CNN newsman lays his opinions on line

LOS ANGELES — To watch Jack Cafferty in action on CNN is to see a 1930s celluloid character fitted improbably but neatly into the 21st century TV news model.

Whether condemning the actions of politicians, Democrat or Republican, or calling out what he sees as government incompetence, Cafferty evokes the old movie version of an aggrieved newspaperman trying to slap sense into his town.

But Cafferty, a Pied Piper for viewers who are as mad as hell and have the Internet capability to tell us, is truly a modern electronic journalist.

On CNN's daily political news program "The Situation Room," Cafferty lays his opinion on the line right next to that of online correspondents who respond, sometimes in the thousands, to his topical questions and complaints.

He leaves the loud baying to other TV commentators, instead favoring a world-weary growl that approaches soothing. But his refusal to hew to a consistent partisan checklist on issues is startling; this guy would probably defy a label instructing "dry clean only."

And he has style. He's dour, he's dyspeptic, he's any choice of words that describe a chronic dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and he knows how to convey it.

Cafferty is at ease defending his approach and his right to the TV soapbox that, courtesy of cable and satellite, has plenty of room.

"I'm 63 years old, put four kids through college, survived two marriages, paid an awful lot of taxes, and I figure I'm as qualified as the next person to take a look at the world around me and have some opinions on what I see," he said. "They're not always right, but they're always heartfelt, and they're always real."

"I think that's what viewers pick up," he said. "I'm not some hair-sprayed, programmed anchorette who's wound up for an hour, wheeled into the desk and sat there and the computer turns me on and off and the script comes out like it's supposed to."

Instead, the "Cafferty File" trains its gimlet eye on immigration protests, the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina and conduct of the Iraq war and to Muslims and 9/11. In return, he's drawn fire from those on the left, right and middle, as well as sometimes-scathing personal insults.

He said he shrugs off the character assaults. ("I'm a target. I ask for opinions.") But he is quick to defend the approach to newscasting so distant in time and style from his start as a TV newsman in his native Reno, Nev., when he turned to journalism because he couldn't afford medical school.