REPORTING LIVE.

• Author: FISCHER, RAYMOND L.
• Position: Review

REPORTING LIVE BY LESLIE STAHL SIMON & SCHUSTER 1999, 445 PAGES, $26.00

Leslie Stahl wanted to be like her father: patient, respectful, and gentle. However, as a "door kicker" reporter who became a "stakeout queen" stalker, she soon gained the reputation of being a tough, tenacious, mean, pain-in-the-ass bitch. Despite this characterization, critics have always considered her a fair reporter, a watchdog (with a streak of pit bull) searching for the truth and asking the tough questions. Stahl is not just a good reporter, she is an excellent author as well. Reporting Live is an interesting, enlightening, and entertaining book about television and politics.

In telling her stow of life in Washington from the Watergate years to the Persian Gulf War, Stahl has interwoven three main themes: her account of reporting and interacting with three presidents and their wives; her associations with CBS personnel and the decline of TV news; and the difficulties facing a "tough" woman working with men and doing a "man's job."

Reporting Live dates from Stahl's 30th birthday, when she realized that she wanted to be a journalist. (Everything prior was "prenatal.") In occasional flashbacks, the author gives insights into her formative years, although more exposition concerning the woman Leslie Stahl would broaden understanding of reporter Stahl. For instance, she mentions nothing about her years with "60 Minutes," which could be the subject of another book.

Stahl began her 27 years with CBS in 1972, when, as a result of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, all of the TV networks were scouring the country for women and blacks. CBS hired Stahl, Connie Chung, and Bernard Shaw. Knowing her male colleagues considered her a "lightweight," Stahl sought to convey her seriousness and promised herself that she would never attribute any setback to sexism.

Stahl has the ability to characterize individuals in terse phrases: Jimmy Carter, weak and ineffectual, made enemies of the very people he...