A royal “we” was enough to trap John Roberts in the firing line last Friday, when a chat segment on CNN’s American Morning found him clarifying a first-person reference to get to the point. Roberts wondered if “we risk — or does the Democratic Party here risk — Barack Obama becoming John Kerry II?” While he was trying to relate the question to his guest, Clinton administration advisor Paul Begala, the moment was instantly liveblogged via National Review’s The Corner (“Calling Dr. Freud”) and a few folks tired of the talking points on Fox News were reminded to tune in for infuration next time.
But last week’s attempt by Roberts to turn supporting evidence into a debate over Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Bridge to Nowhere rankled one Democrat blogger at Daily Kos. Yesterday, asking aloud what John McCain could do to change his image overseas got Roberts roasted on Newsbusters — just for pointing out that only Americans can vote in this particular election.
This new “sixth estate” of relentlessly parsing the content of television news is in full-flight stateside, this being the first presidential election in the era of YouTube. There is, however, only one cable anchor likely to have his motivations questioned with a link to a MuchMusic interview with Yngwie Malmsteen.
Roberts might be able to feel the noise — loudest last month when he wondered aloud about Palin’s ability to do the job she was applying for — but he claims he is too preoccupied with following the actual news to absorb distaste with his delivery.
“Feedback from viewers is great,” Roberts tells Scrolling Eye at the tail end of a shift he woke up for at 1am. “But that’s different from the ranters who will rant about anything, especially those fierce partisans taking issue with whatever doesn’t fit their view of politics. We’re not going to change their view of the world.
“What CNN is dedicated to is speaking to the great middle of America, going after viewers seeking a reasonable opinion of things — all the moderate Republicans, Democrats and independents that want to be reliably informed.
“We’re offering personality, not partisanship. That means being personable with the guests and connecting with them, while never injecting my own opinion — unless it’s something obvious, that can help make the information accessible.”
The positioning of CNN as the in-between voice has been solidified in recent months with competitor MSNBC steering its prime-time in the polar opposite direction of Fox News — an approach NBC reined in after last month’s national conventions.
CNN, by contrast, have taken the high road: “The Best Political Team on Television” remains the sales pitch, augmented this summer by a travelling roadhouse called the CNN Grill.
The job of male American Morning anchor was given to Roberts in April 2007, a year after he left CBS News for CNN once it became clear that the job of replacing Dan Rather at the main desk would go to Katie Couric. But the lineage of his satin-jacket days on Citytv’s The New Music, and starring role in the 1984 launch of MuchMusic, was rarely evident on camera over the 15 years that Roberts was carrying Walter Cronkite’s torch. By contrast, the CNN assignment makes him more recognizable as the 51-year-old Mississauga native who once answered to “J.D.”
After all, the revival of CNN took root with hiring the guy who used to host The Mole, and still fills in for Regis Philbin — a background that enhanced Anderson Cooper’s credibility for appearing as empathetic or as acerbic as the story warrants.
Yet while Anderson Cooper 360 helped define itself prowling through musical bumpers like “Marquee Moon” by Television, the advent of more obvious sonic signatures on American Morning have tended to more populist choices. Roberts’ well-trained tendency to back-announce songs like Loverboy’s “Working For the Weekend” was habitual enough to be remarked upon back in July on The Daily Show, juxtaposed with a few seconds of the esteemed anchorman hosting Much’s Power Hour.
Those old metal-mullet Much clips — and, really, there must be better stuff gathering dust out there than a current YouTube search generates — actually belie the fact that Roberts started his on-camera career in 1979 doing genuine journalism on The New Music at Citytv, which he proudly points out is still being produced. (Though likely for sentimental reasons only, given how the show is totally buried on the teen-skewed Much schedule, with its local airing Saturday nights at 10:30pm — on CP24.)
“I never got my ears pierced,” says Roberts, “never got tattooed, never really had the full immersion into that culture. The main part of the job wasn’t just throwing to the videos, it was connecting to the most intelligent people we could find. Sting, who had been an English teacher, was the ideal interview subject.”
The popularity of British post-punk in Toronto led to Roberts reporting on reggae when nobody else on TV paid it attention, even producing an episode in Jamaica. Later, in 1981, it was the only show from this continent to cover Bob Marley’s funeral. “And we did it all on a $1.98 budget,” says Roberts. Just don’t blame him for any awfulness that followed once pop music was being guided by the visuals.
But by 1987, J.D. Roberts made a fairly seamless transition to anchor the late-night CityPulse newscast. A job at the CBS affiliate in Miami beckoned by 1989, although he was back the following year, a first foray into morning television on CTV’s Canada AM that became just an interim transition to CBS’s Black Rock.
The high-profile reporting duties and Sunday anchor job followed, which was assumed to be the last rung up the ladder in succeeding Rather on the CBS Nightly News, although Roberts contemplated making up for University of Toronto Mississauga studies — abandoned upon discovery of a closed-circuit campus radio microphone — during his late-‘90s term as medical correspondent.
“I considered enrolling in the Yale School of Medicine,” he says. “Then I realized, if I tried that, I would probably never afford to put food on the family table again.”
Roberts scored the role of Chief White House Correspondent for CBS in 1999 instead — becoming a US citizen along the way — the job he held during the 2004 presidential election campaign, when Dan Rather found himself in the midst of Rathergate. Beating up on CBS News had become the greatest of all online Republican pastimes.
So, the following year, when Roberts used the term “sloppy seconds” during a morning gaggle with White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan — regarding the selection of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court — it became the stuff of a bulletin on the Drudge Report, at least until he publicly apologized.
“Over the course of my life my mouth and cheek have been my biggest enemies,” says Roberts. “But this was also a generally informal session with reporters. I had the stuffing beat out of me, but it was also like a game of broken telephone — it got picked up by Drudge, and from there the story became that I stood up in the middle of the room, and said these words in a full-throated voice.”
Nonetheless, the incident was a reminder that a more off-the-cuff character still lurked somewhere within Roberts, which has resurfaced through his New York City-based role at CNN.
The broadcasting bug that led him to read hog reports on the radio in Owen Sound in 1975 — followed by jobs in Kitchener and London, Ontario — remains intact. “I’m still drawn to the high-wire aspect of potentially talking to millions of people,” says Roberts, who figured that could be his career when he was hired in 1977 to spin records at 1050 CHUM: “That neon sign looked like a cathedral to me.”
Dealing with real-time scrutiny on the blogs — with arguments now enhanced by streaming video — is a new development for everyone in television, though. Can someone working in unscripted live television even hazard a response?
“There’s a term pilots have called ‘Chasing the Instruments,’” says Roberts. “You can be moving in the general direction, but you don’t see the details of what’s actually ahead of you, because you’re looking for guidance in the cockpit.
“So, what I try not to do on the air is find myself chasing the instruments. And, if the criticism from both sides is equal, then I know that I’ve been doing my job.”
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