The Dangers of Docudrama

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Nearly 50 million Americans last week watched at least portions of a five- hour, two-part television movie called The Atlanta Child Murders. The CBS production restaged, in summary form, the trial of Wayne Williams, who was convicted in 1982 of murdering two young blacks after a nine-week proceeding in a courtroom that held, at most, 175 spectators. In law, the verdict of the jurors (later affirmed by the Georgia Supreme Court) was definitive. But in the minds of much of the public, the reality of what happened in Atlanta may more likely be what they saw enacted last week on TV. That was not history, not journalism, but crusading entertainment, with the facts carefully organized to sustain a neat story line and to suit a political point of view: Writer-Producer Abby Mann believes that Williams was railroaded. Responding to local hysteria and national scrutiny, Atlanta officials were, Mann contends, so desperate to close the books on as many as 29 allegedly connected murders that they would have blamed absolutely anyone. Mann's position lacks internal logic: while on the one hand accusing the city of a rush to judgment, his film on the other hand charges Atlanta's mostly black city government with racist neglect of the crimes against minority children. To make his helter- skelter charge of injustice, Mann focuses on all the shortcomings and loopholes in the prosecution case, and belittles or simply omits evidence damning to Williams.

The Atlanta story epitomizes the troublesome nature of a burgeoning literary hybrid that the TV networks call docudramas. These video narratives focus on actual events and real people, but often include invented dialogue, characters and even entire scenes. Dozens of docudramas have been made, on subjects ranging from the history of American slavery, in Roots, to the perjury trial of Alger Hiss in last year's Emmy Award-winner Concealed Enemies. Many have dealt with personalities, living or dead, who still figure in national political debate.

Some of these shows have enhanced the public's understanding of issues and its appreciation for the specific accomplishments of public figures. Others, however, have blatantly treated speculation as fact, or even knowingly distorted the truth to advance a cause or enhance a dramatic scene. ABC's The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald presupposed that President Kennedy's assassin was not murdered by Jack Ruby, then argued the case that Kennedy was slain by a conspiracy. CBS's Kill Me If You Can played down the crimes of Sex Offender Caryl Chessman and dwelt on his slow, gruesome execution in the gas chamber for the explicit purpose of arousing public sentiment against capital punishment. NBC's Kennedy depicted the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as a scheming bureaucratic thug, and the same network's King, also by Abby Mann, suggested that the black civil rights leader was virtually a puppet of white liberals. At minimum, docudramas inevitably distort history by being selective. Ike, which focused on a purported World War II romance between President Dwight Eisenhower and his aide Kay Summersby, exaggerated the importance of individuals with whom Eisenhower worked directly, and sharply undervalued the impact of his offstage superiors, like General George Marshall.

Docudrama producers argue that they are creating art, not reportage. They liken their work to Shakespeare's history plays, which also had an unmistakable political point of view, and to historical novels, which frequently fabricate details for verisimilitude and mingle actual and fictional characters. Says CBS Vice President Donald Wear: "Dramas based on fact are a part of literature and the theater, and if television is going to be a vital and contemporary medium, they have to be part of TV, too."

There is, however, a fundamental difference between the stage or the printed page and the TV screen: books and plays are not news media. Television serves as a primary source of news for a majority of Americans. The reasonable viewer can, of course, distinguish between a sitcom and a news special. But it is not clear how many viewers recognize that a network may have one standard of fidelity to fact in its 7 p.m. newscast, and another an hour later in its docudramas.

In the case of The Atlanta Child Murders, Mann is so convinced of the rightness of his case that he says he was, if anything, "too fair to the prosecution." But Atlanta officials understandably regard the CBS show as simply wrong. Says Mayor Andrew Young, who took office while the 1982 trial was under way: "What Abby Mann has done is to make the city the enemy. It is an abuse of the power of the media. I think CBS should be just outright ashamed of themselves." CBS admits that the protest from Atlanta has "caused some introspection." At the last minute the network inserted an onscreen advisory to viewers that conceded that "some of the events and characters are fictionalized for dramatic purposes." CBS executives have yet to explain why, if they wanted to make a film about the Atlanta case, they chose Mann's perception as the one to endorse.

Television is at all times a powerfully believable medium, even when it is not invoking names familiar from the headlines. The docudrama-style 1974 CBS movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman portrayed the struggle of American blacks for civil rights through scenes from the life of a wholly fictional centenarian. That title character seemed so compellingly real that former New York Governor Hugh Carey gave a speech while in office citing Jane Pittman as a historically important black American.

Although truth usually conquers such error in the realm of serious scholarly debate, there is less likelihood of dispelling the distorted beliefs about history that casual viewers bring away from docudramas. Few books ever become truly "definitive," in the sense that no further books are written to challenge their interpretation. But docudramas have far less often retraveled ground covered by previous examples of the genre. If the only show on a subject is erroneous, corrective information may not sink in when conveyed in the less vivid form of print. The TV networks are plainly within their constitutional rights to make docudramas, and to express whatever point of view they wish. Their output may add to public knowledge and enrich public debate. But given what misimpressions of history a docudrama may also leave, the furor in Atlanta should provide an impetus for overdue self-restraint. In a thoughtful, democratic society, nothing is more sacred and vital than the ability to agree on, and face, the facts, whatever they may be. For networks that pride themselves on their journalism to play fast and loose with facts, whatever the intentions, is deplorable. For the public, a little false knowledge can be a dangerous thing.