Reviews

Joyce's insider book is a tale full of sound and fury told by no idiot. A career CBS man, news vice-president under Van Gordon Sauter, and president until forced to resign in 1985, Joyce has written a defensive, descriptive, dialogue-filled account of the dirty deeds done to him by the network. He depicts himself as a talented and misunderstood manager who did the best he could with budget and personnel in troubled times. Boyer, New York Times television critic and formerly a media critic for CBS News, describes Joyce as an inaccessible, aloof, and unpopular executive nicknamed the ``Velvet Shiv.'' Of veteran newsman Charles Collingwood's funeral, Boyer writes, ``The infidels, Joyce and Sauter, were inside the cathedral; corruption was complete, it could get no worse. But of course, it did.'' Other CBS insider books include Bill Leonard's In the Storm of the Eye ( LJ 5/15/87) and Peter McCabe's Bad News at Black Rock ( LJ 4/15/87). Robert Slater's This Is CBS ( LJ 6/15/87) is mostly narrative history. Joyce and Boyer cover the Westmoreland trial, William Paley, Sauter, the Cronkite-Rather feud, mass firings, the evening and morning news, Phyllis George, and takeover attempts; Boyer brings us to 1987 with Larry Tisch's successful takeover. The two approach CBS at different angles and levels of objectivity, but would probably concur that wounds inflicted are wide open. Jo Cates, Poynter Inst. for Media Studies Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.

In 1986, after almost 30 years at CBS, the author was dismissed from the presidency of CBS News when Van Gordon Sauterhis direct superior, longtime colleague and sometime friendteamed up with anchorman Dan Rather to cast him as the scapegoat for the news division's problems. Joyce recounts that painful experience, but not until he has described his entire career in more detail than most readers will want. Still, it's a fascinating look at how news organizations work, and it's only the blow-by-blow account of recent yearswhen Rather, whom Joyce describes as ``constantly inventing who he is or what he is,'' comes to the forethat will deservedly shake readers' faith in television journalism. The familiar weaknesses of the executive memoir are here: decades-old conversations rendered in impossible detail; wooden dialogue that unnaturally puts background information into speech. But Joyce admirably restrains himself from overstating his case, and his characterizations of individuals who at one time or another sided against him will ring true with readers familiar with their representations onscreen and in the press. His is finally a sad tale, not only because of his fate as a result of the ``nervous breakdown'' of CBS, but also because of the sorry state of big-time, big-money broadcast news. CBS-bashing may be in vogue, but to a great extent it is also in order. (May)