SETTING THE MEDIA RECORD STRAIGHT

Time to separate nitty from gritty.

What did the media know? When did they know it? And when they knew it, did they know they knew, and if they did know, did they know what do about it?

As ABC’s late-night “Viewpoint” program showed Wednesday, questions about media performance are now officially part of the Iran arms/ contras story that has dominated newscasts and front pages for weeks. That’s because attacking coverage of the news is a facile defense against the news.

President Reagan set the media-socking tone in a recent Newsweek interview and later passed the baton to White House Communications Director Patrick Buchanan, the Administration’s designated snarler.

Out in the boonies where I live, some of the attacks are just as shrill and predictable. A letter in our local newspaper captured some of the anti-media venom by accusing the “liberal” TV networks of causing all of the President’s problems and, even more heinously, enjoying it.

And on the fundamentalist Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) this week, media coverage of the Iran arms/ contras story was called “an attack on Christianity and conservatism.” The implications were that non-conservatives and Christianity were incompatible, that Reagan doubters were anti-God.

Does the “liberal media” label stick?

It seemed to, in a sense, during “Viewpoint,” one of those periodic Ted Koppel-moderated programs designed to examine the media’s role.

In setting the battle lines as Media vs. Conservatives, the 90-minute program encouraged the very “liberal media” argument that its panel of reporters sought to reject.

And by giving identifiable conservative critics like muddled Reed Irvine the most latitude, “Viewpoint”:

--Revealed a deep insecurity.

--Seemed to endorse conservative charges that maybe some of the media have been too tough on Reagan--despite others insisting that coverage hasn’t been tough enough--and that this program would make things right.

Wrapping up at 1 a.m. in the West, it was the kind of program where ABC’s battling and embattled Sam Donaldson felt compelled to announce that he voted for conservative Barry Goldwater in 1964 and admired Richard Nixon’s Red China initiative. Words, words. If he were a true American, why didn’t he produce his passport?

The program’s title was “Bashing: The Press and the Presidency.”

The bashees on this night were those wild radicals Donaldson, Helen Thomas of UPI, Chris Wallace of NBC and Bill Plante of CBS, all White House press corps members and highly visible during rare televised press conferences involving Reagan or his staff.

The bashers were seated in an audience at George Washington University in Washington consisting mostly of students, some of whom got to ask questions.

Prospective questioners invited by ABC included such critics from the right as Irvine, the head of Accuracy in the Media (AIM), and such critics from the left as Jeff Cohen, the head of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).

Somehow, though, the right had the might.

Among the non-students allowed to ask questions were Irvine, conservative columnists Lester Kinsolving and James Lofton, and the media consultant responsible for a pro-Reagan commercial combating the President’s negative publicity over the Iran arms/ contras scandal.

Cohen was the only identifiable representative from the left.

This might have been one of the adroit Koppel’s finer nights had not a double standard intervened. He kept an appropriately tight rein on most of the questioners, ordering them to “get to the point.” Kinsolving and especially Irvine, though, were allowed to take as long as they wanted to get to the point.

It looked like a cave-in to the right.

One period in the middle of the program consisted of Irvine making rambling charges without asking a question, Koppel saying something witty to get him on track, Irvine continuing to ramble, then Koppel coming back with something witty, and so on and so on. Finally, “Viewpoint” went to a commercial, after which Irvine was allowed to complete his sermon.

“I don’t want you to feel that you haven’t been given adequate time or that the panel hasn’t answered your question,” Koppel told Irvine, whose media watchdog group publishes an outspoken newsletter accusing most of the major media of left-wing bias.

This was not Irvine’s first starring appearance at a “Viewpoint.” Koppel skillfully rebuts his arguments, but is otherwise deferential. Why does Irvine merit such deference?

One interpretation could be that Koppel, in being relatively sharp with FAIR’s Cohen and yet appearing reluctant to cut off Irvine, was trying to rectify past media sins against conservatives. At least it could have been viewed that way.

Perhaps those “liberal-bias” charges are having an effect, even though in truth the right has always had greater media access than the left.

The program’s Media vs. Conservatives tone was established earlier by a report from Jeff Greenfield that included words from Buchanan and columnist Robert Novak, yet another proponent of the “liberal media” line.

What if conservative critics are right about most journalists being liberal? Then what? If the media tend to attract people with liberal political views, what’s to be done about it? Should they all be fired or reprogrammed? By whom? Their bosses? They’re liberal, too, as the argument goes. Apparently the only solution is to somehow dissolve our media institutions and start from scratch with journalists who are politically acceptable to the right.

But then the left will protest that the media are conservative.

There is something even more insidious here, according to Doug Clark, the man who charged the media with being anti-Christian and anti-conservative on a TBN program called “Praise the Lord.”

And pass the ammunition.

Clark told viewers Wednesday that the coverage of the Iran arms/ contra story so angered him that he hasn’t watched any television “in the last few weeks.” Which, of course, gave him a unique perspective on the coverage.

He accused the networks of “launching an attack against the President” that was also a “satanic attack on America.” He added: “I think we’re carrying freedom a little too far.”

In a blockbuster, he revealed that some of Reagan’s critics “support lesbians and homosexuals.” And he asked, ominously: “Do you know that 75% of the world doesn’t celebrate Christmas?” He ticked off some of the peoples who don’t celebrate Christmas, including “the oy veys in Israel.” I think he meant Jews.

The White House telephone number was flashed on the screen so that Reagan’s friends could “vote for the President against the press.” “We love this Christian country and we want to keep it that way,” Clark said.

He was followed by the Joy Singers.