UNIONS HIT NBC’S PAC PROPOSAL

Although the AFL-CIO has a political action committee, 15 media and entertainment unions that are part of that labor group say they are “dismayed and outraged” at NBC’s consideration of starting such a committee.

The labor organizations include the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the Writers Guild, as well as craft unions.

All members of the Arts, Entertainment and Media Industry Committee of the AFL-CIO, they didn’t directly criticize NBC President Robert C. Wright in their joint statement, released Thursday in Washington.

But they clearly referred to Wright’s PAC proposal, which network officials have said was only “an inquiry” he made to NBC chief attorney Corydon B. Dunham and several other top officers.

“There has been no reply (by Dunham) to his original memo,” an NBC spokesman said Friday, referring to Wright’s November memo that first raised the question of NBC starting a political action committee.

The matter still is pending, and no action has been taken yet, the spokesman said.

The unions nonetheless characterized it as “a plan,” and said that they “vigorously oppose” it or “any plan which would formally, or by management pressure, try to force our members to give money to a fund of this type.”

Federal election laws bar companies from contributing to their PACs--and thus political candidates they support--any money they have gotten from employees by force or threats of job or financial reprisals.

The unions asserted that were NBC to start a PAC to back political candidates, this would “compromise the integrity and objectivity” of their members who work on news programs and “dramatic programs that often relate to important issues.”

The statement also appeared to take a slap at Wright, a former top executive at General Electric who joined NBC in September with three years of experience in cable TV but none as an executive of a television network.

“To look at a network as just another company selling products or services,” the unions said, “is an incredible failure to understand the traditions of broadcast or journalism, and the fact that a network is made up of stations licensed by the government as a public trust.”

The NBC spokesman, Curt Block, said that the company had no comment on the statement because Wright’s PAC memo “is just an inquiry” and because “it may very well be that nothing happens” after Dunham and other key executives report back to Wright.

Although some of the unions signing the statement have political action committees, three of them--the Screen Actors Guild, AFTRA and the Writers Guild--do not, according to the Federal Election Commission.

The writers’ group represents some network and loca news employees, as does AFTRA, whose membership includes on-air television news reporters and such anchormen as Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings