Letting Viewers Talk Back

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

ABC's Viewpoint puts correspondents on the firing line

Network television offers disgruntled audiences no outlet as effective as a newspaper's Op-Ed page, or even a correction box. Yet the need for access of dissenting views may be greater in TV news than in print journalism. The time for nightly network coverage is minimal, the emotional impact often maximal. Inevitably, many stories are excluded and others oversimplified.

All three networks have tried to open their programs to angry advocates and ordinary citizens. NBC has quoted viewer letters on NBC Magazine and Meet the Press. CBS has aired letters too, and last year had its 60 Minutes reporters examine on air their own reporting techniques. By far the most ambitious and risky effort has been ABC's Viewpoint, a live discussion among correspondents, aggrieved news subjects and members of a studio audience. The show has probed ABC's relations with business and the White House and has confronted broader questions of accuracy, responsibility and taste--often bluntly. In a segment last October, a woman in Dallas told Barbara Walters that she "comes across in interviews as being almost rude."

Viewpoint has been notable for its mingling of adroit self-defense by correspondents with an occasional apology or admission of error. The self-questioning tone fits ABC'S goals, which include public relations as well as journalistic innovation. Indeed, confession has been good not just for the soul but for the ratings; the sporadic 90-minute show, which starts in the late-night slot of ABC News' Nightline, has attracted somewhat more viewers than Nightline does.

The fourth episode of Viewpoint was broadcast last week from the University of Chicago, where 850 people watched Anchor Ted Koppel in the flesh and half a dozen of his colleagues on monitors. The subject: coverage of foreign affairs. Correspondent John Laurence opened on a skeptical note, calling network correspondents "jet-age ambulance chasers." Koppel closed with a warning that globe-girdling TV technology has given Americans "the illusion that we are familiar with distant places and cultures."

In the segments between, however, Viewpoint lost some of its humility. When challenged about the facts in a report on alleged Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians living in the West Bank, Correspondent Tom Jarriel failed to answer specific charges; rather, he aggressively interrupted his questioner, Howard Squadron of the American-Jewish Committee, until Koppel rebuked him. Said Koppel: "I think it'll be most useful to everyone if Mr. Squadron is given an opportunity to make his points, Tom." London-based Anchor Peter Jennings answered a question about the Falkland Islands dispute with a lame joke that the unmentioned "pawns" in the situation were the Falklanders' sheep.

Some correspondents appeared to feel that nearly every tough questioner in the audience was promoting a political point. Lamentably, that was often the case, perhaps because ABC production aides who screened the questions beforehand were looking to create provocative exchanges. One woman condemned reporters for focusing on the human rights record of Argentina's ruling junta rather than attacking Britain's legal claim to the Falklands. Another premised her question on a claim that El Salvador's guerrillas represent "85% to 90% of the people," ignoring the fact that about 80% of the country's voters cast ballots in March for centrist and rightist parties.

After one questioner ripped ABC for be ing pro-Palestinian and the next complained that ABC was anti-Palestinian, Jennings suggested that there was more selective listening than biased reporting. Said he: "We are not getting through, and that disturbs me."

There were a few thoughtful questions, but they did not elicit much in the way of answers. Asked how to avoid manipulation of TV by foreign governments and terrorists, Jennings gave the standard it-won't-happen-again apology for overcovering crowds outside the U.S. embassy in Iran during the hostage crisis. Paris Bureau Chief Pierre Salinger aptly pointed out that "in no country ... is the concept of freedom of information the same as in the U.S." That topic merits 90 minutes by itself -- it is the overarching problem that American correspondents face -- yet it got scant attention, except in offhand remarks about being denied access to combat zones.

Laurence's opening report condemned what may be TV's biggest weakness, one discussed on every episode of Viewpoint to date: obsession with the "visually sensational." Seconded Jennings: "The producers in New York say, 'You have got to have bang-bang [pictures of violence].' That is a sad rule." Yet Viewpoint introduced its Middle East segment with shot after shot of bang-bang, some of it several years old. And Laurence, who works in London, reported the unremarkable results of a poll of American viewers' attitudes toward foreign reporting while he stood in front of a prototypically familiar but irrelevant visual symbol, the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.

Though ABC chose topics for emotional appeal, there seemed little new to say about the Iran hostage crisis or the Arab-Israeli conflict, and not yet enough to say about coverage of the Falklands. The advocacy questions and windy, defensive answers left some of the audience feeling shortchanged. Said Chicago Attorney Dan Weil: "I wanted to see what the ABC correspondents really thought of themselves. There were only a few times when we got that sort of thing." Yet by putting itself under attack from both sides on several issues, ABC probably built some sympathy for itself and journalists in general.

As was apparent at the program's end, on many questions there is no right answer, just a set of possible perspectives. Truth, as Jennings remarked during one embattled exchange, is often in "the eye of the beholder."-- By William A. Henry III.

Reported by Jay Branegan/Chicago

With reporting by Jay Branegan/Chicago

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.