Out of the Anchor Chair, Into the Fray

Cannon to the right of them,

Cannon to the left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volley’d and thunder’d;

Storm’d at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell

Rode the ... network anchors.

That’s not quite the way England’s 19th century poet laureate, Alfred Tennyson, wrote “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Nor is this the Crimea.

But good morning, America, isn’t that ABC’s Charles Gibson, usually genial in New York, now greeting viewers as window dressing from Jerusalem? Also MSNBC anchor Brian Williams, doing triple duty from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on NBC’s “Today” and “Nightly News” as well as on his own cable newscast?

And if any Los Angeles viewers had two TV sets tuned simultaneously to CBS and CNN at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, they saw a pair of bush-jacketed Dan Rathers, one on videotape anchoring “The CBS Evening News” from Jerusalem, the other live from Jerusalem checking in with Larry King.

“Danger is my business,” Rather informed his rapt CNN interviewer in Los Angeles.

Cameras to the right of them, cameras to the left of them, cameras in front of them, into the bloody maw of Israeli-Palestinian violence they charged: Last week ABC’s Peter Jennings and NBC’s Tom Brokaw jetting in for a look, this week “Good Morning America” co-host Gibson, Williams and battle-tested Rather surging to the forefront of their networks’ coverage, as President Bush on Thursday urged Israel to “halt incursions” and withdraw from territory it has recently occupied.

It’s been the biggest gathering of media Mt. Rushmores abroad perhaps since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when Rather and Jennings were airlifted to West Berlin to join at the hip with Brokaw in front of the Brandenburg Gate, before scaling that once-notorious freedom barrier on ladders like Batman.

That historic event delivered optimism, euphoria and chills up the spine. Now comes the Middle East, where the loudest, most deafening blast of Jewish-Arab hatred in years features relentless Palestinian suicide bombings that slaughter Israeli civilians and powerful Israeli forces grinding up defiant Palestinians while rolling across the West Bank.

The presence of news stars is hardly needed to signify the enormity of what is happening now. Network anchors by tradition, though, are not only journalist-presenters but human exclamation points. The message (a questionable one) is that having them on the scene somehow lifts the level of reporting and commitment.

So naturally KABC-TV brought Los Angeles viewers Travels With Charlie by satellite early Thursday. “Can you tell us a little bit about those [control zones]?” an “Eyewitness News” anchor asked Gibson, the station’s designated expert in one of those curious TV dialogues where journalists quiz each other.

Later, Jennings, too, interviewed Gibson. On the Fox News Channel, commentator Tony Snow interviewed anchor Brit Hume. On MSNBC, an anchor and reporter interviewed NBC’s Washington bureau chief and “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert.

And on CBS Thursday morning, prior to Bush saying he will send Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Middle East, “Early Show” co-host Jane Clayson asked Rather from New York: “Can you tell us what will break this impasse?” To his credit, Rather said he didn’t know.

By then, however, he’d already etched himself into this ugly history by reporting at length Monday and Tuesday about a Palestinian car bomber whose explosive detonated prematurely at a checkpoint between East and West Jerusalem that Rather and his crew had passed moments earlier. They peeled back, camera rolling.

Although this was a relatively minor explosion that killed only the bomber, CBS played it big because of the Rather group’s close proximity and because it had footage. “There was this muffled varoom,” he told Clayson, assigned by her show to debrief Rather this week. “Take care, and be safe,” she later told him.

“This war is not about journalists, [and] frankly too much can be made of this,” Rather said after describing the bomb incident again, this time to the inquiring King.

“Does it not give you ... a greater understanding what it’s like living day after day there?” King wondered.

“You just have to walk the ground, be here, to experience it,” Rather replied.

Other feet have preceded him. The shriveled foreign presence of the networks in the last decade notwithstanding, Israel is one place abroad where they still maintain bureaus, along with veterans with the talent and experience to probe beneath the surface. As in CBS correspondent Bob Simon’s notably smart and balanced story on Wednesday’s “60 Minutes II” about “transfer”--a proposal for removing Arabs from the area--that has gained stature among mainstream Israelis after this latest crush of suicide bombings.

It’s no wonder that Simon’s piece stood out.

So-called golden ages are rarely what they’re said to be, and it’s not as if network news ever earned the icon status amnesiacs grant it. Television by definition is too dependent on pictures to inform the public fully, moreover. And even before he passed CBS anchorship to Rather, Walter Cronkite was accurately branding TV news essentially a headline service. That title not only still applies today, but the stories beneath the headlines seem generally shorter and thinner than ever.

The networks can still rise to an epic challenge, evidenced by Sept. 11, when they, and ABC News and Jennings in particular, distinguished themselves in the initial aftermath of terrorist attacks on the U.S. in coverage that Americans tuned to by the multitudes. The present Israeli-Palestinian war is another of those times when TV’s combat reporting is sometimes high, given limits placed on media by the Israelis.

Yet Brokaw, Jennings and Rather appear to be the John Cameron Swayzes of this age, destined to be rendered obsolete, along with many of their colleagues and the eroding tradition they represent, by economics, changing tastes, shrunken news holes and the technologies of the Internet and cable.

“Dan Rather, on the scene in Jerusalem,” King announced at one point Tuesday. You can’t escape the feeling, however, that this brigade’s war-zone charge may be one of its last.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted at howard.rosenberg @latimes.com.