Solid-Gold Anchors, Fool’s Gold News

The following column was written after a two-month absence during which I had back surgery for a herniated disc. At a future date, I will relate in detail the delights of catheters (“We can’t do this unless you relax,” growled one of two nurses holding me down) and other fascinating aspects of my recovery.

For now, however, other duty calls. My columns on television coverage of this week’s Democratic National Convention will appear in the A section of the paper.

Say what?

On the day last week that KNBC-TV Channel 4 announced the signing of Paul Moyer to a multimillion-dollar contract--making him possibly the highest paid local news anchor ever--some of the station’s news units reportedly received memos discouraging overtime.

In other words, dire economic conditions require Channel 4 to continue holding the line on news operations. And to prove it, the station is paying Moyer $1 million-plus a year.

Whether coincidence or not, these conflicting messages symbolize the glaring double standard at Channel 4, which lured Moyer from KABC-TV Channel 7 with a glittery six-year contract reportedly worth more than $8 million at a time when its news-gathering operations are said by station sources to be slashed to the bone.

And at a time when the quality of its newscasts has perhaps never been lower or grimier.

“You get off the air some days and you want to have a shower,” says Keith Morrison, the station’s lame duck 6 p.m. news anchor who shortly will be taking his showers in Canada. He’s leaving soon to host the morning program “Canada A.M.” in his homeland.

Once described by an NBC News official as “one of those rare TV reporters who really cares about the quality of the work,” Morrison is a principled journalist whose disenchantment with Channel 4 predates the Moyer announcement. He had informed the station months ago that he wished to leave when his contract expired in August. However, that’s not to say he finds fault only with his own station’s newscasts.

“I don’t think the people of Los Angeles are well served by their local television,” he said. “I’m probably saying way too much, but somebody in this business has to tell the people in this city they’re getting screwed.”

The Moyer contract applies an exclamation point to that.

According to station sources, the probable new weekday anchor lineup with Moyer will have John Beard and Linda Alvarez at 4 p.m., Moyer and Wendy Tokuda at 5, Jess Marlow and Kelly Lange at 6 and Moyer and Tokuda at 11. Thus, Colleen Williams loses her 5 p.m. anchor job, and Beard and Lange are out at 11 p.m.

Moyer is returning to Channel 4 at a time when the station trails Channel 7 in overall news ratings after a few heady years at the top. And although both he and Channel 4 have said publicly that they don’t believe a single on-air individual can swiftly reverse a station’s news fortunes, the swankiness of Moyer’s deal--his reported perks include substituting for “Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw and “Today” host Bryant Gumbel--shouts otherwise.

There was another option open to Channel 4: Use the millions it is spending on Moyer to instead upgrade its news coverage. However, such a concept must have sounded musty and wheezingly geriatric to station management whose cynical view is that only personalities make newscasts and that viewers are too dull-witted to distinguish between good and bad coverage.

Making anchors into pontificating icons--thereby investing them with far more credibility than they deserve--is an enduring strategy of television news. The process takes on many exotic forms.

For example, at KCBS-TV Channel 2, a station whose news ethics make even Channel 4 look like Mother Teresa, news director John Lippman has attached an addendum to his earlier order that staffers reporting live from the field be quizzed about their stories on the air by anchors. A recent Lippman staff memo delivered this admonition to reporters: “In answering anchor questions or starting live shots after anchor introductions, don’t contradict anchors (as in, ‘Well, not exactly, Tritia . . . ‘).”

In other words, even if anchors misspeak or misinterpret an element of a story, they are not to be corrected on the air by reporters. Better the misinformation stand than anchor credibility or authority be undermined.

When it comes to Channel 4 losing quality journalists in the last year, meanwhile, add Morrison’s name to that of John Marshall and Bill Lagattuta, both of whom were let go. And some observers are predicting that anchorman Jess Marlow (“He’s the soul of this station,” said one news source) will be the next ejectee.

Morrison, who has evolved into a first-class correspondent while splitting time between Channel 4 and the NBC News Los Angeles bureau, has been telling colleagues for some time that he wanted to leave the local station. He arrived in 1986. “It’s just that it (local news) has stopped being journalism,” he said. “It’s turned into a race for ratings and money.”

Although raging seemingly for ages, that race has accelerated in today’s tabloid-driven era that finds Los Angeles’ network-owned stations, in particular, gushing gimmicks to attract viewers.

Morrison said his desire to leave Channel 4 intensified after it began joining other stations in lavishing large chunks of newscast time on meaningless live chopper coverage of police pursuing suspects across freeways. “It was after the first of the car chases that I decided to get out of there,” he said.

“There are some very good news people associated with this business, and some of them are at Channel 4. But I think the system has gone very sour. There’s something intrinsically wrong with it. It’s a tragedy that a city this size has to be fed such nonsense.”

Nonsense that all too often pushes out legitimate news.

“There is a fiscal crisis in this state that people should have seen coming for quite a while, and there is political turmoil in Sacramento that we should have seen coming,” said Morrison, citing lapses in coverage. “The city government is in turmoil, and we don’t know why. There is this whole element of news that should be on television, but they just won’t cover it. They won’t create the type of programs that can cover it. Instead, they (Channel 4) put ‘Hard Copy’ on the air.”

Not only put it on the air, moreover, but uses newscasts to promote it.

“This has nothing to do with Paul Moyer,” Morrison said. But he’s being too kind, for the Moyer hire is a blazing metaphor for the style-over-substance malignancy expanding in TV news.

By many accounts Moyer is a likable fellow, and he can’t be faulted for getting the best deal he can. Moreover, when it comes to communicating, there’s no better news anchor in town than Moyer. He has a smooth, easy, manner. He can read a news story with the best. Plus, he’s the Edward R. Murrow of anchor chitchat, the conversational Muzak that threads just about every local newscast.

But let’s get serious .

Forget Murrow. Moyer’s contract makes him sound like the Michael Jordan of local news--a dazzling whir of news insights and creativity--even though it’s highly likely he will be only a reader and play no significant editorial role in shaping the newscasts he will front.

Will viewers swarm to Channel 4 from Channel 7 merely because of Moyer’s camera charm, that engaging smile and cock of the head? Not exactly, Tritia.

Nor, according to this crystal ball, will “Eyewitness News” ratings dive merely because of Moyer’s departure. Besides, not to worry. It still has the Channel 7 NewsVan.