Schorr at Law Forum

"I have a grip on a very traditional form of journalist," Daniel Schorr told a small group at the Harvard Law School Forum last night.

Schorr, a correspondent for CBS News for 25 years who won an Emmy for his coverage of Watergate, will join on June 1 a cable television network owned by Atlanta businessman Ted Turner.

"Ted Turner and I come from different worlds," Schorr said. Comparing Turner with CBS president William S. Paley, he said Turner built his communications empire on the "cheapest and tawdriest kinds of entertainment," noting that Paley had begun with shows carrying Jack Benny and Bing Crosby.

Now Turner has begun to reach out for "something different and something more respectable," Schorr said.

Turner's idea of a 24-hour cable news network will supply a smaller and more serious news audience with better news coverage, he said.

"If I could get an audience that is smaller and more interested [than the network audience] then I could end up where I always wanted to be all my life," he said.

Calling network news a "superb form of journalism," Schorr said a half-hour news show tends to encourage the extreme elements in society, not giving moderates a chance, because extremism is better entertainment. Network news "must in one way or another share the values of television, which are entertainment values," he added.

With a 24-hour news service, Schorr said, there will be "no more homogenization, no more trying to do a thing that will capture the American public."