review by Bill Monroe
Monroe, a former newspaperman and moderator of NBC's Meet the Press, is the ombudsman for the Stars and Stripes military newspapers.

Breaking News, a novel by Robert MacNeil. Doubleday, 320 pages. $24.95

The good news about Breaking News is that this novel is high-torque readable. Short chapters. Short sentences. Elmore Leonard dialogue without the blood. A gaudy cast of network insiders from big-rich anchorpeople to martini-fueled corporate execs, slithery agents, and obnoxious producers, all of them running on the treadmill of golden desperation.

The bad news is the bad news the big three networks are putting out these days -- too much soft stuff, too much Monica, too little Capitol Hill, too much violent death and not enough nuclear proliferation, too many arthritis updates and not enough hunger in Sudan. And too many complex stories chopped off at thirty seconds to keep the twenty-something with the remote from zapping a six-million-dollar anchorman. Read all about it!

Trouble is, the attack on the networks' tabloiding of the evening news is hoary old hat, dating at least to the fifties. And the commercial networks, if they ever had a monopoly on journalistic sin, long ago lost it. Robin MacNeil of PBS fame may have noticed that his halo'd old NewsHour is permitting its "sponsors" and "underwriters" real chunks of time these days to sell their products. Gene Patterson, the eminent newspaper editor, was in The Wall Street Journal earlier this summer bemoaning recent lacerations of newspaper integrity.

So when the aging hero of this book, anchorman Grant Munro (no relation), undertakes to interpose his professional body against the onrushing tide of journalistic pandering, the reader is immediately resigned to seeing Mr. Quixote mangled page by page right into the seventy-second (short) chapter. The man is handicapped, after all, by old age (he's 59 years ancient) and emergent jowls.

He discovers the jowls -- and a bit of puffiness around his eyes -- at a moment of vulnerability. His contract is up for renewal. The network brass are looking for younger viewers. His face is giving him away as Uncle Grant. Should he have it tucked and tightened the way the young anchor types do on the arrival of the slightest droop? His persistent agonizing on the subject does not suggest he is up to heroics of any kind.

But in a goodly number of pages, Munro puts up a fearless, if not reckless, fight, starting right out with a speech to the Radio-Television News Directors Association in which he compares broadcast newspeople to the Gadarene swine: "You remember, Christ sent evil spirits into a herd of pigs, and the maddened herd raced over a cliff and drowned." Here Grant Munro follows in the footsteps of Edward R. Murrow, who, while leaving out the "swine" part, said about the same thing to the same convention forty years ago this October.

Murrow's rhetoric had no visible effect. Neither does Munro's. But Munro has other weapons on his side, including a muscular journalistic conscience, a wife given to sanity, and, behind the scenes, the finesse of an author who may be thinking movie contract and a minimally happy ending. As a result of which, the last give-'em-hell anchorman eventually salvages the core of his personal integrity, the core of his troubled marriage, and a few million dollars more on his contract renewal.

Without giving away the basic endgame strategy, however, it has to be noted that an unsettling element appears in the final pages. Ken Walden, the top man himself, the way-above-the-network corporate boss, invites Grant and Winona to a quiet little four-person dinner, just the Munros and the Waldens.

This has never happened before. What does it mean? Will they go to a restaurant full of Gadarene swine? Is this today's pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Or is it a mess of pottage that will put this Good Anchor's soul back into dangerous play? This question, left hanging as the book fades to black, concerns us because the plot by now has maneuvered the reader firmly onto the side of Good Journalism and those Good People, Grant and Winona.

The book has a lot more going for it than anchorman agonistics. It has entertainment and gossip about media people, real or virtual, even dollops of nasty humor, courtesy of the mysterious Hollygo Lightly ("the First Electronic Black Drag Queen Gossip Columnist"), who keeps a salty Internet chat page going with daily scoops from spies who sit in on all the top network news meetings.

Hollygo calls the networks Beige, Taupe, and Bisque, noting their uniform blandness. She labels the three network anchors Grecian Formula, Lone Ranger, and Gregory Peck. "GregoryPeck" is Grant Munro. But, if you're inclined to read the book, I'll leave it to you to do your own possible matchups with Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather, none of whom reminds me of Gregory Peck.

There's a female blackhat formidable -- an elegant, sexy, diamond-hard anchorshrew, queen of the magazine heap. She has contrived for herself no less a name than Ann Murrow, reflecting, it seems, her own self-image.

The Lady Murrow is pure feminine demon out of Batman and Robin MacNeil. In her interviews she bores in with "cold blue eyes" and "throaty, tragic tones." She doesn't mind asking a mother for every detail of the rape of her daughter. And holy catbird, Robin, there she is now leaning into that titan of broadcasting. She's overcoming him with perfume, low cleavage, and high ratings! (If the author had someone in mind while fashioning this character, I wouldn't touch speculation on the point with a witch's broomstick.)

Breaking News succeeds as an inside mural of the sweaty life at the top of the network news jungle. Despite all the reporting over the years on anchor salaries, for example, it took Grant Munro to shock me into full realization of how much random gallantry an anchor guy can afford.

You see, Grant and a close buddy were on a mountainside when his chum fell to his death. Then a few weeks later Grant got to feeling sorry for his friend's widow, Teresa, with whom he, Grant, had had a sort of a courtesy two-night stand following the accident. And so he upped and sent the lady half a million dollars. Without his own good wife Winona even knowing half a mil had disappeared. A startling glimpse of how the other half lives, assuming another half of anchorpeople.

But finally the book divides up the fauna of the net news jungle so one-sidedly into good (Grant and Winona) and evil (almost everyone else) that it provokes a couple of subversive thoughts.

Is it truly venal for networks to compete with each other for higher shares of a mass audience? If not, should the networks design their news fare with one eye on working moms, plumbers, and computer jockeys, or should they fashion it exclusively for academics, writers, and policy addicts?

As for "news you can use," I gotta tell you, I caught Peter Jennings recently on the evening news when he was winding up a piece on restless leg syndrome -- a non-lethal but exasperating problem that afflicts millions of Americans. Peter said cutting down on caffeine might help. I dropped caffeine -- cold turkey -- the very next day. Hey, it works! It was just by the grace of God that I wasn't tuned in that evening to some capital-J journalist trying to educate me about the excesses of the Taliban in Afghanistan. God bless you, Peter.

And now, lest the floor director cut his throat with his fingernails, it's time to say: Good night, David. Good night, Chet. And good night to you, too, Grant Munro. You slashed at the dragon right handsomely, and, while the beast is still undamaged, we come reasonably close to loving you -- moneybags, jowls, and all.

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