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Liz Trotta: Two Decades on Network News
| Article
# : |
19630 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1991 |
2,344 Words |
| Author
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David Ehrlich
David Ehrlich is a frequent contributor to The World & I and
writes from his base in Washington, D.C. |
As a network news correspondent for both NBC and CBS during the twenty-year period when telejournalism came of age, Liz Trotta reported directly from the scenes of many of the seminal events of our era. Hers was one of those sober voices that brought the Vietnam War home to us. Reared in an Italian Catholic tradition in New Haven, Connecticut, Trotta worked for the Chicago Tribune and Newsday before joining NBC in 1965. She was the first female correspondent based overseas for a major network. And although Trotta is perhaps most celebrated for her dynamic coverage of the Vietnam War, she also served NBC in London, Singapore, Tehran, and Tel Aviv. Domestically, she reported on elections, trials, crimes, and many of the other events that shaped our history. In 1979, she moved to CBS, from which she retired in 1985.
In her recently published memoirs, Fighting for Air (New York: Simon & Schuster), Trotta recounts her adventures in the rice paddies of Vietnam and the halls of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. David Ehrlich recently interviewed Trotta in New York City.
THE WORLD & I: You've been out of network television for nearly six years. How would you assess its present condition?
Liz Trotta: Not very favorably, I'm afraid. Network television is going the way network radio went a generation ago--it's deteriorating into silly little talk shows, atrocious tabloid shows masquerading as journalism, and news that remains in the public's mind only long enough to be dislodged by the next sound bite.
W&I: You make it sound as if the networks are digging their own graves. Are they?
Trotta: In my day, there were only three networks and a limited core of highly trained talent. Today, the tele-journalism scene is far more fragmented. And the video landscape is peopled by pretty airheads who often don't seem to have a clue about what they're saying.
Worse than that, even though NBC, CBS, and ABC will dispatch hordes of reporters to cover a big story, networks only rarely command the wide audiences they once did. They seem to think that simply throwing a lot of people at a story will assure full coverage and viewership, regardless of whether that coverage is accurate or not.
W&I: The media was often accused by the government and others of turning the public's mind
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