MEDIA POLITICS : Networks Give Candidates Short Shrift : TV News Prefers Shuttle Flight to Politics

In the video-political world, some days are more important than others. And when America is trying to relaunch its space program, candidates should know it is not a good day to launch major campaign initiatives.

Perhaps both of the candidates learned something on Thursday. Neither Michael S. Dukakis nor George Bush earned so much as a sound bite on two of the networks.

And both candidates chose this day of the shuttle launching to hold rare press conferences, both too late in the day for the network news, and both knowing that whatever they said would get less space in newspapers.

The Bush staff has made it clear in the past that it fears that slips in news conference remarks can detract attention from the carefully arranged message the candidate is trying to put out on a given campaign day, a sin that, in the political world, is called “stepping on one’s message.”

Over the din of competing news, Dukakis tried to get out a substantive message Thursday. He made what his campaign had billed as a major statement on the environment; and, in the political competition to ride the coattails of movie and singing stars, the Democratic nominee trotted out actor and environmentalist Robert Redford.

A day earlier, George Bush had used country-Western singer Loretta Lynn, who even claimed in rural Illinois that the vice president “was country,” a campaign whopper that not even the networks aired.

Tough Dukakis Line

Dukakis’ possibly mistimed environmental address won him a full story on only one network, CBS, and the only three sound bites the governor earned were hardly important remarks about the environment. One, indeed, was a particularly rough attack line: “Calling George Bush an environmentalist is like calling Dan Quayle a statesman.”

Dan Rather, or his writer, seemed to think that that went a bit far. In perhaps the best line of the night, Rather described the campaign styles of the two sides as “no blow too low.”

And the closest Dukakis got to substance on the environment in a sound bite Thursday was defending his tarnished record on cleaning up Boston Harbor by blaming the federal government for the delays. Correspondent Bruce Morton said the Reagan Administration and Dukakis shared blame.

Bush got his lone network sound bite of the night by accusing Dukakis of hypocrisy for denouncing Bush for once voting to delay a Social Security cost-of-living increase. Dukakis had once favored the same thing, Bush noted, and Morton said Bush was right.

On NBC, the campaigns earned only a mention and no pictures, the political equivalent of nonexistence. And, on ABC, Peter Jennings did the talking over standard campaign pictures, noting that Bush had charged that Dukakis’ plan to collect more taxes by beefing up the Internal Revenue Service amounted to “a government hand in every pocket and a tax agent in every house.”

The only line to make all three networks--and CBS used the sound bite--was actor Redford introducing himself by saying, “Hello, I’m Dan Quayle.”