Losses Tallied at CBS’ Largest Bureau

When Jack Smith, the head of the CBS News bureau here, answered his telephone Tuesday morning, he found a newspaper reporter on the other end with questions about the recent firings in his office.

“I’ll have to call you back,” he said, quickly leaving the phone.

Minutes later his assistant called to say that all such inquiries should be referred to the CBS public-affairs office in New York. Smith, she said, “is not commenting on anything.”

Smith’s reaction reflected the touchiness that remains in the wake of the firing of more than 200 people at CBS News last Friday, including a reported 11 of the 218 employees at the network’s largest domestic bureau here.

Among those cut from CBS’ Washington staff were 22-year-veteran correspondent Ike Pappas, who was covering Capitol Hill; 15-year-veteran legal correspondent Fred Graham, Pentagon correspondent Chris Kelley and reporter-producer Hampton Pearson, plus others who held positions in the bureau as directors, producers and administrative aides.

“There were a lot of tears on Friday,” said one CBS correspondent here who asked not to be identified. “It’s an excruciatingly difficult time.”

While the Washington bureau has experienced cutbacks in the past, the correspondent said, the latest firings were especially painful because, for the most part, “they did not cut people because they were not doing a good job.”

“Some of the people they cut really are both the past and the future of CBS,” the correspondent said.

The morale at the CBS bureau here is said to be “very bad” by those who work there, with some staffers reporting that they have had sleepless nights thinking about those who were fired and about the future of the organization for which they work.

“I think it will be important for those of us who are left to buckle up and work harder,” said one bureau member. “But it’s hard to do when you are feeling depressed.”

Others reflected on the long-term effects of the $30-million reduction in the annual CBS News budget that CBS Chief Executive Officer Laurence A. Tisch had ordered. One staffer compared the large-scale firings to the demise of the Washington Star, the afternoon newspaper that folded in 1981.

“I hope we aren’t the evening newspaper of our times,” the staffer lamented.

The comment reflects a concern in the broadcast industry that the networks’ collective share of the TV-news audience is diminishing as a result of several factors, including competition from Cable News Network and local stations, where satellite technology and mobile equipment now make it much easier for them to get national and international reports that previously only the networks could deliver.

“I think the layoffs are a symptom of something deeper,” Fred Graham agreed, pointing to his own case as an example. Earlier he had been offered a new contract by CBS, but he was also negotiating for an anchor slot with ABC affiliate WKRV-TV in Nashville when he learned Friday that he was among those being fired.

“To me, it’s not altogether a coincidence that I’m going to a local station. I think that maybe that’s where the future is in broadcasting,” said the 55-year-old former lawyer, who had worked as a reporter for the New York Times before joining CBS in 1972, where he won three Emmy Awards.

In the years ahead, Graham added that “we may be seeing network news operations becoming a little more like a wire service--like the Associated Press--and it may be that those of us in the good local stations will be more like the good local papers around the country.”