Nose for TV News Does Not Imply Sense of Style

T he Walter Winchell days--when reporters were nearly always male, nearly always invisible and nearly always dressed in the clothes they slept in--ended forever with the coming of television. At first it was enough to simply not look offensive. But today, TV reporters and anchors use their wardrobes as a kind of lever toward greater acceptance and credibility. Is this proper? And does it work?

HE: From what I’ve heard and read, Edward R. Murrow was probably the first TV reporter to dress exceptionally well. But it wasn’t just on the air, and I don’t believe it was affected. Murrow spent a lot of time in London broadcasting on radio during the war and he got used to Savile Row tailoring. And that’s what he continued to wear when he started doing “See It Now.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Dan Rather, Murrow’s latest heir apparent at CBS, also wears Savile Row suits. But he also wore Afghan robes and a four-day beard while he covered the Russia-Afghanistan war, and I think he heads for Banana Republic every time he has to go to a country where the temperature is greater than 70 degrees. Come on.

SHE: I never see Barbara Walters on television in anything less than a perfectly cut power suit, tailored silk shirt and tasteful jewelry. Years ago she set the “tailored” standard for women in broadcast journalism when she dressed to be taken seriously. Even her hair and makeup is styled not to distract.

When I see female television journalists looking cute or trendy I cringe. For example, newscaster Kelly Lange’s long, tousled, “I-wanna-be-young!” locks drive me nuts. I’m so busy thinking how she should cut it, act her age, I can hardly pay attention to what she’s saying.

HE: I had a broadcast journalism professor in college who referred to all TV news types as “the bouffants.” I loved the guy.

He thought pros like the late Bill Stout, who wore straight-ahead suits on the air and was balding, were saints. Ruth Ashton-Taylor, who worked with Stout at KNXT, was the same way. Neat, clean, but no foppery. You knew that they weren’t dressing to dazzle you. The story was the star, not them.

But now . . . . It’s getting silly. Arthur Kent covers the Gulf War for NBC in designer khakis, and people start calling him the “Scud Stud.” Deliver me.

SHE: Maybe the viewers have something to do with it. Face it, we hanker for the coordinated look in every area of our life. Kent covering the war in a Brooks Brothers suit would have seemed absurd. Even a sport coat would have looked out of place. Khakis in that case were the less distracting choice. And the sobriquet “Scud Stud” probably said more about the public’s need to diffuse the seriousness of his report than it did about Kent’s sartorial style.

HE: I don’t expect somebody to cover a brush fire or a hurricane in blue pin stripes, but I do think there’s a kind of precious self-consciousness about any reporter who gets on the air these days. They all seem to be trying to ratchet up the gravity of every situation they’re in, and they use their clothes, in part, to do it.

If they’re interviewing celebrities, they dress like celebrities. If they’re doing a winter weather story from Big Bear, they’re turned out in the latest designer ski clothes. If they’re covering a border war, they dress like Che Guevara. They think they’re stars. They’re not.

SHE: But they are. If only by virtue of their exposure. And so is the news. Their goal, I think, is to balance style with substance. I can handle them in clothing coordinated to a news site. What I can’t handle is misguided cuteness: sweeping false eyelashes, a super-glossed mouth, a guy whose face is cracked with pancake makeup. Again, it distracts. My pet peeve: an off-kilter rug!

HE: The issue, I think, goes beyond mere fashion and into the realm of journalism-as-vaudeville. News is not entertainment. News is news. Anchors are not stars. They’re news readers (which is their official title, by the way, if they happen to work for the BBC).

If you dress the anchors in Armani, the field reporters in Gap prole-chic and the unnaturally revved-up weather guy in nouveau country-and-Western (yes; I saw KNBC’s Christopher Nance in just such an outfit recently), you turn a legitimate enterprise into a dog-and-pony show.

SHE: Blame it on the vaudeville-starved public. When viewers switch those bad-news loaded dials, my bet is they’re looking for a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. So give ‘em sugar--Nance in cowboy boots, Kent in khakis, Kelly with short tousled hair--but be sure you give ‘em the facts . Theatrical style is OK. But it will never be a substitute for substance.