Back when network television news could send seismic waves through political, diplomatic and corporate realms on a nightly basis, Roger Mudd felt like a big deal and the real deal.
Now, as he reaches age 80, Mudd looks back at the nearly 20 years he spent in the CBS News Washington bureau, mostly covering the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, but also working on breaking news stories, anchoring the Saturday evening newscast and sometimes substituting during the weeknights for legendary anchor Walter Cronkite.
Mudd could have written a primarily nostalgic account and probably found a publisher. Instead, he painstakingly examined the notes he kept during the 1960s, ’70s and into the ’80s, as well as interviewing almost every living colleague and direct competitor from the glory days.
Yes, nostalgia enters the text from time to time. It is mixed with disappointment and anger. Mudd left CBS at the beginning of the 1980s, when the corporate owners chose correspondent Dan Rather instead of Mudd himself. Both seemed worthy, given their hard news credentials and their hard work.
Mudd is candid in revealing that he felt more worthy than Rather, and in suggesting that he had received positive signals about warming the Cron- kite seat.
After departing the top-rated television network for news, Mudd reported for rival NBC and narrated at the History Channel on cable before retiring from on-air appearances. Despite many fulfilling moments at those employers, Mudd, by his own admission, “never truly ceased being a CBS man.”
Like a true lover, Mudd feels free to point out flaws in his colleagues, as well as strengths, giving the memoir a welcome edginess.
Rather takes the hardest hits, but Mudd also details shortcomings of Ed Bradley, Connie Chung, Marvin Kalb, Harry Reasoner, Daniel Schorr, Eric Sevareid, Lesley Stahl and others. And he injects humor and occasional nastiness; none of the candor feels gratuitous.
No matter whom he praises and criticizes, Mudd comes back again and again to the Washington bureau personnel. He calls them “a proud, competitive and talented cadre of reporters, correspondents, producers, editors and executives who so dominated the network’s news division that it became almost an independent duchy.”
Mudd certainly does not fail to single himself out for praise, and certainly does not spare himself from criticism. He understands the shortcomings of his personality and how his quirks and his outbursts caused anguish in the CBS corporate suites.
In addition, Mudd fills the pages of his memoir with stories about politicians, bureaucrats and private-sector celebrities, perhaps most compellingly John F., Robert and Edward Kennedy.
More educator than gossip, Mudd clearly wants to enlighten contemporary readers about how and why first-rate network television journalism occurred more frequently during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s than it does today.
He is a fine teacher.
Steve Weinberg, who writes in Columbia, Mo., is author of the just-published dual biography “Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller.”
Nonfiction
The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and the Glory Days of Television, by Roger Mudd, $27.95
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, the photo caption misidentified one of the three television anchormen pictured. They are Robert Trout, Roger Mudd and Eric Sevareid.
