The Moscow Summit : For Media, Glasnost Doesn’t Mean End to Moscow Glitches

In the circus spirit that always bubbles just beneath the surface of pre-planned news events like the Reagan-Gorbachev summit, the trials and tribulations of the news media sometimes threaten to drown out the doings of the two most powerful men on Earth.

The huge Xerox machine flown in for the U.S. Information Agency exploded. Some Japanese journalists tried to unseat their American colleagues. And a satellite with the hiccups repeatedly disrupted U.S.-Soviet telephone linkups on which the world’s most influential news organizations were depending.

So began the first day of the Moscow summit.

It wasn’t a bad start, considering. At least that’s how USIA chief Charles Z. Wick evaluated the situation. “I think it’s working out really well,” he said with dutiful good cheer. “Otherwise, I’d be walking around the press center being the recipient of expressed dissatisfaction.”

Grousing at Soviets

One of the main reasons Wick was spared, it appears, is that so much of the grousing was directed at the Soviet side.

“I believe there is some complaining,” acknowledged Nikita Matkovsky, a press official with the Soviet Foreign Ministry. “But the host country is doing everything possible to settle it down.”

Certainly, no one expected that this U.S.-Soviet meeting would be a cinch to cover. Not when 5,365 reporters and technicians from 62 countries, including 1,060 Americans, were accredited this week in Moscow, which hasn’t seen such an onslaught of media since it hosted the 1980 Olympics.

And not when the vast majority of the Americans here with the media couldn’t even pronounce the name of their hotel and shortened its name, Mezhdunarodnaya, to the simpler “Mezh.”

Unprecedented Access

On the one hand, Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s much-heralded policy of glasnost, or openness, has given Western journalists unprecedented access to high-ranking Soviet officials as bona fide news sources. During the week before the summit, one press conference included a uniformed military marshal who actually answered questions with a minimum of propaganda and a maximum of forthrightness.

It was at one of these “truth” sessions last week that the Soviets finally specified how many of their troops were killed in Afghanistan.

But the fact is that glasnost hasn’t had much effect on the low-level Soviet bureaucrats. When wielding control over passes, privileges and even piroshki-- the little Russian meat pies that some experienced Moscow media hands had hoped would sustain them in the face of Moscow’s limited fast-food capability--their favorite word for foreign journalists is still “nyet. “

That’s why many media technicians, sent to Moscow days in advance to arrange for telephones, computers and work spaces, were exhausted mentally and physically even before the President and First Lady arrived.

Problems Were Expected

“You know what it’s like pushing a pea up a hill with your nose?” asked Mike Botho, the chief of the London news center for Voice of America. “Setting up here was about the same. But no more than we expected.”

As a three-time visitor to the Soviet Union, Botho knew what to expect. But, given glasnost, he also hoped the situation would be improved. Then it took him three hours just to get his summit credentials.

And that was relatively speedy. For other journalists, it took days.

“They have a different approach from the way we do things in the West,” Botho explained. “The problem here is that everybody does everything slowly. And then it all has to be done on the right bit of paper, and the right person’s got to deal with it. It just takes time.”

Fred Tasse, a technical support staffer for computer systems with Cable News Network, also found it frustrating to set up. In fact, just talking about it makes him look like he bit into a lemon. “The hardest thing to deal with is the length of time it takes to do things,” he said, echoing Botho.

Americans Also Faulted

But Tasse doesn’t blame just the Soviets for the delays. “It’s the White House staff that is causing the extra delays,” he maintained. “All this coordination between two governments means you’ve got two mixes of securities.”

That’s why he and his technical colleagues spent one entire week just setting up for the arrival of the Reagans in Air Force One at Vnukovo Airport on Sunday. And even then, things went wrong.

“Everything was more or less ready 99%,” Tasse said. “Then the White House said we couldn’t go out and do all the work we were supposed to do this morning because they didn’t want anybody there this morning. We couldn’t complete the installation. And all to get these four little wires talking to each other.”

Was the work finished in time? “We’ll know as soon as the President lands,” Tasse said tensely an hour before Air Force One appeared in the shimmering blue sky. (CNN’s coverage of the event was technically flawless.)

Surprise From Reagans

Ironically, given all the concerns about whether the Soviets could handle a full-blown international news event, a surprising number of the problems plaguing news organizations on the first day of the summit were attributable to the Americans.

Obviously, if the First Couple had stayed home at Spaso House instead of going for an unscheduled walk with the people, the mob scene on a Moscow street would never have occurred and Soviet security wouldn’t have kicked into violent overdrive.

As it was, several journalists traveling with the President and First Lady complained of being beaten up. Associated Press photographer Ira Schwarz claimed to have suffered a black eye and told colleagues, “I want to see my doctor.”

On another front, White House and some other pool reports were delayed and then were less plentiful than usual because a 1,200-pound Xerox machine “blew up in color” as soon as it was plugged in here, the USIA’s Wick reported.

The problem may have stemmed from the fact that the behemoth had come loose during its flight from Washington to Moscow. Then there were questions as to whether the Russian voltage had been properly converted for the American machine. In any case, a replacement machine is being flown in from Duesseldorf, West Germany. Meanwhile, a Xeroxing shuttle has been set up between the U.S. Embassy here and the USIA offices in the International Filing Center in the Sovincentr complex.

Telephone Lifelines

The lifeline of traveling journalists, of course, is the telephone. It not only connects them with their news organizations but also provides the means for them to transmit their stories electronically or via dictation.

So many phones were needed to expand Moscow’s normally poor international calling abilities that each of the four major television networks put in 22 telephone lines to the United States. That figure is even more staggering when one considers that all of Moscow had only 11 telephone lines to the United States before the summit began, according to the USIA.

Much of the American media thought they would get around the antiquated Soviet telephone system by leasing service via satellite from IDB Communications Group Inc. of Culver City, Calif.

What they have instead is an uneven connection that goes up and down without warning and is subject to the vagaries of weather in places as far away as Arlington, Va., and Staten Island, N.Y.

Technical Problems

“One reason I’ve heard for some of the problem,” said Botho, “was that it’s been raining for eight days straight in New York and the satellite dish site at Staten Island is sinking. So they have to keep adjusting it.”

“I’m afraid that’s not exactly right,” countered Bill Wisniewski, IDB’s director of special projects, who’s fielding the complaints. “But I know it makes a heck of a good rumor.”

The source of the problem is technical, to say the least, and exacerbated by restrictions governing U.S.-Soviet communications. Basically, Wisniewski explained, “no one had ever worked the Intelsat VAF10 satellite No. 335 in the Soviet Union before. We’re encountering a number of problems due to location and weather. And these may continue.”

Television networks use a different satellite for their video transmissions, so “film at 11” was not affected.

‘Unfortunate’ Incident

Of course, other problems were well within the Americans’ or Soviets’ ability to control. Soviet official Matkovsky called it “unfortunate” but also “rather funny” when the highly competitive Japanese journalists began rearranging the White House press corps’s assigned front-row seating for the summit press center before the Americans even appeared in Moscow.

“I saw Japanese correspondents trying to steal the places of the American press and trying to occupy their seats,” Matkovsky said, incredulous. “And now we have a lot of people who are worrying about their missing seats.”

Although the situation finally sorted itself out, the Soviets puzzled over a solution. Some Americans suggested having a Soviet guard stationed in the press center to watch over the seating arrangements.

But the Soviets nixed that idea. Apparently, they didn’t think it would look good for glasnost.