In public opinion, anchors are still sinking

Will Ferrell's newest role is another Hollywood portrait of a pompous and/or vacuous newsman. Positive portrayals of journalists just aren't believable, experts say.

NEW YORK - Will Ferrell's title character in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, which opened Friday, is faced with a serious female colleague for the first time. Diversity is the reason, he's told. But he thinks diversity is the name of an old wooden ship from the Civil War.

A San Diego anchorman in the '70s, Burgundy is the latest in a line of Hollywood anchormen dating back to Ted Baxter of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77) who by turns are pompous, vain and vacuous, living by the slogan "Sincerity: Once you can fake that, the world is yours."

Since Baxter (the name of Burgundy's dog, by the way), we've seen Jim Dial of Murphy Brown, Bill McNeal in NewsRadio and three cartoon favorites: Kent Brockman of The Simpsons, Tom Tucker of The Family Guy and Morbo the alien in Futurama.

Saturday Night Live has long lampooned anchors on its Weekend Update. And The Daily Show has won a Peabody for its nightly sendup of newscasts.

The comic, unflattering characterization of anchormen recurs for several reasons, according to pop culture observers

1. They're authority figures.

"Kind of like dads in sitcoms," said Jill Geisler, the first woman in the United States to become the news director of a major-market network affiliate.

"It's why very seldom principals of schools or deans of universities are presented in a good way," said Syracuse University's Robert Thompson, citing Dean Wormer in Animal House as a classic example.

2. Journalists rate lower than even lawyers in surveys of the public's esteem.

Interestingly, however, a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press shows consumers regularly turn to local news more than their local paper, network news or any other source. In Anchorman, the bumbling Burgundy is a viewer favorite.

3. People are generally more cynical.

"It is harder today to do a serious, sincere story of an anchorperson than it is to do a comedy. Could you imagine trying to pull off Lou Grant today, for example, without people laughing in your face?" said Thompson, who runs Syracuse's Center for the Study of Popular Television.

"The "journalist against the world, out to do the right thing, fighting the right fight' seems so naive to so many people that it ends up sounding square."

The last earnest attempt, the NBC series Deadline, starring Oliver Platt, was quickly canceled after its 2000 debut.

Dave Tolchinsky, an associate professor of radio-TV-film at Northwestern University, thinks viewers are often wondering about the sincerity of the anchor's emotions on camera.

"The movie Broadcast News made a big deal out of the fact that the William Hurt character should "pretend' to cry," he said. "Now I think most people assume that anchorpeople are faking it - faking the emotion, faking the chatter and lively banter.

He noted that Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty echoes Broadcast News but with a slightly different spin: Ultimately, it's Bruce's refreshing honesty that sets him apart from the anchors.

And citing Albert Brooks' memorable flop-sweat scene in Broadcast News when he tries to anchor, Tolchinsky said: "(Brooks) fails as an anchorperson but like Bruce in Bruce Almighty succeeds as a human being."

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