Washington — Men of character and independent thought are the backbone of journalism. There was a time when network television news saw itself as the electronic equivalent of the world’s great newspapers of record. During that era, CBS News correspondents were among the best in the business. Roger Mudd was one of them.
Millions of people know the face and even more recognize the voice. And no wonder, for Roger Mudd is one of broadcast news most respected correspondents. At 79, Mudd’s newly published memoir reflects on a journalistic career that spanned five decades in both print and broadcast media.
In The Place To Be, Washington, CBS, And The Glory Days of Television News, published last week, Roger Mudd writes about his origins as a journalist as well as his long involvement in network television news. His skills as both a writer and a reporter thus bring to life the era of greatness in broadcast journalism. For those who lived through that era, or want to understand why it was so significant to all journalists, Mudd’s words transcend time and space and bring to life ideals, ethics, and human frailties that still bedevil journalists today.
The Big Leagues of Broadcast Journalism are defined as much by assignment as anchor desk. In the network news business, the major leagues teams news are called bureaus. Their names are legendary: London, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, New York and Washington. With all of the networks based in New York, the most important bureau has always been Washington.
Mudd’s career began at the Richmond Virginia News Leader in 1953 where he provided re-write services mostly for news releases from social and community groups. He liked the work, but accepted his first broadcast job at WRNL, the News Leader’s radio station. Before long he moved home again to Washington, D.C. to work at CBS O&O WTOP where he was paid the $95 a week to work in the radio news department. The job included the 6 a.m. radio news broadcast as well as the local news inserts on the morning television show Potomac Panorama. As is customary in the business, Mudd became a news anchor at WTOP — a job that made him visible at the White House, government officials and the network news operations. One of the network news bureaus, CBS, was located in the same building where he worked.
Roger Mudd’s account of how he was hired into, and angrily left CBS News is both riveting and revealing. While the names of the personnel in Washington and New York became immensely famous, their fame was only the public side of CBS News, for inside, both in Washington and New York, there was conflict and infighting driven by large egos and the early cross currents that would eventually put Dan Rather in Walter Cronkite’s anchor chair and end Roger Mudd’s career at CBS.
