Rose a Thorn in the Side of Celebs : Television: ‘PrimeTime Live’s’ Judd Rose has made a career of skewering the rich and famous.

“PrimeTime Live” correspondent Judd Rose describes his reporting style as that of an “oaf in paradise.”

It works this way: He conducts the news interview with the star-politician-executive, and--at first--is the nicest guy on Earth. He’s wide-eyed, earnest, pleasant and vaguely dense. Imagine, if you will, Jethro Bodine of “The Beverly Hillbillies” interviewing Donald Trump.

And then: Zing.

The interviewee gets hit with the question--the question that punctures his or her blather about how great-talented-important he or she is. Imagine Jethro turning into Mike Wallace.

Or Judd Rose.

An oaf, indeed: This man has made a specialty of tackling the rich and fatuous. There are risks all right: Plenty of victims have walked out of interviews with Rose, cursed him, thrown wine in his face, threatened him with bodily harm. A livid Disney executive once warned Rose he might not walk out of Disney World alive. Disney World!

Rose, 37, is a rarity in the world of celebrity telejournalism, a world where practitioners are more apt to star-stroke than star-bash. He simply describes himself as sort of an “anti-’E.T.’ reporter.” When an interview turns nasty--as it frequently does--his first reaction is “Great television! My God, I hope the camera (is) rolling.”

“I wouldn’t call (his reporting technique) hostile, but it’s absolutely deadly honest,” says David Doss, a senior producer on “PrimeTime.” “He refuses to take what the publicist serves up.”

Or, as former colleague Josh Mankiewicz says of Rose: “He does the snotty piece better than anybody.”

To wit:

* Rose’s piece on Wayne Newton (Dec. 28, 1989), which began with the observation that “12 million people have seen the act--some are repeat offenders.”

* His description of David Duke: “The Robert Redford of Racism” (Nov. 2, 1989).

* Or this one with Geraldo Rivera: “The man (has) made a career out of pulling everyone else’s pants down” (Sept. 12, 1991).

These, of course, are easy targets, but Rose says that he finds their success representative of “how the (promotion) machine works, how they start to promote their books, or movies, or whatever and how (the media) just falls in line. They refuse to ask any questions that might ruffle their brows because, as the head of ‘Entertainment Tonight’ once told a friend of mine, ‘If we did they’d never invite us back again.’ ”

After a rocky start two years ago, “PrimeTime Live” has evolved into a better show and one of the reasons, according to industry observers, is Rose.

He is regarded by many as one of the best writers in network news. Rose’s style, which is often compared to such network stylists as Charles Kuralt and Andy Rooney, is at turns sardonic, arch or passionate.

Rose also lends the show some balance. In recent months, “PrimeTime” has dramatically increased its load of heavy investigative pieces.

Sam Donaldson, Diane Sawyer, Chris Wallace, John Quinones, Sylvia Chase and Jay Schadler are the inquisitors, and Judd Rose is the oaf. The very clever oaf. Chicago-born and raised in California, Rose certainly doesn’t look like a celebrity-slayer. The 6-foot-4 Rose looks as if he could be a linebacker but has a much friendlier demeanor. His office, near ABC News’ New York headquarters, is crammed with kitschy items of every description (including hundreds of campaign buttons)--a reflection, say friends, of his fascination with popular culture.

Rose grew up surrounded by popular culture. His mother, Sondra Gair, was a radio actress in the 1940s and ‘50s (“Corliss Archer, Girl Detective”), and his father, Hilly, was a longtime radio talk show host in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

After dropping out of UCLA in his junior year, Rose moved to New York and became a newswriter for NBC Radio. After several more years as a radio writer and reporter in New York and in Washington, he got his first TV job at KNBC.

He later jumped to KABC and nearly got fired--”I was a big mouth and always told (management) what I thought.”

Dennis Swanson, president of ABC Sports and Rose’s boss at KABC, says Rose “was very immature; I used to call him ‘man-child.’ ”

He was also headstrong: Rose’s bosses at KABC ordered him to do a five-part series on Pia Zadora as a sweeps feature. They--and she--expected a puff piece, but the series instead savaged the aspiring actress.

Zadora tried to get the station to kill the series, but instead she fired her publicist.

The jump to network news came in ’82. Rose covered major West Coast news stories for all ABC newscasts until joining “Nightline” in Washington six years later.

Since joining “PrimeTime” in May, 1989, Rose has worked on serious investigations including the Pan Am 103 crash, but it is his features that stand out. He has done pieces on sports figures including Jose Canseco and Roger Clemens. His political pieces included a harrowing story on Detroit in which Mayor Coleman Young cursed-out Rose on camera. And then there was the story about “Dick Tracy” in which Warren Beatty sharply elbowed the correspondent in the ribs--on live TV.

But it may be last September’s story on bookselling celebrities that best captured the Rose technique. In her autobiography, LaToya Jackson wrote of being abused as a child. She then went on to do dozens of TV interviews, speaking out against child abuse while promoting the book.

In her chat with Rose, he observed that “there is an argument to be made that by talking about abuse in this context, to sell your book, trivializes a very serious subject.”

At that, Jackson stalked out of the interview.

Rose (voice-over): “Don’t worry. You can see more of LaToya, a lot more, when she returns to the pages of Playboy in November.”

Zing.