DOES TV BAR SHOWS OF RIGHT AND LEFT?

According to a group of more than 70 demonstrators here, most television executives believe that opposition to U.S. government policy in Central America is too controversial for American TV viewers to see.

At a rally Wednesday outside the downtown offices of independent television station KBHK, the protesters said more than 80 stations across the country have refused to sell air time for a 30-minute special that, says its executive producer, “makes a strong case against military solutions” to the current political problems of Nicaragua and El Salvador.

“What does free speech mean?” asked Nick Allen, a former wire service reporter and executive producer of the barred program, “Faces of War.” “Do you have to own a television station before you can put on controversial programs?”

Chanting slogans such as “We want prime time,” the group picketed in a light rain for more than an hour. Organizers carrying a briefcase filled with $5,000, which they said was to buy air time for the program, attempted to meet with station executives to persuade them to accept the program.

Top managers were not at the station, however, and have not been available for comment for days. Allen did appear on KBHK’s daily afternoon public affairs program for 15 minutes on Wednesday to air his grievances.

The arguments surrounding the TV program reflect traditional liberal and conservative points of view on the volatile Central American political debate, but the case of the “Faces of War” special and KBHK illustrate much broader concerns of activists across the political spectrum who say they are excluded from the most wide-reaching medium of mass communication in history.

Fewer than a dozen stations across the country have agreed to run “Faces of War,” which features actor Robert Foxworth narrating documentary footage and making a pitch for funds to support the producing organization--Project Neighbor to Neighbor, an offshoot of the San Francisco-based Institute for Food and Development Policy.

No San Francisco or Los Angeles station has accepted the show.

“The TV stations are acting as censors,” said producer Allen.

Frances Lappe, co-founder of the food institute, which has supported hunger-relief efforts around the world for 10 years, was equally angry about the broadcasting industry’s refusal to let the group’s message reach the public.

“Our books have been published by major New York publishers and used in classrooms from Stanford to Harvard,” Lappe said, and major newspapers and magazines have given editorial space and sold advertising space to the group over the years.

“Television is the only way to reach millions of Americans,” Lappe continued. “We were totally unprepared for the kind of censorship we have encountered in trying to buy time on television stations.”

A continent away, former Idaho Rep. George Hansen, a conservative Republican, has found himself in the same situation.

Hansen and his Washington-based New Continental Congress group have had only marginal success persuading broadcast networks, local stations and cable-TV networks to air a series of 30-second, one- and two-minute commercials attacking alleged abuses by the Internal Revenue Service.

Dramatically re-creating instances of questionable IRS actions, the provocative commercials condemn the IRS for sins ranging from being an unresponsive bureaucracy to being a Gestapo-like agency that tramples on the Bill of Rights and is beyond control of the courts, Congress or politicians.

Hansen, currently appealing a 1984 conviction for filing false financial disclosure statements to Congress, said he expected that it would be tough getting his ads on TV, especially at first.

“There’s a paranoia about the IRS,” he said from his Washington office, “especially in the media business.” He said there is the perception that, in addition to corporate tax matters, the IRS also has influence in such areas as broadcast licenses that can cause broadcasters headaches.

Such a concern is unknown to most newspapers, which regularly sell advertising space to interest groups expressing specific points of view.

Commercial TV stations and networks, however, long have restricted air time for what they call “issue advertising.” Most broadcasters insist that controversial issues are explored in news and public-affairs programs and are inappropriate in shows from outside sources.

That attitude, critics say, assures that most of television presents only consensual, centrist positions that offend few viewers and sharpen the perspectives of fewer still.

“There’s a real kind of ideological hegemony that mainstream media exercises,” said Herbert Chao Gunther, executive director of the San Francisco-based Public Media Center, a public-interest advertising agency that regularly supports liberal causes.

“Most people with controversial and substantive points of view have extreme difficulty getting on the air,” Gunther said.

It is not only politics that sends many broadcasters ducking. Groups taking stands on controversial issues of any sort--according to federal regulations, broadcasters themselves determine what is a controversial issue--complain that they are regularly excluded from television.

Earlier this year, all three of the broadcast networks refused to carry informational messages directed at teen-agers produced by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists about contraception. Last month, NBC and CBS agreed to carry the spots after the doctors’ group agreed to make changes in the commercials.

Joseph E. Seagram and Sons Inc. has been involved in a yearlong fight with the broadcast networks over a series of anti-drunk-driving messages explaining that standard servings of beer, wine and distilled spirits contain equivalent amounts of alcohol.

Mobil Corp., which regularly buys space in leading newspapers and magazines to present its point of view on a variety of political, economic and social issues, has sparred with the broadcast networks for years.

In 1979, in the midst of the oil crisis precipitated by the Iranian revolution, Mobil went so far as to start its own mini-network to present its messages to American viewers. The corporation bought time on local stations around the country for the British-made TV series “Edward and Mrs. Simpson” and included commercials outlining the oil industry’s views on energy regulation and other related issues.

Broadcasters often claim that their attitudes reflect concerns arising out of the Federal Communications Commission’s fairness doctrine, which requires federally licensed radio and TV stations to air all sides of controversial issues of public importance.

At the very least, a station found to have violated the fairness doctrine could be ordered to give free air time to groups representing opposing views. Theoretically, the penalty is much worse. Fairness-doctrine violations are grounds for revoking a station’s license to broadcast.

In practice, however, the FCC rarely enforces the doctrine. It has cited only one fairness violation by a broadcaster since 1981 (pro-nuclear power spots aired by a Syracuse, N.Y., TV station). The FCC recently issued a report calling for congressional repeal of the regulation.

FCC Chairman Mark Fowler has said that the doctrine has a “chilling effect” on broadcasters. He has fostered a laissez-faire attitude at the commission toward fairness issues that, critics say, undercuts broadcasters’ fears of government retribution implicit in the regulation.

Those critics charge that broadcasters hide behind the regulation as a convenient shield against on-air controversy or as an excuse to bar messages contrary to their personal politics.

“That’s a dumb thing to say,” said Walt Baker, vice president for programming of KHJ-TV (Channel 9) in Los Angeles, which turned down a request to air “Faces of War.”

“Many stations take positions, but they don’t want to take them in paid advertising,” Baker said. “Our basic policy is not to accept paid advertising on any issue of controversial importance.”

A number of stations refusing “Faces of War” have sold air time to fundamentalist TV ministers who have used their electronic pulpits to support hard-line action in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

KBHK in San Francisco, for example, accepts paid programs from conservative minister Jerry Falwell, who often mixes his politics with religion and has devoted whole programs to the Central American issue.

“All we are asking is the same opportunity as Jerry Falwell to present our views in the free marketplace of ideas that the Founding Fathers intended for our democracy,” said producer Allen.

WUHF-TV in Rochester, N.Y., also airs paid religious programs that have dealt with Central America and aired “Faces of War” last summer. Only after receiving one complaint about the liberal program, the station determined that “Faces of War” fulfilled its fairness obligations of balancing the conservative religious programming.

“We handle a number of controversial issues--gun control for one,” said Dale Hartnett, WUHF’s director of programming and operations. “We try not to play God by deciding whose opinions should or should not be on the air.”

Ironically, the broadcasters’ fairness doctrine shield is often the only weapon that activist groups have to fight the opinion gatekeepers at the stations. Neighbor to Neighbor Wednesday filed a fairness-doctrine complaint against KBHK, asking the FCC to investigate the charges.

While the left is obviously frustrated with mainstream TV, the right, too, has its problems with the media.

But former Rep. Hansen is more optimistic that his controversial anti-IRS messages will get out.

“The initial reaction is, ‘We don’t want to get involved,’ ” he said, “but if you have a cause that’s worthy you can break through.”

Hansen put everything he wanted into the ads, he said, but was careful not to over dramatize the IRS actions.

In one of the ads, heavily armed IRS agents storm into the kitchen of a family in an Amish community. Another shows a woman cringing inside a Volkswagen Beetle as revenue agents smash her car windows with night sticks, pull her out and drag her off--nose-to-glass-strewn-asphalt--as her car is towed away.

The IRS, says the narrator in one commercial, “can attach your bank account. Tow your car. Seize your home and possessions and hassle your children--all without any hint of a fair trial. It’s time for citizen action against this growing cancer. . . .”

The commercials have run on local stations and cable systems in Anchorage, Seattle, Detroit, Washington, Atlanta, Boise, Memphis and Denver.

The ads have been refused by each of the three broadcasting networks as well as a number of cable-TV program services, including ESPN (the sports channel), Cable News Network, USA Network, the Weather Channel, Financial News Network and Ted Turner’s WTBS Atlanta superstation.

“They’re inflammatory and we don’t know if everything in there is accurate,” said Cable News spokeswoman Judy Borza in Atlanta.

ESPN wouldn’t run Hansen’s ads, said spokesman Craig Levinsohn from Bristol, Conn., because it generally seeks to avoid controversy of any kind. The sports channel regularly steers clear of all political commercials, he said, and monitors closely any potentially troublesome ads.

Levinsohn said ESPN recently stopped running its first condom commercial after receiving letters from offended fathers who had been watching sports events with their young sons.

Time-buying for the anti-IRS spots is being handled by ICN Communications Corp. of New York, a direct-response advertising agency that often represents conservative groups.

“We’ve had trouble in the past with one of our other clients, the National Rifle Assn., but nothing close to this,” said an ICN executive who asked not to be identified because he did not want to appear critical of the tax agency. “It hits either too close to home or people are playing scared.”