This is the great propaganda arch of national network news. "These facts are what's really happening and we're giving them to you." The networks spend untold billions to convey that false assurance.
The elite anchor must pretend to believe the narrow parameters and boundaries of a story are all there is. There is no deeper meaning. There is no abyss waiting to swallow whole a major story and reveal it as a hoax. No. Never.
With this conviction in tow, the anchor can fiddle and diddle with details.
The network anchor is the wizard of Is. He keeps explaining what is. "Here's something that is, and then over here we have something else that is, and now, just in, a new thing that is." He lays down miles of "is-concrete" to pave over deeper, uncomfortable, unimaginable truth.
The anchor is quite satisfied to obtain all his information from "reputable sources." This mainly means government and corporate spokespeople. Not a problem.
Every other source, for the anchor, is murky and unreliable. He doesn't have to worry his pretty little head about whether his sources are, indeed, trustworthy. He calculates it this way: if government and corporations are releasing information, it means there is news to report.
What the FBI director has to say is news whether it's true or false, because the director said it. So why not blur over the mile-wide distinction between "he spoke the truth" and "he spoke"?
On air, the anchor is neutral, a castratus, a eunuch.
This is a time-honored ancient tradition. The eunuch, by his diminished condition, has the trust of the ruler. He guards the emperor's inner sanctum. He acts as a buffer between his master and the people. He applies the royal seal to official documents.
Essentially, the anchor is saying, "See, I'm ascetic in the service of truth. Why would I hamstring myself this way unless my mission is sincere objectivity?"
All expressed shades of emotion occur and are managed within that persona of the dependable court eunuch. The anchor who can move the closest to the line of being human without actually arriving there is the champion. In recent times, it was Brian Williams -- until his "conflations" and "misremembrances" surfaced.
The vibrating string between eunuch and human is the frequency that makes an anchor "great." Think Cronkite, Chet Huntley, Edward R Murrow. Huntley was just a touch too masculine, so they teamed him up with David Brinkley, a medium-boiled egg. Brinkley supplied twinkles of comic relief.
The cable news networks don't really have anyone who qualifies as an elite anchor. Wolf Blitzer of CNN made his bones during the first Iraq war only because his name fit the bombing action so well. Brit Hume of FOX has more anchor authority than anyone now working in network television, but he's semi-retired, content to play the role of contributor, because he knows the news is a scam on wheels.
There are other reasons for "voice-neutrality" of the anchor. Neutrality conveys a sense of science. "We did the experiment in the lab and this is how it turned out."
Neutrality implies: this is a democracy; an anchor is no more important than the next person (and yet he is -- another contradiction, swallowed).
Neutrality implies: we, the news division, don't have to make money (a lie); we're not like the cop shows; we're on a higher plane; we're performing a public service; we're like a responsible charity.
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