‘60 MINUTES’ EXECUTIVE DEFENDS CBS NETWORK

Don Hewitt, the executive producer of CBS’ “60 Minutes,” only spoke for 24 minutes. But in that time he:

--Criticized the New York Times for editorially criticizing CBS’ “The Atlanta Child Murders,” but said that the TV movie’s writer, Abby Mann, was “dumb” to call the film a “crusade” (the New York Times quoted the writer as saying that).

--Predicted that Gen. William C. Westmoreland will lose his $120-million libel suit against CBS, but added that “nobody I know,” including correspondent Mike Wallace, a co-defendant in the suit, “takes any pleasure in Gen. Westmoreland’s discomfort.”

--Accused Westmoreland’s lawyer, Dan M. Burt, and the Capital Legal Foundation, the pro-business public-interest law firm that Burt heads, of “using” Westmoreland to create a “ cause celebre “ against CBS News.

(Burt was in court and unavailable for comment, but David Henderson, a spokesman for Westmoreland in Washington, called Hewitt’s charge “b.s.” Burt never asked to take the general’s case, Henderson said: “I sought Dan (Burt) out, as a matter of fact.”)

Hewitt’s comments came Tuesday in a speech and question-and-answer session at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where the 62-year-old news executive spoke at a luncheon hosted by the Hollywood Radio and Television Society.

In prepared remarks, he lashed out at a Sunday New York Times editorial against CBS’ controversial docudrama “The Atlanta Child Murders,” which was based on a series of murders there. Atlanta officials have called it inaccurate and distorted. CBS calls it “a fair dramatization.”

The editorial said that the two-part movie, whose closing segment aired Tuesday, “tries to cast doubt” on the case of Wayne Williams, a young black man convicted of killing two black men and linked during his 1982 trial to slayings of 10 black children from 1979 to 1981.

Generally criticizing docudramas based on recent events, the editorial said that while “the network news divisions struggle to display reality as it messily unfolds, the entertainment divisions are misappropriating news” and supplanting news documentaries with the “tidy fictions” of docudramas.

The top-rated “60 Minutes” never has aired a story about the Atlanta case that led to Mann’s dramatization, a CBS News spokesman said in response to a query Wednesday.

In his comments Tuesday, Hewitt pointedly noted that “Murders” was broadcast by three New York Times-owned TV stations in Huntsville, Ala., Memphis, Tenn., and Ft. Smith, Ark. He didn’t address the complaints of Atlanta officials.

But he did ask whether the New York paper would similarly inveigh against “docudramas like ‘The Longest Day,’ ‘Patton,’ ‘Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,’ ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ (for which Mann won an Oscar)” and “Gone With the Wind.” The last generally isn’t considered a docudrama but rather a Civil War melodrama in which both passions and Atlanta are set ablaze.

“Do they really believe the news division should have done these films, and not the people who did these films?” Hewitt asked. “I don’t really believe they believe that.”

“The fact is,” he said, “the New York Times thinks the public is dumb, and has to be constantly educated about what it’s watching. The public isn’t dumb. They know very well what they’re watching and they know a drama when they see one.”

The veteran news executive noted that such pre-television writers as Shakespeare and Charles Dickens used history as the backdrop for their dramatic works.

“Do I think Abby Mann gave me the straight scam about the Atlanta child murders?” he asked. “I think he probably took some license--as I’m sure Shakespeare and Dickens did with their docudramas.”

However, he said he didn’t think Mann should have called his docudrama a crusade: “I think that’s a dumb thing to do. Calling anything a crusade is usually counterproductive for the cause you’re crusading for.”

In the arena of news, Hewitt defended “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception,” the 1982 “CBS Reports” documentary that led to Westmoreland’s lawsuit. The general contends that the program libeled him by saying that he deliberately underestimated enemy strength in Vietnam in 1967 to show progress by U.S. troops in the Vietnam War.

“That broadcast was right on the money,” Hewitt asserted, although conceding that a well-publicized CBS internal probe of the production--sparked by a highly critical TV Guide article--found that “there were some CBS standards and practices violated.”

(Among other things, the network’s study found that there had been an “imbalance” in presenting Westmoreland’s side of the story.)

“But the content was absolutely honest,” Hewitt said, adding that he opposes codification of journalistic guidelines. All a reporter need ask himself, he said, is “Have you ever knowingly done violence to the truth. And is what you’re putting on the air an honest representation of what the audience thinks it is?”

The federal court trial of Westmoreland’s suit, which began on Oct. 9, now is in its closing weeks in New York.

“I think Gen. Westmoreland was a loser the day he went into the courtroom,” Hewitt said. “And quite frankly, I feel very sorry for him. He’s a good gent, he’s served his country a lot of years, and I don’t think he deserves to be a cause celebre in anybody’s cause.”

CBS producer Don Hewitt: “The fact is the New York Times thinks the public is dumb.”