Arthur Hailey: Evening News

Instead, he turned his thoughts to Harry Partridge.

For Partridge, Sloane recognized, the hasty but excellent reporting job from Dallas had been one more solid performance in an outstanding professional career. Through DFW's airport paging system Sloane had been successful in reaching Partridge by phone and had congratulated him, asking him to pass on the same message to Rita, Minh and O'Hara. From an anchorman that kind of thing was expected—a matter of noblesse obligeeven though, where Partridge was concerned, Sloane did it without any great enthusiasm. That underlying feeling was why, on Sloane's part, the conversation had a touch of awkwardness, as conversations with Partridge often did. Partridge had seemed at ease, though he sounded tired.

Within the moving car, in a moment of silent, private honesty, Sloane asked himself— How do I feel about Harry Partridge? The answer, with equal honesty, came back: He makes me feel insecure.

Both question and answer had their roots in recent history.

* * *

The two of them had known each other for more than twenty years, the same length of time they had been with CBA News, having joined the network almost simultaneously. From the beginning they were successful professionally, yet opposites in personality.

Sloane was precise, fastidious, impeccable in dress and speech; he enjoyed having authority and wore it naturally. Juniors were apt to address him as "sir”and let him go through doorways first. He could be cool, slightly distant with people he did not know well, though in any human contact there was almost nothing his sharp mind missed, either spoken or inferred.

Partridge, in contrast, was casual in behavior, his appearance rumpled; he favored old tweed jackets and seldom wore a suit. He had an easygoing manner which made people he met feel comfortable, his equal, and sometimes he gave the impression of not caring much about anything, though that was a contrived deception. Partridge had learned early as a journalist that he could discover more by not seeming to have authority and by concealing his keen, exceptional intelligence.

They had differences in background too.

Crawford Sloane, from a middle-class Cleveland family, had done his early television training in that city. Harry Partridge served his main TV news apprenticeship in Toronto with the CDC—Canadian Broadcasting Corporation—and before that had worked as an announcer—newscaster—weatherman for small radio and TV stations in Western Canada. He had been born in Alberta, not far from Calgary, in a hamlet called De Winton where his father was a farmer.

Sloane had a degree from Columbia University. Partridge hadn't even finished high school, but in the working world of news his de facto education expanded rapidly.

For a long time at CBA their careers were parallel; as a result they came to be looked on as competitors. Sloane himself considered Partridge a competitor, even a threat to his own progress. He was not sure, though, if Partridge ever felt the same way.

The competition between the two had seemed strongest when both were reporting the war in Vietnam. They were sent there by the network in late 1967, supposedly to work as a team, and in a sense they did. Sloane, though, viewed the war as a golden opportunity to advance his own career; even then he had the anchor desk of the National Evening News clearly in his sights.

One essential in his advancement, Sloane knew, was to appear on the evening news as often as possible. Therefore, soon after arriving in Saigon he decided it was important not to stray too far from "Pentagon East"—headquarters of the United States Military Assistance Command for Vietnam (MACV) at Tan Son Nhut air base, five miles outside Saigon—and, when he did travel, not to be away too long.

He remembered, even after all these years, a conversation between himself and Partridge, who had remarked, "Crawf, you'll never get to understand this war by attending the Saigon Follies or hanging around the Caravelle.” The first was the name the press corps gave to military briefings; the second, a hotel that was a popular watering hole for the international press, senior military and U.S. Embassy civilians.

”If you're talking about risks,” Sloane had answered huffily, "I'm willing to take as many as you are.”

"Forget risks. We'll all be taking them. I'm talking about coverage in depth. I want to get deep into this country and understand it. Some of the time I want to be free from the military, not just tagging along on fire fights, reporting bangbang the way they'd like us to. That's too easy. And when I do military stuff I want it to be in forward areas so I can find out if what the USIS flacks say is happning really is.”

"To do all that,” Sloane pointed out, "you'll have to be away for days, maybe weeks at a time.”

Partridge had seemed amused.”I thought you'd catch onto that quickly. I'm sure you've also figured that the way I plan to work will make it possible for you to get your face on the news almost every night.”

Sloane had been uncomfortable at having his mind read so easily, though in the end that was how it worked out.

No one could ever say about his time in Vietnam that Sloane didn't work hard. He did, and he also took risks. On occasion he went along on missions to where the Viet Cong were operating, was sometimes in the midst of firefights, and in dangerous moments wondered, with normal fear, whether he would make it back alive.

As it turned out, he always did and was seldom away more than twenty-four hours. Also, when he came back it was invariably with dramatic combat pictures plus human interest stories about young Americans in battle, the kind of fare that New York wanted.

Following his plan shrewdly, Sloane didn't overdo the dangerous exploits and was usually available in Saigon for military and diplomatic briefings which, at the time, were newsworthy. Only much later would it be realized how superficial Sloane's kind of coverage had been and how—for television—dramatic pictures were a first priority, with thoughtful analysis and sometimes truth trailing far behind. But by the time that became apparent, to Crawford Sloane it didn't matter.

Sloane's overall ploy worked. He had always been impressive on camera and was even more so in Vietnam. He became a favorite with the New York Horseshoe producers and was frequently on the evening news, sometimes three or four times a week, which was how a correspondent built up a following, not only among viewers but with senior decision makers at CBA headquarters.

Harry Partridge, on the other hand, stayed with his own game plan and operated differently. He sought out deeper stories which required longer investigation and which took him, with a cameraman, to more distant parts of Vietnam. He made himself knowledgeable about military tactics, American and Viet Cong, and why sometimes those of both sides didn't work. He studied the balance of forces, stayed in forward areas gathering facts on ground— and air—attack effectiveness, casualties and logistics. Some of his reports contradicted official military statements in Saigon, others confirmed them, and it was that second kind of reporting—faimess to the U.S. military—that separated Partridge and a handful of others from the majority of correspondents reporting out of Vietnam.

The bulk of reportage on the Vietnam war was, by that time, negative and adversary. A generation of young journalists —some of them sympathetic to anti-war protesters at homedistrusted, at times despised, the U.S. military, and most media coverage reflected that conviction. An example was the enemy's Tet offensive. The media proclaimed Tet as a total, smashing communist victory, a claim which calmer research two decades later showed to be untrue.

Harry Partridge was one who, at the time, reported that U.S. forces at Tet were doing much better than they were being giver! credit for; also that the enemy was doing less well than generally reported and had failed in some of its objectives. At first senior Horseshoe producers queried those reports and wanted to delay them. But after discussion, Partridge's record of solid accuracy won out and most were aired.