Show Biz or News Biz?

Are TV newscasters journalists or entertainers? The denizens of the print world, squinting over their reconditioned typewriters at the six-figure (and lately even seven-figure) superstars of TV news, are not the most impartial judges of the subject. Let a member of the judiciary, with no ax to grind, review the question.

That is what Judge Martin B. Stecher of the New York State Supreme Court has done in a case involving Jim Bouton, a baseball pitcher turned TV sportscaster (and now TV series actor). In 1971 Bouton enlivened one of his news spots by taking an interview with Alex Webster, then the coach of the stumbling New York Giants football team, and running part of it backward on the air with no sound. Webster was not amused by the gimmick, which made him look like a demented Donald Duck. Claiming that he had been portrayed as a "dullard and a stupid person," he sued Bouton for $3 million.

Judge Stecher threw out Webster's plea, saying that Bouton, in expressing his opinion, was protected by the First Amendment. As for Webster's contention that First Amendment guarantees did not apply because Bouton intended to entertain rather than inform, Stecher ruled that the line between the two was simply "too elusive" to define. The judge did concede, however, that "television is essentially an entertainment medium, and its news personnel are often as much entertainers as reporters." Next case.

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