Time Inc. Accused of Using Reporters’ Group to Push Film : Murrow Docudrama Splits Journalists

More than one journalist involved has wondered what Edward R. Murrow himself would think about all this--some of the most luminescent names in the news business spatting in public over whether a press advocacy group should screen a TV “docudrama” on Murrow’s life at a Washington fund-raiser.

Some say a docudrama, a theatrical re-creation of actual events, would have appalled Murrow, the man credited with pioneering network television news standards. Others think an intramural quarrel that appears to pit journalists--and the commercial interests--of one corporation, CBS, against those of the film’s producer, Time Inc., would have embarrassed him.

Cronkite May Quit Group

The dispute has so escalated, however, that it already may have harmed the group involved, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, one of the most effective advocates of press freedom. CBS newsmen Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, whose company is a major financial contributor to the committee, have hinted that they might resign from the group if the film is shown.

CBS newsmen are not alone in objecting. “I think Murrow would have thrown up at even the possibility that someone would do a docudrama about him,” said Village Voice writer Nat Hentoff.

“I don’t know what the issues are, and I don’t really care,” said Mike Royko, a member of the Reporters Committee’s official steering committee, who abstained when asked to vote on the matter recently. “But, if I could vote now that I know Rather and Cronkite are against it, I’m for it.”

The tempest began several weeks ago when Time magazine Washington correspondents David Beckwith and Hays Gorey suggested that the Reporters Committee screen a new film about Murrow’s life, called “Murrow,” at a fund-raising event for the organization. The film was produced by a Time subsidiary, Home Box Office.

Dissent in News Division

The film concerns Murrow’s career at CBS in the early days of television and focuses on the conflicts between commercial profit and journalistic integrity at CBS. At a time when the network has just posted its first quarterly loss in 32 years, is suffering from internal dissent in the news division and is facing charges of liberal bias from Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N. C.), Reporters Committee Executive Director Jane Kirtley knew the idea would prove controversial.

After viewing “Murrow” privately, however, Kirtley and her executive group decided to poll their steering committee, a prestigious group of 30 journalists, including such figures as the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw, ABC’s Peter Jennings, TV journalist Hodding Carter, Hentoff of the Village Voice, Wall Street Journal Washington bureau chief Al Hunt and Los Angeles Times Washington bureau chief Jack Nelson. A majority vote, Kirtley hoped, would settle the matter.

The vote was 16 to 10 to go ahead, and plans were set to hold a fund-raiser Jan. 9 at the National Press Club. Two employees of Time Inc. on the committee, Beckwith and Gorey, abstained. NBC anchorman Brokaw was opposed to the screening. ABC’s anchorman Jennings voted for it.

Far from settling matters, the vote, tallied last week, provoked deep rancor. One committee member charged that CBS “is trying to suppress this film . . . because it raises new challenges to CBS’ credibility.” Another journalist denounced his fellow committee members for “leaking to the press.” Some reporters refused to comment; others asked for confidentiality.

Dan Rather Upset

Rather, who was so upset that he called Kirtley from the U.S.-Soviet summit meeting in Geneva, privately discussed resigning from the committee after the vote, some committee members said.

Cronkite, when asked whether he, too, might consider resigning, told the Washington Post last week: “Maybe that’s the easiest thing to do.”

Cronkite refused to elaborate on those remarks. Rather also refused to comment for publication--either on the dispute or the possibility of his resigning.

Even before the Reporters Committee was involved, “Murrow” had been the subject of tumultuous gossip at CBS News, where staff members circulated bootleg scripts and prints of the film. Employees were twittering about the depictions of such CBS pioneers as Murrow, former Chairman William S. Paley and former President Frank Stanton. It was noted, for instance, that actor Dabney Coleman, best known for playing insincere and manipulative executives in such films as “Tootsie” and “9 to 5,” played Paley. Daniel J. Travanti, the earnest and virtuous Capt. Furillo on TV’s “Hill Street Blues,” is Murrow.

Accusation Against Time

When the Reporters Committee wandered into the picture, Rather charged that Time Inc. executives were using the press group to promote their sister company’s movie, an accusation of newsmen bowing to commercial pressure curiously similar to the issues depicted in the film.

“One of the things that has made the Reporters Committee so effective is that its members don’t try to use it for self-aggrandizement, to settle scores or get things done for their parent companies,” said one steering committee member who holds Rather’s views. This journalist stipulated that he remain anonymous.

Public television journalist Carter, who favors the screening, thinks charging Beckwith and Gorey with shilling for Time Inc. is hypocritical. “It is a cheap shot (to say) that those who are in favor of running this movie are sullied by crass self-interest and those who are opposed to it are not.”

Beckwith has denied accusations that he was “carrying water” for Time Inc., as one committee member put it. He disputed also the notion that the reporters’ group must avoid contact with any projects produced by companies represented on the committee.

Some, like Village Voice writer Hentoff, do not share Rather’s concerns but are still opposed. “I just think docudrama is a misshapen form of I don’t know what, and I think it is dead wrong with journalists to associate themselves with any form of docudrama, or to make money off of one.”

Film Called Dull

Cronkite, on the other hand, just thinks the movie is lousy and unfair. It is a “dull . . . docudrama of the worst type,” he said, and it “maligns” former CBS President Stanton, who is depicted as an incessant number-cruncher who must appease a profit-oriented board of trustees, a Red-baiting Congress and an idealistic Murrow.

“When an organization that champions our hopes for . . . freedom of speech chooses to endorse in this fashion a movie which badly portrays one of the great defenders of freedom of the press, it is a travesty, and I don’t want any part of it,” Cronkite said.

Stanton’s depiction in the film is mixed. At one point, for instance, Stanton tells CBS producer Fred Friendly, Murrow’s collaborator: “Controversy and the consequent negative public opinion hurts CBS’ financial position . . . . My obligation is to the corporation and the stockholders.”

But Stanton comes across as more sympathetic when Chairman Paley tells Murrow why he is canceling Murrow’s program “See It Now:” “This is the real world . . . . Do you think God was protecting you. I was protecting you. And Frank Stanton, running his ass off down to Washington every time you crawled down one of those lightning shafts of yours.”

Docudrama Defended

Carter considers complaints about how people are depicted in the film largely irrelevant. “That docudrama, whatever its failures and virtues as history, is first rate as an exposition of a number of the practical and moral and professional issues that arise in the course of journalists’ doing their business.”

Carter noted also that the group screened the film “Absence of Malice” three years ago at a fund-raiser, even though several members considered it a misrepresentative caricature of journalists.

One point of concern to Cronkite, according to committee members, was that an early draft of the script had Stanton hesitating only momentarily on hearing of Murrow’s death before returning to preparations with Paley for a business meeting the next day.

Ernest Kinoy, who wrote the screenplay for “Murrow,” said in an interview from his home in Yonkers, N. Y., that the scene was rewritten because “CBS producer Don Hewitt pointed out that it seemed to give the impression that Stanton didn’t care.”

“That wasn’t what we had in mind, and so we changed it,” said Kinoy, one of the writers of the “Roots” miniseries and author of the TV movie “Skokie.”

Actually, Kinoy said, somewhat amused, “all the fuss about this is just going to give the movie more publicity.”