Networks Duped--’Chernobyl’ Was Trieste

Red-faced officials at NBC News and ABC News said Wednesday that they made a mistake Monday night in airing videotaped scenes of what they thought was the damaged Soviet nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. They were flim-flammed, the officials said.

They said they have learned that the tape, broadcast on the “NBC Nightly News” and ABC’s “World News Tonight,” actually was taken at a factory in Trieste, Italy. They said the tape was acquired by their Rome bureaus from an unidentified Yugoslav man who claimed to have been near Chernobyl the day after the disaster there.

The incident was reported by both networks Wednesday on their evening newscasts.

When Italian television aired the same tape, “some sharp-eyed Italians suggested the pictures were really of Trieste. . . . In cooperation with the Italian police, we made an intense investigation and, yes, the video had been taken at Trieste,” ABC anchorman Peter Jennings told viewers.

‘Badly Misled’

“We were the victims of fraud,” he said, later adding that “we were badly misled. We misled you, and we’re not very happy about that.” Tom Brokaw, his NBC rival, offered essentially the same explanation and also apologized.

Anchorman Dan Rather, whose “CBS Evening News” program did not get or air the bogus tape Monday night, showed a portion of it Wednesday. He noted that Soviet TV has had “small and sparse coverage” of the Chernobyl accident, but “today was quick to air this footage and crow about and condemn it.”

Rather, who reported the explanations and apologies of NBC and ABC, said that millions of European viewers also saw the videotape on newscasts in their countries. He said that a “24-year-old Frenchman” whom he didn’t identify has been arrested in Italy and “charged with fraud for allegedly faking the film and selling it.”

Never Part of the Deal

Ramona Dunn, a CBS News spokeswoman in New York, said her network never was part of any deal to purchase the tape because the person trying to sell it claimed he hadn’t been able to find a CBS representative.

NBC and ABC news executives had agreed to pay $11,000 each for the tape, said a source at one of the networks. But the source, who declined to be identified, said that while the networks were embarrassed, at least they had made no payment, nor will they now.

“We didn’t pay a nickel,” he said.