But Are They Still Journalists? : Terry Murphy, Doug Bruckner and Jodi Baskerville don’t miss their hard-news days. On ‘Hard Copy,’ they report stories people care about. Like O.J. and Brad Pitt’s hair.

Just a few years back, they were reporting on such issues as infants born with AIDS, the fallout of the L.A. riots and government malfeasance. Today they relentlessly chase such tidbits as Brad Pitt’s new haircut or revelations at Princess Di’s latest seance.

“I used to read the New York Times every day. Now I read the Enquirer,” says Terry Murphy, former news anchor at KCBS-TV Channel 2 and KABC-TV Channel 7 and now co-anchor of “Hard Copy.”

Murphy is one of three former L.A. news reporters who are now stars of the most popular tabloid TV show in the land. She is joined by Doug Bruckner, who worked for eight years as an investigative reporter at KNBC-TV Channel 4, and Jodi Baskerville, who covered breaking news for KCBS until about a year ago, to make up three-fifths of the on-camera talent on “Hard Copy”: three former Los Angeles news reporters gone national--national tabloid. (Another former local news reporter, Tony Cox, works at a rival tabloid, “Inside Edition.”)

“I don’t feel like I’ve sold out. I don’t feel like I’m working for something like the National Enquirer,” insists Bruckner, even though “Hard Copy,” like the newspaper tabloids, sometimes pays for interviews. “As far as the integrity of the stories I’ve done (is concerned), I don’t make up quotes, everything is checked and double-checked, and I haven’t compromised any of the ethics I maintained as a local news reporter.”

Bruckner has reason to sound defensive. During the course of its six seasons, “Hard Copy” has been vilified by some critics as “repulsive” and “the closest TV equivalent of those spurious scandal sheets, the National Enquirer and the Star.” Others have criticized it for encouraging television news outlets to adopt some of the tabloids’ more sensationalistic tendencies in an effort to compete for viewer attention. Radio, TV and newspaper journalists lament that such shows have tainted them all in the minds of the public, which, they contend, blames all of the media for the supposed sins of “Hard Copy” and its ilk.

But even though Bruckner and co-anchor Barry Nolan appeared as themselves in a recent episode of the NBC sitcom “The Mommies,” in which they helped poke fun at the frequent ridiculousness of their own show, Bruckner, Murphy and Baskerville argue that all the gnashing of teeth over their work is essentially nothing more than hyperbole and newspaper critic snobbery.

“I just look at it as fun,” Murphy says. “Any story in our program would in the old days be the entertainment story or kicker of a newscast that everyone laughed about. We’re a whole show of that. By our natures, we are far more interested in Brad Pitt’s haircut, and whether or not we like it, than in the line-item veto. It’s an unfortunate fact of life, but it’s true.”

Bruckner agrees: “I think the mainstream press wants to lump us in with the Weekly World News and stories about aliens meeting with Ross Perot to discuss political strategy. Newspaper people have a disgust that our show is even on the air. But we admit that we’re not ‘MacNeil/Lehrer,’ and we never will be. We’re on against reruns of ‘Married . . . With Children’ and ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.’ What are you going to learn more from: watching reruns of those sitcoms or watching our show?”

*

All three acknowledge that “Hard Copy”--based at Paramount Studios in Hollywood--has earned its outrageous reputation, especially in its first few years, when nearly every show featured grisly crime stories and sleazy trailer park trysts. But they claim it has improved, especially in the last year or so, as it has focusedon celebrity sightings, gossip and never-ending reports on such events as the sex allegations against Michael Jackson, his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley and the O.J. Simpson case.

They also insist that, whatever their show’s reputation, it is no worse than what passes for local TV news today. Those newscasts have degenerated during the past decade, they say, becoming more and more trivial and tabloid-oriented.

“Initially, my former colleagues couldn’t believe it,” said Murphy, who has been with “Hard Copy” since it began in 1989. “ ‘You’ve spent your whole career in news--how can you do this?’ But the truth is, I wasn’t spending most of my days in local news doing series on children with AIDS. I was sitting behind an anchor desk reading copy and teases that today use all of that same ‘You’ll only hear it here’ and ‘Channel 2 exclusive’ kind of language that is just hype anyway.”

“We don’t cover city council or politics here, but we weren’t doing all that much of that where I was before either,” said Baskerville, who worked at KCBS from 1990 to 1994. “We did tabloid news. Anything sensational, or over the top, or ‘if it bleeds, it leads’-type stuff. I’m not doing anything like that here. Maybe you’d rather show people how the schools are failing and how some children are starving, but it doesn’t sell like curiosity about grisly murders or celebrity divorces. And those stories that you or I consider important weren’t being emphasized at those so-called newscasts I was working on. So I don’t see it in any way as a step down.”

Murphy wound up at “Hard Copy” because she had lost her job at Channel 2 after a pregnancy leave--she now has two boys ages 10 and 6--and her priority was to find work that allowed her to spend time with her children and husband rather than coming home at midnight after anchoring the 11 p.m. news. “Hard Copy” tapes here each day before noon because it has to be fed by satellite to stations around the country by the early afternoon, so Murphy is able to finish up her day by about 1 p.m.

As for Baskerville, she was simply cranking out story after story, day after day, at KCBS, without any time for thought, she said. After losing her job there, the appeal of national exposure, a large salary--more than double the average pay for a local news reporter--and often several weeks to work on her reports made taking the “Hard Copy” job a no-brainer.

*

But Bruckner’s case was different. He was a serious journalist with aspirations of working on a network newsmagazine, covering substantial topics and personalities. Leading the investigative unit at Channel 4, he often worked months on long-form reports “that sometimes saved people’s lives, or at least tried to do some good.”

To cut costs, Bruckner said, Channel 4 disbanded that investigative unit in the late 1980s, and he was forced to “take a step backward” and become a general assignment reporter, cranking out 90-second stories on much more trivial subjects. He left in 1988 after a contract dispute.

*

Bruckner worked free-lance as a reporter at KABC, then signed on to the yet-to-premiere “Hard Copy” in 1989. At first, he didn’t know what the show would be. The producers described it as “ ’60 Minutes’ with attitude,” a mix of serious journalism and celebrity gossip. The serious journalism, Bruckner said, soon evolved into true-crime stories, although he said he is “very proud” of the half-hour pieces he reported and produced on such topics as Betty Broderick, the La Jolla socialite who killed her ex-husband and his new wife, and Charles Manson--interviewed four years ago by Bruckner in his prison cell--and the families of his victims.

Bruckner--who in recent years has also taken on the role of the voice of “Hard Copy,” narrating the breathless opening of the show that is replete with teasing, tawdry headlines such as “Loni’s Secret Shame”--concedes that the show is an easy target for criticism. Those rabid headlines, even if in bad taste, are necessary to grab an audience poised to flip to sitcoms, game shows, other tabloids, ESPN or MTV, he said. But he won’t allow anyone to blame “Hard Copy” for the decline in American discourse or lowering the standards of other news broadcasts.

“The whole American culture is celebrity-obsessed to our detriment, and, sure, ‘Hard Copy’ and People magazine promote this culture of celebrity. But so do Time and Newsweek when they put celebrities on the cover,” he argued. “There’s all this unnecessary gnashing of teeth about what we’re doing, but local news was going that direction long before ‘Hard Copy’ was created. Sex, violence and celebrities are ratings-getters, and ratings is what TV is about.

“I used to be able to do stories about real heroes like scientists and teachers. I did a five-part series on the best teachers in Southern California back at Channel 4. I couldn’t do that now even if I was still there. I would love to do stories on a real hero. But it doesn’t get ratings like Brad Pitt or Tonya Harding.”

Linda Bell Blue, the executive producer of “Hard Copy,” herself a former news producer at KCBS who covered the 1984 Democratic National Convention, said that her show even does a service to the American public by cutting through the carefully managed image crafted by celebrity publicists and continually on display on local news, network morning programs and the late-night talk shows.

“Celebrities try to set their agenda and put out a particular story,” she said. “And that story is very often not close to being accurate. Many shows simply spit that out, and I think the audience feels cheated by that. We try as best we can to see through that managed agenda.”

*

But after doing so many stories on what psychics say about O.J. Simpson’s fate or Cher’s new tattoo/Harley-Davidson/lover boy, can these once-legitimate reporters ever cross back over into news? When Deborah Norville, the former network news reporter, announced early this year that she was taking the job as host of rival tabloid “Inside Edition,” for example, some of her ex-colleagues at the networks scoffed that she would never be able to return.

Rick Feldman, general manager of KCOP-TV Channel 13, downplays the perceived credibility gap between news and the so-called tabloids, pointing out that “Hard Copy” & Co. have gone no more berserk than network and local news shows in their coverage of the Simpson murder case, a story he believes is fundamentally irrelevant to most people.

“I just don’t think you can draw distinctions anymore,” he said. “The tabloid world is both newsy and tabloidy, and today’s news, even the network newsmagazines, is both tabloidy and newsy. ‘Hard Copy’ does investigative reports that are more newsy than many you see on the news.”

Sherrie Mazingo, chair of the broadcast journalism department at USC, who has “systematically studied” the content of the tabloid shows, said that “Hard Copy” and its counterparts do produce substantive, solid reports “with stories that are put together with just as fine an editorial and production quality as any so-called legitimate television news program. The only difference is that the quality journalism is mixed in with stories on bizarre, sleazy topics that sometimes go beyond the bounds of decency and good taste. But otherwise the reporting is the same.”

As a result, Mazingo believes “Hard Copy” reporters could find work on more mainstream newscasts. It’s a question that comes up in the ethics class she teaches at USC. Although she doesn’t think a network news executive--sensitive to the overall reputation of the department--could afford to hire a tabloid reporter, Mazingo tells her students that “it is no disgrace to work for one of these ‘infotainment’ shows and they would have no trouble moving on to any local station in the country.”

“That makes the pill go down easier,” she added, “but I also tell them that they have a responsibility to bring a higher ethical standard to the coverage and reporting while they are there.”

Baskerville, 29, acknowledged that she was initially worried about the effect “Hard Copy” might have on her future, but since starting there last fall, she said, she has received two job offers from news organizations. Murphy, who like Bruckner is in her 40s, said that the show has probably limited her chances of working in news outside of Los Angeles. But within Los Angeles--where she is sure viewers remember her previous television incarnation--she said that she is confident she could return to news if she ever wanted to.

Bruckner conceded that he’d now never find a job as a network news reporter, but he is certain he could easily go back to local news at any time. Neither of those possibilities appeal to him, however.

“I hope someday to do something closer to A&E; or Learning Channel stuff, strange as that sounds from a ‘Hard Copy’ reporter,” he said. “In high school I remember seeing films on art and history that really fired my imagination, and I hope to be able to do the same thing someday.”

Of his experience with “Hard Copy,” he said: “I had the opportunity to do a national show, make a good salary, reach a big audience and have a lot of fun. But I really don’t imagine spending my whole life as a tabloid reporter. I don’t want to be Steve Dunleavy (the Australian-born reporter on “A Current Affair”), who was supposedly the guy parodied in ‘Natural Born Killers.’ I don’t want to be the role model for the next one.”