Novel Take From Idealistic Cynic : Media: Jeff Greenfield humorously outlines what would happen if a President-elect died after the balloting.

Sharing a plane ride with Dan Rather some years ago, Jeff Greenfield started talking to the CBS News anchor about journalism. Why, he wondered, is it so important to be 10 minutes ahead of everyone else? “What’s wrong with the way [the analytical French newspaper] Le Monde does it? You get there a couple of days later, but you find out what’s going on.”

Rather reacted with stunned disbelief. “Dan looked at me,” Greenfield recalled, laughing, “as if I’d just said, ‘Who needs these silly Ten Commandments, anyway?’

“Dan’s first instinct is to follow the story, in that classic journalistic tradition that is a good thing for this country. I’ve known the adrenaline rush of being on deadline--but I’m much happier sitting back and thinking about something for a while.”

In a beat that is still unusual for television, Greenfield sits back and looks at TV and the media environment in which the nation is swimming.

Beginning in 1979 as a critic for CBS’ “Sunday Morning” and then for the past dozen years at ABC News, Greenfield has deconstructed and commented on the media and politics. He had come to television after stints as a consultant and speech writer for New York Mayor John Lindsay and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Now, in a classic case of the realist’s revenge, the 52-year-old commentator has put into fiction some of his experiences and thoughts about the two worlds in which he has traveled.

“The relationship between people in politics and people in the media has been compared to bad-faith sex,” Greenfield said. “You use people, there’s no emotional attachment, but you get something out of it.”

Despite the sound of that statement, “The People’s Choice” is a comic novel that is idealistic as well as cynical. Praised by critics for its humor and dialogue, Greenfield’s work imagines what might happen if, two days after a presidential election, the newly elected President suddenly died. The result would be a constitutional crisis that would throw the selection of the next President to an obscure bunch of people known as the Electoral College.

“No one really knows what would happen in such a situation,” said Greenfield. “You’d have reporters out trying to find and interview electors, people that nobody has ever heard of, and politicians trying to take over.”

“The People’s Choice”--which has been optioned for development as a theatrical film by Savoy Pictures--satirizes some of the conventions and personalities of TV news: the “distinguished commentator” who spouts platitudes, the “crisis” graphics of a certain All News Network, the political reporter who so lives for the campaign trail that he would leave his 5-year-old daughter crying with her mother at the zoo if he were summoned to a story by a beeper call from the boss.

“That happened to a journalist-friend of mine who was desperate for time with his kid,” Greenfield said.

Asked whether he believes cynicism in the media has contributed to cynicism about politics, Greenfield responded: “Americans have always been cynical about politicians; what’s new and disturbing is that many people feel their vote no longer counts. There are many factors--the decline of political parties, the move to the suburbs--that have contributed to the voter ‘disconnect.’ But I do think TV has made politics appear to be more of a spectator sport--while, contradictorily, giving people a feeling of the power they ought to have because ‘these politicians are in my living room and ought to be listening to me.’ ”

Greenfield likes to use TV to analyze TV. He once put a “think track” (a voice going, “Hmmm. . . .”) as opposed to a “laugh track” on a story.

Greenfield hasn’t veered from turning his critical spotlight on his own company. When “Nightline,” the late-night program for which he does most of his reporting, did a program this spring on communications legislation in Congress, Greenfield, noting recent attacks on television in Congress, said, “A lot of the folks in Congress . . . are very, very angry at big media. In fact, they’re so angry at these big media conglomerates that Congress is about to give them more power and more money than they ever dreamed of.”

Ted Koppel noted on the air that all four major networks had declined to comment for the “Night-line” story and added that, while the management at Capital Cities/ABC would never tell “Night-line” not to cover a story, “neither is any of us under the impression that they are especially happy” with the program’s choice of topic.

Is Greenfield worried that the “hands-off” attitude of senior management might change now that ABC is in the process of being acquired by the Walt Disney Co.?

“Is it worse that we’re going to be a subset of [Disney chairman] Michael Eisner than that NBC News is a subset of General Electric, one of the biggest defense contractors, or that CBS is owned by a guy [Laurence Tisch] who owns a tobacco company?” he responded. “The potential [for abuse] in conglomeratization is troubling, particularly on the global stage. But TV networks have always been subsets of companies with other fish to fry. As bad correspondents say, only time will tell how these mergers will work out. All I can tell you is that my bosses at Cap Cities have always supported me on the kinds of stories I do.”