Blushing Peacock

IF SOMEWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE THERE IS A HELL FOR journalists, it probably resembles the current condition of NBC News. Last month Dateline NBC stars Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips delivered a stunning on-air apology for its report on the safety of GM trucks, which showed a pickup catching fire in a test crash but did not reveal that incendiary devices had been attached to the vehicle to help ensure a blaze. A week later, anchor Tom Brokaw expressed his regrets for several aspects of a Nightly News report about environmental abuses on an Idaho river. It featured footage of "dead" fish -- but the supposedly deceased denizens of the deep were only stunned as part of an experiment. Clearly, someone's head was due to roll, and the rollee turned out to be the top man himself: Michael Gartner, president of NBC News. Gartner issued a statement that insisted he had planned to announce his departure in the spring, acknowledged "the publicity of late" and his hope that the announcement would "take the spotlight off of all of us," but did not otherwise link his exit to the recent debacles. (See related story on page 54.)