TV & VIDEO - May 17, 1988

CBS--already the subject of two books published this month--will be the focus of a third, due out July 27. Entitled “Fair Play,” it’s by Burton (Bud) Benjamin, a respected documentary maker and executive producer of the “CBS Evening News” in the Walter Cronkite era. Benjamin’s topic: the internal investigation he conducted for the network’s news division into the making of a controversial 1981 Vietnam documentary. The program prompted a $120-million libel suit by Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who later dropped charges. Former CBS News President Edward Joyce, whose own book on CBS News came out this month, recently characterized as “an act of journalistic malpractice” the documentary that provoked the general’s suit. CBS has consistently defended the program as truthful.