Anchors: Brokaw, Jennings, Rather and the Evening News

This joint effort by UCLA English professor Gerald Jay Goldberg and his son, television critic of the Wall Street Journal , is a shrill look at the networks' top three newscasters--Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather--and, beyond them, at the overall field of TV news. In the authors' view, making news programs is ``a breathtaking . . . high-wire act''; the firing of 200 of CBS's 1200 news staffers stirs ``a massive outcry''; and when something goes wrong, those involved become not disturbed but ``monumentally upset.'' The nadir is reached in the description of Rather's argument in his Beijing hotel with government officials about coverage of Tiananmen Square, handled here with a measured pomp appropriate to the Congress of Vienna. In addition to biographies of the three anchors--all treated almost reverentially--the authors offer a superficial look at the future of TV news that ignores the central question of what constitutes news and who makes that vital decision. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)