NBC v. A.M.A.

Television news is often accused of turning a bland eye on controversy, and activist critics yearn for the days when the late Edward R. Murrow savaged Joseph McCarthy and crusaded for migrant farm workers. No such criticism could be lodged against the NBC documentary What Price Health. Broadcast last December, the program attacked the high cost of medical care in the U.S., portrayed individual victims of the system in dramatic terms, and lobbied for adoption of a broad national health-insurance scheme.

NBC's show was so tough that it gave the American Medical Association a severe case of outrage. Persuaded that NBC was guilty of numerous specific errors and general distortion, the A.M.A. battled for eight months to gain satisfaction. But only after the A.M.A. took its case to the Federal Communications Commission did NBC yield some ground. Now the A.M.A. and NBC have reached a fuzzy compromise that leaves unsettled the issue of redress in such controversies.

The fight began on Jan. 10, when A.M.A. Executive Vice President Ernest B. Howard sent a protest letter to NBC President Julian Goodman. Howard attacked what he called the program's "frequent inaccuracy and overall bias," pointing out 29 instances in which NBC had, by the A.M.A.'s standards, distorted the truth. Howard demanded equal air time for an A.M.A. rebuttal.

Instead, Howard received from NBC on Feb. 27 a 39-page rebuttal of the A.M.A. allegations. Two months later, the A.M.A. countered the counterattack and formally asked the FCC to investigate what it termed the "distortion and slanting of news" in the NBC documentary. For its counsel, the A.M.A. hired former FCC Chairman Newton Minow, who once condemned commercial network programming as a "vast wasteland." The A.M.A. also discussed the case with the new National News Council, an independent body established to adjudicate complaints against news organizations.

A number of the A.M.A.'s specific charges about the show were petty, but others were significant. One of the show's human-interest vignettes, for instance, concerned Kristen Knapp, 5, whose congenital heart condition received prominent treatment in the documentary. NBC showed the girl being denied necessary corrective surgery be cause her father--laid off his job two years earlier--could not afford it.

Nonsense, the A.M.A. declared.

Kristen had received heart surgery at a Cleveland hospital five weeks before the broadcast. Further, the A.M.A. said, the girl had always been eligible for free medical attention through Ohio's crippled children program. NBC's rather lame response: the Knapps had not been made aware of the benefits available to their daughter at the time the documentary was filmed, and NBC had been unable to reach the family for an updated report on Kristen before broadcast time.

The Knapp family remembers things differently. Gregory Knapp, the father, says that NBC was in touch with him and was told of the operation.

The A.M.A. was particularly galled by what it felt was an inaccurate description of the "Medicredit" health bill it is advocating in Congress. It said that NBC was in cahoots with supporters of the comprehensive Kennedy-Griffiths health-insurance plan, which the A.M.A. vehemently opposes. Although it denied that charge, NBC has since December sold and leased prints of the documentary to groups who used the film to promote the Kennedy-Griffiths legislation.

Three weeks ago, the controversy came to a quick--and surprisingly muted--conclusion. NBC agreed to devote a 15-minute segment of the Today Show this week to an interview with A.M.A.

President Russell B. Roth. He was expected to point out some objections to the NBC documentary and discuss health legislation now before Congress.

In addition to that live interview, NBC will give some time to A.M.A. views during an upcoming documentary on hospital costs and malpractice. The network also gave the A.M.A. a list of organizations that have shown What Price Health so that the A.M.A. can offer them its president's interview as an addendum. For its part, the A.M.A.

will not pursue its proceedings before the FCC.

The compromise left both parties publicly satisfied, but it also left unanswered some serious questions involving broadcast journalism. If the A.M.A. was at least partly right in its complaint, why did NBC wait eight months to do anything about it? Can a 15-minute interview so long after the original program really correct any errors for the audience that watched the first program?

And--perhaps most important--why did NBC allow sloppy reporting on the Kristen Knapp case to undermine what was generally a serious and courageous report on a very real national problem?

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