Festival of the Book: Roger Mudd on journalism

The problem with all these newfangled TV journalists, veteran newsman Roger Mudd says, is their look-at-me mentality and their emphasis on soft news about subjects like health, dog training and lifestyles.
In his years as a CBS News reporter alongside the likes of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Daniel Schorr and Bob Schieffer, the nightly news was all about hard news and analysis.
“When you were in the field reporting, you did not wave and flap your arms,” Mudd told a crowd Wednesday at the kick-off breakfast of the 14th annual Festival of the Book. “You were reporting. Anyone flapping their hands was known as a bad actor. Now hand flapping is de rigueur.”
As CBS’ congressional and national correspondent during the 1960s and 1970s, Mudd had a front-row seat to the civil rights movement, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate and more. His forthcoming book, “The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and the Glory Days of Television News,” tells the inside story of CBS’ Washington bureau and shows what news consumers in the age of the Internet and 24-hour cable news networks are missing.
“In our time, the news was the news,” he said. “And you didn’t mess around with it.”
Mudd amused the breakfast crowd of people from Charlottesville-area businesses and nonprofit organizations with anecdotes about his own stumbling beginnings in the world of journalism.
At the age of 25, Mudd was working as a re-write man at the Richmond News Leader when he was hired as news director for the paper’s radio station WRNL. On his first day as a broadcast journalist, he mangled a report about the ailing health of Pope Pius XII. On the air, Mudd kept accidentally calling him “Pipe Polus.” Mudd tried to mute his microphone to compose himself, but hit the wrong button.
“What you heard was a burst of insane laughter, followed by dead air,” he said.
In 1961, Mudd was set for his on-air debut with CBS News. He was covering the release from federal prison of Mildred Gillars, also known as “Axis Sally” for her role as a Nazi radio propagandist.
Mudd had pre-written his report and was ready to deliver his lines on camera as soon as Gillars left the West Virginia federal prison compound. At around 6:30 p.m., a darkened car exited the prison, presumably carrying Axis Sally. Mudd’s cameraman started rolling and Mudd began to say his report. Yet he flubbed his lines. They tried a second take. He messed up again.
By the time the piece made it onto the air, it showed only the footage of the darkened car. Mudd’s on-camera debut would have to wait.
“When it aired, all you saw was video of a car, with a disembodied voice telling you that it was a car carrying what is thought to be a woman who is alleged to be Axis Sally,” Mudd said.
Reporting live, he said, was often a risky affair in the old days of TV news. He recalled a time when he tried to file a live story about the Goldwater campaign kicking a Democratic spy off its whistle-stop train. Unbeknownst to him, the Ohio Bell operator had not patched his phone line through to Cronkite at the anchor’s chair in New York. Instead, the operator had connected them to a top-40 radio station playing “Three Little Fishes.”
“So when I opened my mouth, all they heard was ‘Boop boop dit-tem dat-tem what-tem chu! And they swam and they swam all over the dam,” Mudd said.
Prior to Mudd’s speech, Nancy Damon, director of the Festival of the Book, reminded the crowd that tickets are still available for a Sunday event at the Paramount featuring mystery writer Walter Mosley, as well as a Saturday event with M*A*S*H star Mike Farrell. Damon hinted that the Farrell event will also include a “mystery guest” who may be a fellow actor from the TV series.
Mudd was a last-minute replacement for Wednesday’s “business breakfast” event, filling in for Eric Abrahamson, who had an apparent scheduling conflict. Abrahamson is author of “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder: How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-The-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place.”
Mudd joked that all of Abrahamson’s disorganization might have led to the scheduling conflict.
“Why don’t you invite the professor back next year?” said Mudd. “He can tell you about his next book, ‘A Clean Desk and What It Means to Me’”