In Television News We Ask for Believable Anchors, Not Truth-Tellers

Most people speak of television as an “entertainment vehicle” or an “information vehicle” or, if they want to disparage it, “the boob tube.” In any case they do not usually regard television as something requiring the attention of philosophy. They are wrong. Or at least superficial.

Take Walter Cronkite and the philosophic puzzle that he posed when he concluded his beloved nightly newscasts with the words, “And that’s the way it is . . . .” He did not expect his audience to ask, “According to whom?” “Whom” had nothing to do with it. We were supposed to believe that what he told us was true--undeniable, clear-cut, objective, more or less complete. But why should anyone have believed Walter Cronkite? Who placed on his head the crown of official truth-teller? The usual answer is that he had earned it through an extraordinary measure of credibility. What exactly is credibility? And what are the circumstances that produce it?

In a theatrical context credibility means that an actor has convinced an audience that he or she is the character being portrayed. Credibility, in other words, is the result of a convincing performance. But what does this have to do with a television newscast? What character is an anchorman playing, and what is the name of the play in which he is starring? If we answer that news anchors are not in fact play-acting but are merely being themselves, then on what basis would we judge one to be more credible than another? Is it possible for anyone to give a non-credible performance of himself?

The questions pile up. But at least one answer comes through:

On much of television truth is measured not by its correspondence to reality but by the viewer’s perception of the artistry of the teller--a case, one might say, of the speaker displacing the speech as the relevant object of analysis.

That accuracy is fading as a measure of truth (at least on TV newscasts) was clearly demonstrated--indeed, celebrated--in a remarkable full-page advertisement in the New York Times early this year. Accompanied by drawings of Dan Rather and Ronald Reagan, the copy asked which of the two is more believable. According to a Gallup poll, Rather is. In fact, all three network TV news anchors had a higher “believability rating” than the President, but Rather’s was the highest at 81%. The ad does not say if this means that 100% of the viewers believe Rather 81% of the time, or 81% of the viewers believe Rather 100% of the time. No matter. The most significant feature of the ad is that the question of the truth of Rather’s statements (or, for that matter, Reagan’s) does not come up.

How is it, then, that the believability (read credibility of performance ) of a news anchor has come to take precedence over the veracity of his statements? The first and most obvious answer is that most of us are in no position to judge the truth content of Dan Rather’s statements about what is happening in Iran or Manila or South Africa. Without being there, how do we know which side fired first in Beirut? So we ask instead, is he true? But notice that the same problem does not quite exist in print journalism. We hardly know the names of the newspaper reporters; it rarely matters whether there is a name attached to a story.

Writers do not get believability ratings, and for good reason. In reading we are confronted--purely, simply and only--with words. And even if the words are about matters far distant from our experience, we have been educated, more or less, to activate what Ernest Hemingway once called our “crap-detector.” (I have sanitized the phrase.) At the very least we are prepared to protect ourselves against the seductions of eloquence. At best we are energetic and skilled in applying rules of logic and rhetoric. We invoke standards of what is appropriate documentation and reasonable generalization; we willingly submit our judgment to the rigorous test of plausibility. In any case such analytic powers as we possess are not distracted by images of music or faces. We proceed with the knowledge that charm may be an adornment to truth but can never be the heart of the matter. It is the writing, not the writer, that is our business.

Not so, of course, with television. On television, charm is the heart of the matter, language a mere adornment. That is why political figures, like newscasters, rise and fall according to the believability of their TV images, not the veracity and consistency of their utterances. Indeed, the President, who often speaks inaccurately and almost never precisely, is even known as the Great Communicator. The ascendancy of the image as a decisive signifier of truthfulness also explains why TV newscasters make up the handsomest group of people in America; why they become as famous as movie stars; why they appear as guests and emcees on entertainment programs; why some are fired for having low credibility ratings, none for speaking falsely. Good looks, a trustworthy gaze, celebrity--these reach regions where reason cannot go, and the word is thus rendered irrelevant. In the Age of Television, truth is a gut reaction.

We have something to worry about here, since believable faces may speak falsely and unbelievable faces truly. Perhaps John Keats did not quite know what he was saying when he wrote:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”-- that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. As poetry, these are inspiring lines. As a criterion of truth, they are fraught with peril.