PANEL JOUSTS OVER NETWORK NEWS FUTURE

The panel, sponsored by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, concerned the question: “Is Network News in Trouble?” Moderator Tony Schwartz, TV writer for New York magazine, jokingly expressed hope that the session might turn into a “brawl.”

Although no fists flew, some verbal sparring ensued between TV’s young guard and old guard--none of that really concerned the future of network news. Of the six panelists, only former CBS News president Fred Friendly said that network news operations probably are doomed. Three of the five other panelists, including another former CBS News chief, Van Gordon Sauter, agreed that a new tight-money era in network news has begun, that change is inevitable, but that network news will survive.

However, the Tuesday-night drive toward that opinion was overshadowed on several occasions by sharp verbal jabs by Steve Friedman, executive producer of NBC’s “Today Show” and sharp counterjabs by Friendly and former CBS News executive Burton Benjamin.

The jousts began when Friendly, who quit CBS News in 1966 and often cites the memory of his late colleague, Edward R. Murrow, asserted that networks now are more concerned about servicing their debt than the public and that “broadcast journalism has been affected by greed.”

“I hate to interrupt, but that’s a bunch of baloney,” the feisty Friedman, who is 40, told the equally feisty Friendly, who is 71 and journalism professor emeritus at Columbia.

(The professor later told the producer that “your program is not a news program. It’s Johnny Carson in the morning.” This prompted a rebuke by fellow panelist, author David Halberstam. He called Friendly’s statement “a real cheap shot.” “Thank you,” Friendly replied.)

When moderator Schwartz referred to Friedman as a working producer, the “Today” chief replied: “I must say I think that’s why I’m here on the panel. I have a job. . . I don’t know what some of the people on this panel would do without the word former in front of their names.”

This provoked gasps from the audience and a look of mild disgust by Sauter, making his first appearance in a journalistic arena since he resigned as CBS News chief on Sept. 11, a day after the forced resignation of his chief CBS ally, board chairman Thomas H. Wyman.

Former CBS News vice president Benjamin, who retired last year after a 29-year career during which time he was executive producer of “The CBS Evening News” in the Walter Cronkite era and a respected documentary-maker, was moved to fire back at Friedman.

“I had experience in television programs before you were born,” he said, “and I’ll be producing them when you’re a former .”

The audience of about 250 persons attending the session erupted in cheers and applause, after which the panel--which included media critic Neal Postman and public TV executive Joan Konner--more or less got down to business.

Halberstam praised today’s network news operations as staffed by persons as “good and honorable” as in past years. However, he asserted, networks now have been “kissed by a new, more predatory Wall Street” and that pressures are great to make news more entertaining and thus more profitable.

The panelists also touched on the effects on network news of the billion-dollar takeovers of NBC by General Electric and ABC by Capital Cities Communications, and the top-level shake-up in which Loews Corp. chairman Laurence A. Tisch became acting head of CBS.

Although Sauter said he is more “optimistic” about the new “ownerships” than some of his colleagues, he noted that under the new leadership there is now “an attitude that the network news organizations must adhere to reasonable financial standards of performance.”

And, he said, the new leaders “are going to impose financial restraints that did not exist previously, and that will be painful. . . .”

Network news divisions feel the same economic pressures as the networks in the current climate of flat advertising revenues and rising costs, Friedman said, “but we haven’t all sold out, and we don’t sit around saying, ‘How can we make more money?’ ”

However, referring to the new, cost-conscious heads of NBC, CBS and ABC, Friedman rejected assertions by some that the new owners will cut back on network news: “To say that this new breed of corporate cats is going to beat the hell out of us . . . is just not right.

“We’re working under the same pressure you were,” he said, addressing Friendly. “The most difference is that the money (involved) is even bigger.”

Later in his remarks, Friedman--who like Sauter and Benjamin expressed a belief that network news operations will survive--said that costs have been driven up by the new satellite news-gathering technology.

And “the driving up the costs of covering the world . . . is what is bothering the GEs, the Tisches and the Cap Cities,” he said. “You have $900 million spent (annually) by the three networks to cover the news.”

“Now,” he continued, referring to the recent summit conference in Iceland by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, “if you’re somebody who looks at that (news coverage costs) from a business point of view, you look at the . . . summit.

“You saw 80 cameras on this house where Reagan and Gorbachev were. And you’d ask yourself, ‘Why do we need 80 cameras on a house three miles away. And that is the question that’s being asked right now . . . business people are saying, ‘Hey, you know, maybe there’s a more efficient way to bring you that picture of a house.’ ”

“Is this the new history?” Postman puckishly inquired.

During the two-hour session, Sauter drew an unlikely ally when he defended the use of some entertainment elements in television news. He said that such elements, when used responsibly, “make the stories understandable and aid the retention of the information.”

Public television’s Joan Konner--whose new partner, former CBS News commentator Bill Moyers last September criticized what he called the injection of entertainment values in news at CBS --supported the former CBS News president.

“It might surprise you to hear this,” she said, “but I agree with Mr. Sauter that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with using entertainment values to make information more accepted.”

In addition to the grumbles from the panel Tuesday night, there was another one Wednesday by a CBS News official, Robert (Shad) Northshield. He had been invited to be a member of the panel and was advertised as being on it, but then was asked to bow out because, he said, he was told “we have too many CBS people and not enough blacks or women.”

There were no blacks on the panel. Neither Konner nor NBC’s Friedman originally had been listed as participants.

Northshield, executive producer of the “CBS News Sunday Morning,” said he had agreed to a request that he not participate, but then he got angry about it and wrote “a nasty letter” to Fred Yu, acting dean of Columbia’s graduate journalism school.

The organizer of the panel, Michael Rosenblum, a producer at public TV station WNET here, confirmed Northshield’s statement and said the panel mix-up “really was my mistake.”

Northshield, who is no admirer of Sauter, said that “I think in terms of the future of television news--and I had a number of questions I wanted to ask of Mr. Sauter, questions I couldn’t very well ask while I was his employee.”