The Late Riser
After 30 Years and Many Early Mornings, Charles Gibson Is the Face of ABC's Nightly News

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 20, 2006

NEW YORK

Charlie Gibson is strolling around the set of "Good Morning America," away from the cameras, when an aide to celebrity animal trainer Jack Hanna scurries over bearing a furry creature clinging to a gnarled stick.

"This may be the last time," Gibson announces, greeting his old friend Hanna with a bear hug.

The segment begins and Hanna is soon cradling an alligator, allowing Gibson to assume the role of nervous host: "Would you hold it with two hands, please?" And moments later he pointedly declines an invitation to feed worms to the slow loris, wiggling on the stick.

It's a safe bet that Gibson won't be bringing any cute animals onto the set of ABC's "World News Tonight," where he assumed the anchor chair three weeks ago. That night, he reported on Iraq war planning, a Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty, surging crime rates and a tropical storm threatening Florida -- a far more serious diet than the high-calorie smorgasbord that is morning television.

Clearly, Katie Couric's switch from "Today" to the "CBS Evening News" has generated far more debate, in part because of her status as the first woman taking over one of the Big Three newscasts. But Gibson, who recently became a grandfather when one of his two daughters had a son, simply doesn't generate polarizing arguments. He is a comfortable, easygoing figure who filled in so many times for Peter Jennings over the years that it seems perfectly natural to find him as the face of a news division where he has worked for 31 years.

Indeed, the one controversy surrounding Gibson's anointment is not whether a man who has covered Washington and traveled around the world has the chops for the job, but whether the previous anchor, Elizabeth Vargas, was unfairly shoved aside in the process.

"This place has been rocked twice," says Gibson, 63, recalling Jennings's death and the Iraqi bomb that wounded Vargas's co-anchor, Bob Woodruff, within the last 11 months. He says he keeps describing himself as an "old codger" because ABC staffers "just want some sense that calm has descended. It's not to emphasize that I'm old, which is stupid, but I just want them to know things are okay. Unless I'm hit by a Mack truck, I'm going to be around for a while."

Gibson is accustomed to competing against Couric. He has spent the last 7 1/2 years, with Diane Sawyer, trying to catch Couric and Matt Lauer in the morning-show wars, and he knows that the press will focus on whether his second-place newscast can stave off a challenge from Couric at CBS and gain ground on Brian Williams's top-rated "NBC Nightly News." But Gibson disdains the obsession with Nielsen numbers.

"I have assiduously avoided knowing what the ratings are for shows," he says. "Some people get paid a lot of money to worry about that stuff. If you begin to broadcast or program depending on what a consultant tells you or the ratings indicate, what the hell have you been doing in journalism for 40 years? If you get too immersed in what you think people want to know, based on ratings, you've made a tremendous mistake."

Gibson insists that "World News Tonight" is not so much about him but about the correspondents, the same self-effacing approach that Bob Schieffer has taken since succeeding Dan Rather.

"He owes me," jokes Schieffer, 69, "for proving there's a future for old guys on TV. Charlie's just a good guy. He's been out on a beat and knows how to cover news, and I think he'll be a stabilizing force and formidable competition."

Despite his contention that anchoring shouldn't be a popularity contest, the wry, low-key Gibson ultimately will be judged a success or failure at the box office.

"You get comfortable with a particular newspaper," Gibson says. "It's the same thing with evening news shows. That's why it's hard to change people's habits. You can lose people rather quickly -- Dan got very controversial and all of a sudden people left. But it's difficult to get them to come to you."

A Heavy Load

At an editorial meeting for "World News Tonight" last week, the talk turned to a motorcycle accident involving Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

"He's said in the past that he prefers not to wear a helmet -- isn't it in his contract that he has to?" Gibson asked. When he was a local reporter in Washington, Gibson said, he owned a motorcycle, but his boss made him sell it by saying the company had so much invested in him.

"He was paying me $20,000 a year," Gibson said.

One producer suggested that ABC reporter John Berman take a look at Roethlisberger and motorcycle safety for the evening newscast, but another staffer said Berman was working on an unrelated story for "Good Morning America."

"Which show dominates?" Gibson asked. The conference room filled with laughter.

Gibson is working both the morning and evening shifts this month before bidding farewell to "Good Morning America" a week from tomorrow. On this particular morning he overslept -- waking up at 5:30 a.m., half an hour after he usually reports to the Times Square studio of "GMA" -- and can't suppress a few yawns.

Since signing Gibson to a new three-year deal, ABC has wasted little time in touting him as the voice of experience. "Charles Gibson: He's been there, seen it, brought us the world," a promotional spot says. "Times when the truth needed to be uncovered, he never backed down. . . . In times like these it's important to trust the source."

Such accolades make him sound like an obvious choice. Gibson is "very much in the Peter Jennings tradition," says ABC News President David Westin. "Particularly in time of national emergency or some of the bigger stories we've covered, having someone tried and true, who people have experience with over a long period of time, is very reassuring."

But Westin decided against giving Gibson the job last fall, rejecting his insistence on serving at least three years and rolling the dice on two younger anchors. Vargas, who soon discovered she was pregnant, found herself working impossible hours after Woodruff's injury.

Last month, though Vargas had been assured she could return to "World News" after her maternity leave, Westin handed the job to Gibson, who had no interest in being Vargas's co-anchor.

"I said to David all the way through that I don't believe in two anchors sitting at the desk next to each other," Gibson says. "It never made any sense to me. It never made any sense when Barbara Walters and Harry Reasoner did it or when Connie Chung and Dan Rather did it."

Gibson says he told Vargas he "felt badly" for what she had gone through. He says he had been scheduled to retire next year before getting the offer. "I was okay with the idea that 'Good Morning America' would be my last job at ABC. . . . There was never any foot-stomping," he says.

But to some staffers at the network, it looked as though Vargas was being sidelined by Gibson's stance, along with sagging ratings and an unplanned pregnancy.

"We didn't have the natural person to pair with Elizabeth," says Westin, who chose Gibson after Sawyer took herself out of the running for "World News." He calls Vargas "a consummate professional" but says the job changed on her because of Woodruff's injuries. "I don't rule out the possibility that Bob and Elizabeth will be co-anchors again," Westin says.

Vargas, who remains a "20/20" anchor, says that stepping aside under pressure was "an excruciatingly difficult decision. The problem of my maternity leave was and remains an insurmountable one. I had to leave the show for two months at a crucial time, and it would be unfair to the staff to leave them without a strong anchor. For now, this is the best decision for my family and for my colleagues."

Gibson, for the moment, is carrying a heavy load. He had just finished "GMA" last Tuesday and was posing for pictures with audience members when a producer said in his earpiece, "Get up to the desk right away. Bush is in Iraq."

"You mean the 2:30 news conference is a ruse?" Gibson said. The White House had announced, as a cover story, that the president would talk to reporters in the Rose Garden.

Gibson anchored two breaking-news specials without missing a beat. When Bush met reporters the next day, Gibson was struck by how energized the president looked, despite having had only a few hours' sleep, and how he seemed to be laying out a defense of the war that could become the Republican message in the fall elections. Gibson asked for a report on the politics of the secret trip to Baghdad, which became a "Closer Look" segment.

Colleagues say Gibson is deeply involved in every aspect of "World News," from writing scripts to picking the "Person of the Week." "He's a wonderful presence in the newsroom," says Executive Producer Jon Banner. "He's very aggressive in questioning pieces and making sure we cover this or that angle of the story."

But Gibson is the first to say that this is an unaccustomed role for him. For one thing, he has long been collaborating with Sawyer and the "GMA" staff. For another, he received a Quaker education at Washington's Sidwell Friends School -- he still goes to meetings occasionally -- and believes in the gradual deliberation that Quakers call "a sense of the meeting."

A native of Evanston, Ill., Gibson returned to Washington with a degree from Princeton University in 1966 and got a job as a $325-a-month radio producer. After enlisting in the Coast Guard to avoid the draft, Gibson landed a slot in a training program at Channel 7, now WJLA-TV. He edited down B-movies to fill the available slots on Sunday afternoon. He did cleanup duty at the "Claire and Coco" children's show, Coco being a French poodle. He kept score for a bowling show taped downstairs from the Van Ness Street offices. The station later sent him to another ABC affiliate it owned in Lynchburg, Va.

"He was elegant and had a tremendous command of the English language," says Bob Sprague, who was the station's news director. "He was very interested in the way words were used, which impressed me." Gibson was so interested in politics that he paid his own way to the 1968 Republican convention in Miami. He also aggressively covered Lynchburg's desegregation battles. When he left town for the last time, all the tires on his car had been slashed.

Channel 7 brought Gibson back as a reporter and weekend anchor in 1970. "From the moment he walked in the newsroom," says Leonard Deibert, then the news director, "it was evident he was smart and savvy, but not in a cocky way. He had a great curiosity. He was unafraid of any reporting assignment."

But Deibert recalls the general manager, Tom Cookerly, saying: "He'll never make it in television. He looks too preppy." When Cookerly moved Gibson to radio, he quit and wound up working for a short-lived television news service bankrolled by conservative beer magnate Joseph Coors. Gibson covered the Watergate hearings on the Hill and sat next to ABC's Sam Donaldson, who recommended him to the network.

After covering the Ford White House for ABC, Gibson spent a decade stationed at the House. Brit Hume, who covered the Senate for ABC, says he and Gibson agreed over lunch not to sabotage each other in the nightly competition for airtime. "We never had a cross word or disagreement, mostly because he was so self-effacing," says Hume, now Fox's Washington managing editor. "He's such a good guy that he makes you behave better."

In 1987, after occasionally filling in as the news anchor on "GMA," Gibson was tapped as Joan Lunden's co-host. With his wife, Arlene -- then the director of the lower school at Holton-Arms in Bethesda -- Gibson moved to New York, beginning a successful morning run. "He certainly hasn't made up this soft-shoe, knowledgeable but friendly style," Donaldson says. "That's who Charlie is."

John Reiss, a former Gibson producer who is now executive producer of "NBC Nightly News," calls him "absolutely brilliant at ad-libbing." But Reiss remembers being puzzled at "GMA" when Gibson kept ignoring his instructions, talking right up to the last second before a commercial break, and finally asked him why.

"I could do the best interview in the world with some world leader and I'll come back and some producer would say my tie is crooked," Gibson told him. "This is my way of getting even."

In 1998, after "GMA" fell behind Couric and Lauer at "Today," Gibson was replaced by Kevin Newman. Seven months later, ABC dumped Newman and his co-host, Lisa McRee, and Westin persuaded Gibson to return by teaming him with Sawyer. What was originally billed as a temporary fix has lasted until now.

A Meat-and-Potatoes Man

The highlights have been airing each morning as "GMA" pays tribute to its departing host: Gibson anchoring from the CIA, from the Pentagon, from Buckingham Palace and Vatican City and a refugee camp in Macedonia. He is not the kind of interviewer who draws attention to himself, but caused a stir in 1999 when he challenged President Bill Clinton on gun control in the wake of the Columbine massacre.

"There are very basic measures that could be taken that people agree on," Gibson said. "We register every automobile in America. . . . That's a step that would make a difference."

"Look," Clinton shot back, "let's join the real world here. Now you want to have an honest conversation?"

Gibson says he tries to be "agnostic" on all issues -- except for smoking, which he says killed both his parents and his sister -- and took that approach after learning that gun control advocates as well as the National Rifle Association were unhappy with Clinton. "I just thought it might be something he wouldn't expect if I pressed him about what they were saying as opposed to the usual tack of asking about the NRA folks," he says.

In his new role, Gibson makes no secret that he is a meat-and-potatoes man, interested in Washington and foreign news and cool to softer features. He is well aware that viewers have been deserting the once-dominant network newscasts for two decades, but believes that they remain a formidable force.

"We've lost some audience because people's choices are so much broader now," Gibson says. "But I happen to believe there are three national printing presses in television, and now I've got one of them."