. Tom obliged. During the show, he was flanked by the presidential couple, all singing along on holiday hymns.

We can’t be sure of Brokaw’s voice--his range, timbre, agility, beauty of tone. Howard Rosenberg, who usually watches TV for us for a living, doesn’t really do singing shows. Our classical critics were all out covering “Nutcrackers” and “Messiahs.” Robert Hilburn, our pop music critic, may have been home secretly listening to, who knows, Tears for Fears.

But musical talent aside, the question was raised, did this Brokaw “gig” (musician jargon) further blur the already-blurry line between the news and the show businesses?

Brokaw was quoted as denying any blurring; Leonard Grossman, president of NBC News, was quoted as saying that this was strictly a promo shot that showed Tom as “a human being.”

Further, they noted that the gig also strengthened contacts for further exclusives. . . .

Last Sunday, reporter Brokaw got his further exclusive. He did a pre-Super Bowl interview with President Reagan, his hymnal pal. He asked the President if his red sweater (it looked great for TV; our President is nothing if not great looking on TV) suggested any special allegiance with the New England Pats. The President, alluding to his heritage in Chicago Bear country, parried the question in good fun.

That wasn’t a very tough exclusive, as major national network news exclusives go. Maybe it’s jealousy on our part. I mean, for all the sports people The Times had covering the game, we didn’t get that interview.

At any rate, they both came off as human beings and there’s nothing wrong with being a human being.

Our Dennis McDougal also had a run-in the other day with Nice News. He was covering a press conference at Le Bel Age conducted by Ken Kragen, the promoter behind the USA for Africa/”We Are the World” movement. Kragen was introducing a new song, “Hands Across America,” as the anthem for the national hand-holding “Hands” festivity planned for late May.

It was as impressive a festivity against famine as you could devise, with the hotel donating chablis, various beers and 40 feet of hot and cold buffet.

Paper and pencil and tape recorder in hand, Dennis had been reporting from the middle of the room in the middle of about 100 press people. Around the room were visiting stars and near-stars--like Ben Vereen, Susan Anton, Anson Williams, Diahann Carroll, Jack Carter, Suzanne Somers, Linda Blair, Rosanna Arquette, Cathy Lee Crosby, Dyan Cannon, a lot of “Hill Street Blues” actors and about 100 others.

As the new tune was played on a demo tape, the stars and near-stars rose as one and grasped hands. Everybody was urged to join everybody’s hands and sing along.

Dennis must have felt as if he were trapped in the middle of a fraternity initiation. He was forced to his feet by peer pressure. He tucked his note pad and tape recorder under his arms, took insistent hands and mumbled along to a song he hadn’t heard before.

Kragen praised the singing and emphasized that “the media is truly our partner in this (famine relief business). . . . You kept this on the front page.”

Should we in the press have partners? Should we sing along with sources?

How nice should we be? Will nice sell papers? Is this new niceness based more on the performing arts and being pleasant than collecting news and information?

Should Dennis take some voice lessons? Tap-dancing lessons too?

Some cynics (not partners in the press, surely) might suggest that this all gives new meaning to the concept of trivial.

Walter Cronkite warned us. I happened across an old interview with him by Rick DuBrow, the Herald Examiner’s TV editor. He was seeing a trivialization of the news by a new breed of reporter: “We’re getting a class of people in TV who aren’t gut journalists but gut actors.”

Cronkite once played his cameo self on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” But he wasn’t really an actor; it just made him seem more like a human being. Nothing wrong with that. Some of our best reporters are human beings. Well, Dennis for sure, but there might be a couple more.