THE NATION : The Loss of Standards: Murrow, Meet Limbaugh

The Sunday morning talk shows may never be the same. The last 15 minutes or so of ABC’s stately news program, “This Week With David Brinkley,” are traditionally devoted to a conversation on the issues featuring Brinkley and three working journalists. Thus, viewers tuning in last Sunday may have been surprised to see Brinkley joined by regulars Cokie Roberts of ABC News, columnist George F. Will and--filling in for vacationing newsman Sam Donaldson--Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk-show host extraordinaire.

Now, Limbaugh clearly has opinions on the issues of our time. And it’s clear why ABC might want to crown him “Commentator for a Day”: If even a fraction of his radio audience would have considered tuning into Sunday’s show, Brinkley’s ratings could have gone through the roof. But, surely, Limbaugh’s most fervent fans would concede their hero is no journalist--or anything like an impartial analyst.

Still, his status on that show, if only for a day, is symbolic of much that has happened to the reporting profession--if not the culture--in the last decade or so. Across the dial, NBC’s “Meet the Press”that Sunday spent its last segment inviting a studio audience to ask questions--not of the guest, but of the reporters, giving new meaning to the title “Meet the Press.” (Did anyone ask host and NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert what kind of underwear he favors?)

In an age where Larry King is the new Walter Lippmann and the National Enquirer is considered as valid a source of O.J. Simpson news as the New York Times, maybe Limbaugh deserves to break bread with Brinkley. After all, now that journalists are loud-mouthed celebrities with opinions of their own, why shouldn’t any loud-mouthed celebrity with an opinion be deemed a journalist?

There has always been, of course, a rather thin line in reporting between objectivity and opinion, between keeping yourself out of the story and making yourself an integral part of it. The line seemed blurred as early as the 1930s, when gossip columnist Walter Winchell received press credentials to cover the Lindbergh kidnaping trial, thus legitimizing his status as a reporter and not just a rumor-monger. In the 1960s, the “new journalism” of Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese implicitly raised questions about whether journalistic tellers should separate themselves from their tales.

In the 1970s, Watergate was a rather traditional news story, but Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein became so lionized that the culture--and a genera tion of journalists--forgot the story was not about them but about what they were reporting. And even the 1980s, an issue about crossing the line arose for Will, when it was revealed he had helped prepare Ronald Reagan for a 1980 presidential debate, while simultaneously commenting about the campaign.

Still, this trend has clearly accelerated during the past decade. Some of it is endemic to changes in journalism itself: What might be called “the CNN and news-radio effect.” Unlike the old days, when there were, at most, two news cycles a day, there is now a 24-hour demand for information. That means the network news and newspapers have to provide a different product than they once did, because they assume people get their headlines elsewhere.

The result has been a considerable broadening of what is regarded as reportable news and analysis--much of it far less objectively verifiable than in the past. We now have fields of news that didn’t exist 15 years ago, such as entertainment reporting. News from the tabloids is considered fair game. Call-in shows put forward any “expert” they can drum up, while encouraging callers to speculate and gossip. Some TV commentary itself is close to staged: “Crossfire” and “The McLaughlin Group” are to James Reston and Edward R. Murrow what pro wrestling is to sports.

Because of the incessant demand, news is also presented more quickly to the public, with the inevitable result that there’s a far thinner line between fact and rumor--one reason why personal details about celebrities get reported more quickly, if not falsely--than before.

As reporting has become more personality-driven, subjective and less informed by fact, the public has drawn the somewhat logical conclusion that the subjective and uninformed can now become reporters. Often, vacuous listeners on call-in shows such as King’s or Limbaugh’s replace journalists as questioners or analysts, and tabloids receive the same accreditation as papers with respected standards of publication.

What’s more, as journalists have sought to become celebrities in their own right, they have found themselves lumped with other celebrities--who are, as Daniel Boorstin once noted, simply people known for being well-known. Thus, the essential attribute for the modern television pundit is not necessarily having anything to say but being well-known enough to say anything.

Keep in mind, too, that television is a medium of entertainment--even as it presents news and analysis. Yet, once again, as news has become entertaining, entertainers have flocked to news and made it their own. David Letterman, like Johnny Carson before him, may be the culture’s most widely quoted pundit, the new Eric Sevareid.

The whole culture of television also celebrates the reporters, analysts and anchors vis-a-vis the actual news. On this medium, the personal really is the political. Whereas a newspaper once tended to promote its substance (“All the news that’s fit to print”), television hypes the people who “bring you the news”--the bigger the better. And if that’s the standard, few right now are bigger than Limbaugh.

This is all part of a far larger cultural pattern--the babble of a postmodern age that has seen feeling gain preeminence over thought, while elites collapse. If the public doesn’t believe in the idea of objective journalistic analysis anymore, in large part, this is because it doesn’t believe in experts of any sort--whether they’re Los Angeles Police Department blood technicians, career politicians or journalists. The public has come to the somewhat typical American populist conclusion that these folks are in it for themselves and have lost touch with their constituencies. Besides, anyone can do these jobs, right?

At the same time, as others have noted, the concept of objectivity itself is under attack. Feelings are “in”--whether you are talking about the victim culture of TV talk shows or the whole deconstructionist movement on campuses. After all, it was the narcissistic baby boomers who made the world safe for the slogan, “If it feels good, do it.” If Oliver Stone can be an authority on the Kennedy assassination and Susan Powter a motivational guru, surely Limbaugh can be an ABC pundit.

The public does have a point: As the culture grows increasingly stratified, elites have tended to separate themselves and go up the income scale, while everyone else seems to slide down. Sometimes the “objective” thinkers don’t have the answers: Just ask Robert S. McNamara.

The problem, however, is that a world of subjectivity without professionals is a world ultimately without standards or expertise. Walter Cronkite used to say, “That’s the way it is,” not “That’s the way it seems to me.” Nor can news be ceaselessly entertaining--as we were reminded again last week. There’s something to be said for Limbaugh, but not in that role, on these shows. The jugglers have invaded the cathedral.

Say good night, Chet.