The Right Place at the Right Time

Rating:
Summary: Great stories from a fascinating career in journalism.
Review: "The Right Place At The Right Time" is an excellent professional memoir that has the merit of being both entertaining and informative. From his early days of working as a sub-editor for the Reuters international news service in London, to the pioneering way he later helped to break the mold of network television's pack journalism, Robert MacNeil tells wonderful stories from one of the most interesting periods of the 20th century.

MacNeil was there when the Belgian Congo was granted its independence and--like many developing African nations unprepared for the end of colonial rule--fell into tribal feuds and warfare. He reported from the front lines of the Cold War in Berlin as the Wall was being built, and was in Cuba during the missile crisis. He was there at the assassination of President Kennedy and (in all probability) even met Lee Harvey Oswald just minutes after the shooting. MacNeil covered the 1964 presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson, fought the Nixon Administration to prevent the federal government from interfering with freedom of the press on public television, and ultimately gave up a comfortable job with the BBC to launch what would later become the "MacNeil/Lehrer Report."

During the most turbulent years of the 1960s, it is clear that MacNeil was haunted by the escalating body count of the Vietnam War, and his disillusion with the conflict in Southeast Asia runs throughout this book like a subtext that puts many of the breaking news events into a sort of special perspective. For a man who has interviewed everyone from Charlie Chaplin to the Ayatollah Khomeini (before the fundamentalist revolution in Iran), it is remarkable how his focus keeps returning to the Vietnam War and what it did to America at home and overseas.

Accordingly, "The Right Place At The Right Time" is full of colorful, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, stories about the people touched by events beyond their control. MacNeil has a keen eye for how the broadcasting business can illuminate or distort the facts of a particular case, and he goes to considerable effort not to let his work slip into the cliche of stale formula punditry. For the most part, he succeeds. His criticism of modern television news as being obsessed with style over substance is especially devastating. He demonstrates a respect for the intelligence of his viewers that seems rare among the media today.

If MacNeil's book has a fault, it is that the author never ventures into the realm of a true autobiography. The man himself is something of a cipher. While it is admirable that he has not indulged in the type of confessional, introspective New Journalism that is so fashionable and trendy among writers now, MacNeil is so reserved about protecting his privacy that he says more about one of his old grade-school teachers than he does about his family. Even Walter Cronkite's recent autobiography told the reader more about his wife and children than MacNeil does at any point in this account. After a while, it tends to deprive him of a human dimension. You learn something of his political leanings (liberal), for example, but he never includes more than a passing reference to any part of his domestic life, and that makes him come across as rather bloodless and remote.

Nevertheless, that small quibble aside, "The Right Place At The Right Time" is one of those few books that really does have something important to say, and does so with grace and wit to spare. The short chapters fly by quickly. And when you reach the end, you may even realize that MacNeil has not only provided food for thought, but also left you looking at the broadcasting industry in ways that you haven't before.

Rating:
Summary: Great stories from a fascinating career in journalism.
Review: "The Right Place At The Right Time" is an excellent professional memoir that has the merit of being both entertaining and informative. From his early days of working as a sub-editor for the Reuters international news service in London, to the pioneering way he later helped to break the mold of network television's pack journalism, Robert MacNeil tells wonderful stories from one of the most interesting periods of the 20th century.

MacNeil was there when the Belgian Congo was granted its independence and--like many developing African nations unprepared for the end of colonial rule--fell into tribal feuds and warfare. He reported from the front lines of the Cold War in Berlin as the Wall was being built, and was in Cuba during the missile crisis. He was there at the assassination of President Kennedy and (in all probability) even met Lee Harvey Oswald just minutes after the shooting. MacNeil covered the 1964 presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson, fought the Nixon Administration to prevent the federal government from interfering with freedom of the press on public television, and ultimately gave up a comfortable job with the BBC to launch what would later become the "MacNeil/Lehrer Report."

During the most turbulent years of the 1960s, it is clear that MacNeil was haunted by the escalating body count of the Vietnam War, and his disillusion with the conflict in Southeast Asia runs throughout this book like a subtext that puts many of the breaking news events into a sort of special perspective. For a man who has interviewed everyone from Charlie Chaplin to the Ayatollah Khomeini (before the fundamentalist revolution in Iran), it is remarkable how his focus keeps returning to the Vietnam War and what it did to America at home and overseas.

Accordingly, "The Right Place At The Right Time" is full of colorful, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, stories about the people touched by events beyond their control. MacNeil has a keen eye for how the broadcasting business can illuminate or distort the facts of a particular case, and he goes to considerable effort not to let his work slip into the cliche of stale formula punditry. For the most part, he succeeds. His criticism of modern television news as being obsessed with style over substance is especially devastating. He demonstrates a respect for the intelligence of his viewers that seems rare among the media today.

If MacNeil's book has a fault, it is that the author never ventures into the realm of a true autobiography. The man himself is something of a cipher. While it is admirable that he has not indulged in the type of confessional, introspective New Journalism that is so fashionable and trendy among writers now, MacNeil is so reserved about protecting his privacy that he says more about one of his old grade-school teachers than he does about his family. Even Walter Cronkite's recent autobiography told the reader more about his wife and children than MacNeil does at any point in this account. After a while, it tends to deprive him of a human dimension. You learn something of his political leanings (liberal), for example, but he never includes more than a passing reference to any part of his domestic life, and that makes him come across as rather bloodless and remote.

Nevertheless, that small quibble aside, "The Right Place At The Right Time" is one of those few books that really does have something important to say, and does so with grace and wit to spare. The short chapters fly by quickly. And when you reach the end, you may even realize that MacNeil has not only provided food for thought, but also left you looking at the broadcasting industry in ways that you haven't before.