NEWS & VIEWS

Larry King:An Ethical Crisis



Once you diagnose culture death, once you declare that there is no pulse, should you be disqualified from further comment on the corpse? Somehow I'm not ready to close the coffin on the chalky cadaver that called itself American civilization. Though life has fled, there are further developments. Rigor mortis and decomposition are unappetizing spectacles, even for a seasoned coroner like myself. But if some future generation should try to build a new culture where this one lies mouldering, they need to know what happened here, from the cradle to the crypt.

My weakness is that I'm still capable of astonishment and embarrassment. Few may have been surprised that the University of North Carolina's School of Journalism and Mass Communications sponsored a public lecture by CNN's Larry King. But if you read without amazement that the school invited King to deliver the inaugural Earl Wynn Distinguished Lecture on ethics in TV news, I'm afraid you're jaded beyond recognition.

I have no quarrel with this avuncular, suspendered performer in the owlish eyeglasses, who for all I know may have the best set of ethics in his business, whatever we identify that business to be. But how a journalism school could present him as an authority on journalistic ethics, when he has never practiced nor pretended to practice journalism of any description - this is a mystery and a scandal. Scarred, exhausted as I am by grief and useless outrage, it's a provocation I can't decline.

This is a university we're talking about, a university supported by taxpayers. The SJMC is a venerable, reputable program. A substantial minority of its graduates go on to actual careers in journalism, which not long ago was a serious and honorable profession.

I had seen Larry King's talk show at least twice - on both occasions I think the topic was JonBenet Ramsey - but to make sure I wasn't selling King short I tried him once again. Though Al Gore was scheduled for the night after, King's guest on this evening's program was a rumpled psychic, a middleaged woman doing instant readings on viewers who called in ("Carlotta in Cleveland, I know he hurt you, honey, but you've got to reclaim your life.") She was carrying on a dialogue with a "spirit guide" named Veronique. Whether it's Al Gore, Henry Kissinger, or a fugitive from the psychic network, King never varies his earnest, non-judgmental persona. I suppose it's a gift, this unruffled neutrality that gets hyper celebrities to spill their viscera. It doesn't look like hard work, though, not for Larry King, who has boasted that he never prepares for his interviews.

The school's press release reminds us that King has interviewed kings, presidents, and political candidates by the bargeload. It's true, and few working journalists could match King's life list of luminaries. But if enticing presidential candidates to appear on your TV show makes you a journalist, then Oprah, Leno and Letterman are journalists, too. Presidential candidates are camera junkies; they'll appear on your cable access show in Nicholasville if you promise them a 15 share. Take a moment here to say a silent prayer for the clouded future of ethics, of journalism, of higher education. UNC's press release cites King's weekly column for USA Today, without mentioning that it's a gossip column. And it boasts that Larry King was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

If UNC had any real sense of a credibility problem, it might have left out that star. The culture that produced King and enriches him is of course the culture of celebrity - the tabloid culture - and his schizoid talk show that breezes without apology from Clinton on health care to Madonna on child care epitomizes the most dismal of television's many ethical failures, its fatal refusal to segregate news from entertainment.

If Larry King is a journalist, Tammy Faye Bakker is a theologian. But it's hard to deny that news sometimes occurs on his watch, more or less in spite of itself. In TV's general flight from integrity and public service, it spawns things infinitely more disreputable than Larry King Live.

So why do I bother? I take inspiration from the great Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote, "For a gentleman, only lost causes should be attractive." In The Journeying Boy, his lovely memoir of a Welsh childhood, John Manchip White offers a relevant passage from Tacitus. When Vespasian's Roman legions had conquered all of Europe and marched to the very seacliffs of Wales, to the western edge of the known world, the last resisting Druids of Anglesey chose not to become Roman citizens or Roman slaves. They gathered on the highest cliffs, in their long white robes, and one after another leaped into the sea.

We're in the same predicament here in America. Imperial Rome was a daydream compared to the power of the techno-corporate empire conspiring to suck out our souls. The last citadels of resistance have fallen; there's no place to hide. I'm laying out my best white flannels in the spare bedroom, and praying that my final plunge won't be covered by Bryant Gumbel and analyzed on Larry King Live.


 

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