NBC ‘JOLTED’ BY NEWTON JUDGMENT

The record $19.3-million libel judgment that found NBC guilty of defaming entertainer Wayne Newton “jolted” NBC News, but the division’s investigative reporting won’t stop, the president of NBC News said Thursday.

Larry Grossman made the comment in an interview a day after a federal jury in Las Vegas concluded that NBC News defamed Newton in three broadcasts in 1980 and 1981 by linking him to organized crime figures.

After the verdict, NBC’s chief lawyer in the case, Floyd Abrams, told reporters in Las Vegas that NBC will file an appeal, and added: “If this verdict were to be upheld, it would chill investigative reporting throughout the country.”

Asked Thursday about that, Grossman said that “obviously you can’t get hit with a $19-million verdict and have people say that your investigative reporters went out of their way to defame somebody and not be jolted by it.”

However, he later said that “it’s certainly not true that as a result of all this we’re not going to do any (more) investigative reporting. But I can’t help but believe that it has some effect” in both print and broadcast journalism.

“There’s got to be some concern (about the verdict),” Grossman added. “I mean, you don’t operate in a vacuum.”

The Newton award against NBC was the highest ever made in a case involving news coverage, said Henry Kaufman, general counsel for the Libel Defense Resource Center, an information center that Kaufman said is supported by various news organizations, including the three networks.

There have been higher judgments against publications--$26 million against Penthouse magazine and two totaling $40 million against Hustler magazine--but those awards didn’t involve news and later were overturned, he said.

Kaufman said that a study of libel judgments against news organizations in recent years shows that “every judgment in excess of $1 million has been overturned.”

He said that about 75% of the libel cases his center studied either were thrown out on appeal or the damage awards were reduced.

(In 1984, controversial political figure Lyndon LaRouche sued NBC for libel. Instead of finding for him, a federal jury instead agreed with NBC’s counterclaim against him. The jury said that LaRouche should pay NBC $3 million in punitive damages and $2,000 in actual damages. Appellate courts later lowered that amount to $200,000.)

Kaufman said that he agreed with Abrams about the impact of the Newton award, should it be upheld: “I’m sure that if an award of this size were to be affirmed, it would certainly chill--if not, ‘freeze,’ as some people put it--investigative reporting.”

The greatest impact, he added, would be on smaller news organizations that lacked the financial resources of major publications and the networks.

There was one notable dissenter to Abrams’ warning--Don Hewitt, executive producer of CBS News’ high-rated “60 Minutes.”

“I’ve been hearing about chilling things for the last 10 years,” Hewitt said. “I never caught cold from any of them.”

His program has been sued about 30 times, he said, and hasn’t lost a case yet. He said that he didn’t know what the NBC News broadcasts had said about Newton that prompted the singer to file suit.

“I don’t know what they said or on what authority they said it,” he said. However, he added, regarding the potential chill on investigative reporting that Abrams referred to, “I don’t have the shivers. . . . We’re not doing anything different from what we always do. I haven’t seen anything change here.”

And, he said, “I don’t automatically have one of those Pavlov’s dogs reactions where I automatically side with journalists. I don’t happen to believe that journalists are God’s chosen people.”