TERRORISM CRAWLS UNDER THE COVER OF OBJECTIVITY

Abetting Abul Abbas: The terror of terrorvision continues.

Besides murdering innocents and threatening world peace, international terrorists have put the news media in a terrible bind. How do they report on terrorism without advancing it?

You’ll find no answer here. Suffice to say, however, that terrorism is a story in need of a stage and the media are a stage in need of a story. So NBC News got together with Abul Abbas.

Somewhere .

Abbas heads the radical Palestine Liberation Front and acknowledges organizing last October’s hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro that resulted in the murder of American Leon Klinghoffer.

In an interview on “NBC Nightly News” Monday, Abbas designated President Reagan as “Enemy No. 1” and vowed to import terrorism to the United States by attacking Americans in their own country.

The United States has offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of Abbas, who is urging harm to Americans, he said, because of the recent U.S. bombing of Libya.

It would be one thing if NBC merely had provided Abbas newscast time. That would be one of those tough journalistic calls that the news media are having to make in these times of increased terrorist peril. But NBC went further. As a condition of its exclusive interview with Abbas, it did not reveal his whereabouts.

So a man sought by the United States was shielded by a U.S. TV network for the purpose of obtaining an interview in which he was able to threaten U.S. citizens.

To put it even blunter, NBC--which is in a tight evening-news ratings race with ABC and CBS--made a self-serving deal with a man vowing to kill Americans.

In a sense, NBC was following the old journalistic principle of remaining above the fray, merely acting as a conduit and favoring neither Abbas nor the United States. If that principle applies to Abbas, though, wouldn’t it also apply to all terrorists? Wouldn’t it apply to such evil figures as Dr. Josef Mengele?

Where would NBC draw the line? If it had been offered the journalistic coup of an exclusive interview with Mengele, the notorious war criminal whose death was reported last year, would it have agreed on the basis that it not report his location?

Being the sum of many influences, none of us is completely objective. But reporters are trained to suppress their personal beliefs as much as possible and not take sides on issues they report. If they are advocates, so the argument goes, how can the public trust them to present facts honestly and uncolored by their opinions?

That’s noble. That’s right. That’s one of the basic tenets of the press in this nation.

There are times, though, when the usual rules don’t apply, when the greater good demands humanity first and reporting second, when imitating the aloof, observing Pierre Bezukhov of “War and Peace” doesn’t suffice.

The usual rules don’t apply when lives are at stake. You don’t interview a drowning woman, you try to save her. You don’t make deals with actual or potential murderers, you try to stop them.

An independent press is essential to democracy, and a press that automatically endorses “my country, right or wrong,” is a captive press. But NBC is not a sovereign United States of NBC, either. It is merely a TV network, a business that is part of a larger corporation whose charter is to make profits, not policy.

On the one hand, NBC joined other media in protesting--and rightfully so--the Reagan Administration’s omitting reporters from the U.S. invasion of Grenada on the flimsy grounds that telling them beforehand might have compromised the mission.

The news media correctly argued that as Americans first, journalists second, they could be trusted to keep the invasion a secret, honoring an American press tradition going back generations. Not that they wouldn’t report the Grenada invasion honestly, only that they would not blow it beforehand.

If NBC is American when it comes to Grenada, though, isn’t it employing a double standard in hiding the whereabouts of the America-threatening Abul Abbas in exchange for an interview?

There’s merit in discourses with terrorists. On May 20, KCET Channel 28 will air a half-hour public TV program probing the mind and motivations of a former Brazilian terrorist. Why do some people choose terror? What are its causes? That kind of examination, unlike the Abbas interview, has value.

In an extraordinary commentary on CBS Radio Tuesday, CBS newsman Charles Osgood pointedly wondered whether NBC had found Abbas--when even the CIA and the Israelis could not--or Abbas had found NBC.

“I can see why NBC might want to try to find him, but I can also see why he’d want to go to them,” Osgood said. “If your purpose is to strike fear into the hearts of Americans, you need to find somebody to deliver your message for you.”

Although Osgood has never seemed to be the petty type, NBC dismissed his commentary as sour grapes from a competitor. Cable News Network has defended NBC and said it also would have made the same deal with Abbas for an interview. If given the opportunity, perhaps CBS, ABC and some newspapers would have also, no matter what they say now.

If so, they would have been just as wrong.

Journalists are not divinely ordained. They are merely ordinary people working at jobs, just as accountants and truckers and waitresses work at their jobs. They are not above the crowd, they are part of the crowd, and they ought to act like it.

On Monday, NBC is airing a three-hour program proudly celebrating its 60th anniversary. NBC is really on a roll now, and in many ways is setting high standards for the other networks to follow. So there are lots of reasons to break out the champagne. Unfortunately, the Abbas interview isn’t one of them.