NONFICTION - May 30, 1993

BROADCAST BLUES by Eric Burns (HarperCollins: $22; 241 pp.). Eric Burns’ vividly reported narrative--the darkest assessment of TV news since Edward Jay Epstein’s “News From Nowhere” (1973)--chronicles his 20-year path from an idealistic cub reporter bemused by the cynical old ways of the world to a jaded, bitter man who gets fired after telling his senior producer, “You have the intelligence of a crustacean and the judgment of a slug.” Burns’ estrangement begins when an assignment editor favors him with what is considered to be a plum task: being the first to interview a woman who has just found out that her daughter’s beaten body has been discovered in the forest. At his boss’s urging, Burns persuades the woman to agree to a TV interview by using huckster lines like, “You could be an example for others, an inspiration.” When he succeeds, his boss showers him with approval: “All right! . . . You reeled her in like a pro! Gonna make some history tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I feel it!” The monster that is Burns’ alienation grows in that vast gulf between his own feelings of being sullied by the intrusive, exploitative interview and his need, as a young man starved for validation, to believe in his boss’ praise.