TV CREWS FACING THE AIDS ISSUE

Last Friday, the studio crew on NBC’s “Today” held a meeting. The topic of discussion: possible objections to staffing a studio interview with an AIDS victim scheduled as part of the show’s five-part series on the deadly disease this week.

“There didn’t seem to be any objections at all,” says Scott Goldstein, the show’s supervising producer. And, says executive producer Steve Friedman, “the crews decided to do it (the interview) after about a half-hour’s discussion.”

So, barring last-minute problems, co-anchor Bryant Gumbel’s interview Wednesday with AIDS victim Andrew Hiatt of Los Angeles and Hiatt’s mother will take place as planned at the “Today” studio in New York.

As Friday’s session indicates, some unease obviously persists at being near an AIDS victim, even though medical experts say there is no evidence that the disease--which in the United States primarily afflicts sexually active homosexual men and intravenous drug users--can be contracted through casual contact or proximity to a victim.

But the decision of the “Today” crew to work during the interview indicates a growing understanding of the disease by broadcast news crews. It wasn’t always so.

In 1983, in an early, much-publicized case in San Francisco, fearful KGO-TV technicians refused to put a lapel microphone on an AIDS victim or even share the same studio with him during a live talk show because they were afraid of catching the disease.

After discussions between crew members and management, the victim finally was interviewed via telephone from a separate room.

Harry Fuller, KGO’s news director, says that to his knowledge, there have been no similar incidents at the station since then. He attributes this to continued “responsible reporting” about AIDS in San Francisco, a city with 40% of its single adult male population considered to be homosexuals, according to a study done for the city-financed San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

(AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, destroys the body’s immune defenses, leaving victims prey to other diseases, such as cancer or pneumonia. It is believed to be spread through sexual contact, contaminated hypodermic needles or through the blood, medical experts say. To date, according to the National Centers for Disease Control, more than 12,000 AIDS cases have been reported since the disease was identified in 1981; at least 6,300 victims have died.)

“We’ve been covering this story for four years now, and it’s long since passed off the front page,” Fuller says. Local TV crews, he adds, now seem aware that there is no evidence they can contract AIDs simply by being near a victim, “and they understand more about what’s involved in getting it.”

There still are isolated instances of TV crew members balking at working on an interview with an AIDS victim. Last July, such a refusal at New York station WPIX-TV forced the cancellation of a studio interview.

Balking at interviewing an AIDS victim also occurred--but did not disrupt an interview--at the syndicated “Donahue” talk show two months ago in New York. A cameraman and an audio man refused to work on the show, a spokeswoman acknowledged. The show went on, anyway, “and that’s about the only incident we’ve had” during five programs on AIDS in the last two two years, she said.

Estimates of how many times local crews have balked at working on interviews of AIDS victims are hard to come by. The 2,000-member Radio-Television News Directors Assn. never has done a survey, says its president-elect John Spain, of WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge, La.

However, he says, “I don’t think it’s an issue.”

It’s not much of an issue now, says Tom Kennedy, a top executive of a major technical union, the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, which claims 6,200 members--about 1,000 of them in local and national news--at NBC and ABC.

He says cases of balking NABET crews probably total “five or six, and certainly no more than 10,” and “I think most of that happened in the early days,” when less was known about the disease and the way it is transmitted.

Some of those fears still exist, he says, mainly because no medical experts have flatly said that AIDS can’t be transmitted by casual contact or proximity. Until the experts can say that, he says, those lingering worries of crews doubtless will continue.

To help allay those fears, Tom Capra, news director at NBC-owned KNBC-TV in Burbank, last month held an AIDS seminar for his news crews and invited--at the suggestion of a union official, he says--crews from other TV stations in the Los Angeles area.

About 50 people showed up. They discussed the disease with Capra; Dr. Eugene Rogalsky of the AIDS unit of Sherman Oaks Community Hospital, and Paul Seidler, a community-relations officer with the San Francisco Police Department.

KNBC camera crews still have the option of turning down interviews with AIDS victims, Capra said Monday, but he held the seminar because “I just wanted them to make the choice on an educated basis.”

On Sept. 19, there will be a star-filled AIDS benefit in Hollywood to which a prominent victim--Rock Hudson--has lent his name. On the same day, KNBC is devoting much of its newscasts to stories about AIDS. It also is airing a live half-hour special, co-anchored by Kelly Lange and John Beard, called “AIDS: Is Anybody Safe?”

The reports will include interviews with AIDS victims, Capra says. He adds that none of his crews have balked at the assignments. “No,” he said, “there’ve been no problems.”

John Horn contributed to this story.