Walter Cronkite and Network

Walter Cronkite, The movie Network

Walter Cronkite died July 17th, 2009. He was 92. He was an American icon, a great newsman and television pioneer. What struck me was the reaction to his death. On the night his death was announced, Rachel Maddow spent most of her program paying tribute to the CBS anchorman. My impression as I was that the coverage mirrored the reaction to Michael Jackson's death except that it had more gravitas. Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw, were interviewed by phone, both men gave moving tributes. The intensity was the same, but the tenor was different. Instead of pictures of Michael with Bubbles the Chimp, there was a clip of Cronkite in an Air Force transport reporting on prospective astronauts experiencing the effects of weightlessness, along with other clips of Cronkite's reporting such as political convention, space launches, and narrating the nightly news.

While I watched Maddow's reporting, I was reminded of the 1976 movie Network. Cronkite's daughter Kathy, was in the movie. Network was directed by Sidney Lumet, worked with Cronkite. When Network was released in 2006, Walter Cronkite was interviewed about the film as one of the dvd's extra segments. That was how I got started comparing Maddow's show to Network, and its faux news program which is refered to by Wikipedia as

The Network News Hour (referred to as The Howard Beale Show): The retooled news show featuring segments with "Sybil the Soothsayer", "Jim Webbing and his It's-the-Honest-Truth-department", "Miss Mata Hari and her skeletons in the closet" as well as "Vox Populi." The show also opens with editorial by Howard who goes on ranting and raving until he passes out.
As I watched Rachel Maddow, (whose program, I enjoy by the way,) I was wondering if it was that dissimilar from the Howard Beale Hour. The answer is probably very similar the Howard Beale Hour. Times change and the world has changed since Network was in theaters in 1976. Network news has changed dramatically since Cronkite retired in 1981.

I watch MSNBC because it is entertaining and it also has news. But there is a problem with mixing news and entertainment. As Howard Beale points out,

You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here, you're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do. Why, whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs. source: The Internet Movie Database

Dan Heaton in a 2006 review of the Dvd, on digitallyobsessed, mentions that Cronkite was interviewed about the film.

Legendary television newsman Walter Cronkite worked with Lumet on the You Are There series in the '50s. He shares his opinions about the film in this final segment, and while he admires the movie considerably, he regards it as a comedy. Cronkite does recognize the dangers of media consolidation and offers interesting comments on the subject.

Sidney Lumet was interviewed by the Associated Press on Feb. 22, 2006, the article's author mentioned Lumet, Cronkite and Network

Lumet’s career began in television, notably directing CBS’ “You Are There,” anchored by Walter Cronkite. (The show, offered re-enactments of historical events, thus blending show-biz with news.) On the “Network” DVD, Cronkite, a good friend of Lumet’s, remembers first watching the film with his CBS cohorts.

“We howled with laughter, rolled over on the floor with the depiction of [TV news],” he says.
But Cronkite says he considered “Network” an exaggeration and recalls being concerned people would think it represented the truth about TV news.

In another interview, published in the May 2003 issue of DGA Monthly Lumet says,

"Once [Network] it opened, everybody kept saying, 'Oh, what a brilliant satire.' But Paddy [Chayefsky, screenwriter] and I always said, 'This isn't satire, it's sheer reportage.' We were both brought up in television, so we knew what we were dealing with. But I've got to tell you — I don't think I've seen it in 20 years (I don't usually like to look at my work) — I'm stunned at how prescient it is. A lot of what was hilarious 25 years ago got no laughter tonight because it has all come true. So it hits you with a kind of impact that was not originally intended."

Glen Abel, in his review of the Network Dvd, for the blog DVD Spin Doctor also commented on Network's prescience.

Writer Chayefsky, equally mad as hell, used his black comedy about a raggedy fourth TV network to denounce the hypocrisies of 1976 and warn of media evils to come.
Like his creation Sybil the Soothsayer, "Paddy was capable of seeing the future," director Sidney Lumet says. Chayefsky warned of entertainment masquerading as news, corporate meddling, violent reality shows, the tyranny of ratings, foreign ownership of U.S. media -- essentially the strip-mining of what already was a vast wasteland.

The vision that the movie displayed so eloquently is alive today," producer Howard Gottfried maintains. Adds Lumet, "TV today has become its own satire."

There is one current television personality who apparently does not see the satire or the sadness of Network. That personality is Fox News Glen Beck, who according to an article in the March 29, 2009 New York Times, identifies with Network's deranged protagonist, Howard Beale. According to the article,

In an interview, Mr. Beck, who recently rewatched the 1976 film “Network,” said he identified with the character of Howard Beale, the unhinged TV news anchorman who declares on the air that he is “mad as hell.”

“I think that’s the way people feel,” Mr. Beck said. “That’s the way I feel.” In part because of Mr. Beck, Fox News — long identified as the favored channel for conservatives and Republican leaders — is enjoying a resurgence just two months into Mr. Obama’s term. While always top-rated among cable news channels, Fox’s ratings slipped during the long Democratic primary season last year. Now it is back on firm footing as the presumptive network of the opposition, with more than 1.2 million viewers watching at any given time, about twice as many as CNN or MSNBC.

Sadly Beck, misses an important point, the in the movie Network, newsman Howard Beale is mentally deranged. Hal Broedecker in his The TV Guy and More Blog for Orlando Sentinel wrote on March 31, 2009 that, Beck's comment about Beale might make some people go back and review the movie in a different, light.

Maybe that comment will send more people back to the movie to see Peter Finch's brilliant, Oscar-winning performance as Beale. Beale becomes a public favorite with his "mad as hell" rant, but here are some points to remember:
1. He goes off his rocker.
2. He becomes a pawn in the story.
3. He is used and discarded with harrowing results. Bad ratings can kill you.
Beale is in no way a hero. He is a fad. His madness destroys his career. And he is a dead end.
Being "mad as hell" will take you only so far, writer Paddy Chayefsky explained. Does Beck understand that?

Probably not. Cronkite saw Network and was afraid people would take it as a depiction of current network news. I didn't see it that way. I loved the movie for its powerful, theatrical language, its satire and its cynicism. In 1976, I never really had any inkling that The Howard Beale Hour would become a template for many network and cable television shows. But when I see the movie now, I marvel that life has imitated satire.

I mourn the passing Walter Cronkite. As I watched news coverage of his death, I wondered about his relationship and reaction to Sidney Lumet's masterpiece Network. There is a connection. Cronkite knew Lumet, his daughter had a role in the movie. His original impressions as he and perhaps some of his CBS colleagues watched the movie was that it was outrageous satire, a comedy. But what I'd like to imagine Cronkite actually got was a glimpse of the a future. He was connected to an artwork that not only played in movie theaters and won Oscars, but was also a prediction or prophecy that seemed so fantastic that it could never come true. But then over the next 33 years satire became the model for many television news programs. Glen Beck, Keith Olberman, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, could all perhaps trace their roots to the ruminations of Howard Beale.

What would Howard Beale have to say about the passing Cronkite? In his eulogy of UBS Chairman Edward Ruddy, there is a clue perhaps.

Howard Beale: [arms outstretched to the heavens] Edward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union Broadcasting Systems, and he died at eleven o'clock this morning of a heart condition, and woe is us! We're in a lot of trouble! So. A rich little man with white hair died. What has that got to do with the price of rice, right? And *why* is that woe to us? Because you people, and sixty-two million other Americans, are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books! Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers! Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube! This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers... This tube is the most awesome God-damned force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls in to the hands of the wrong people, and that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died. Because this company is now in the hands of CCA -- the Communication Corporation of America. There's a new Chairman of the Board, a man called Frank Hackett, sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the twentieth floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome God-damned propoganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network? Network (1976) source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/quotes

With Cronkite, we didn't get hysterics or entertainment, we got something better. Daniel Schorr, in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, wrote the following,

The tremendous amount of ink and airtime expended on the Cronkite legend since he died Friday might seem odd given that he was a figure of a generation ago in a career that now generates deep skepticism. But during much of the period he anchored the CBS Evening News, Cronkite represented something deep in the psyche of America, embodied in the word trust.

With Cronkite you got news that was considered verifiable truth. With the our current 21st Century Howard Beales, you get news and you can be sure that it will be entertaining. Who knows, in some cases it might actually be true.

Capitano Tedeschi

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