Salant, CBS, and the Battle for the Soul of Broadcast Journalism: The Memoirs of Richard S. Salant.(Review)

Edited by Bill Buzenberg and Susan Buzenberg Boulder: Westview Press, 1998. 275 pp. Index and photographs. Cloth $27.00. ISBN 0813390915.

Reviewed by Richard S. Rosenbloom

The 1960s and 70s were tumultuous decades in American life, marked by contention over civil rights, assassinations, Vietnam, and Watergate. Most Americans over 50 years of age retain visual memories associated with those matters, because they learned about them through the then new medium of national television. For the better part of those two decades, the leading television news organization, both in quality and in viewership, was CBS News. The head of CBS News was Richard Salant.

Salant was a cerebral man in a visual medium. A lawyer without affection for the legal process, and a stickler for detail, fussy …