Media Group Assails ‘Nightline’ for Being Too Narrow : Same Faces in Political Crowd (White Males), Same Viewpoints Recycled on Issues of the Day

Challenges can be mounted against some aspects of a 40-month study, commissioned by politically liberal Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), that concludes that ABC’s influential “Nightline” is a “fundamentally conservative political program.”

For one thing, the study examines only the program’s guests, not its content or host Ted Koppel’s proven ability to play devil’s advocate and himself represent points of view not expressed by those guests. For another, any show predicated on news is necessarily dependent on news makers . And it’s arguable that news makers in the Reagan era--surely the political ones--were largely Republican and even conservative.

In a broader sense, however, the study is microcosmic, defining by implication a much larger arena of TV in which public-affairs programs are too often cozy clubs where gentlemen gather to talk politics over brandy and billiards. The result is the formation of a sort of media elite--consisting of both interviewers and interviewees--who are called and repeatedly recalled to the podium and whose views predominate because they alone have access to the crowd.

Hence, the perspective of these programs is narrow and predictable.

There are exceptions, of course. On rare occasions a non-member of the club--even (gasp) a female or black who is not Jesse Jackson--is invited in just for kicks. And occasionally the talk turns to shouting.

For the most part, however, meeting the press means meeting, on both sides of the table, a white male mainstream, one that frequently meanders to the right.

Yes, labels are tricky, and media watchdog FAIR has a liberal agenda (it prefers being called progressive ), just as its widely quoted counterpart, Accuracy in Media (AIM), is politically conservative.

Yet the imbalance found in public-affairs programming is not imaginary.

For example, consider ABC’s high-profile “This Week With David Brinkley,” whose regulars range from median-straddling Brinkley and Sam Donaldson to the identifiably conservative George Will. Occasional visits by such liberals as Tom Wicker and Hodding Carter make only a marginal difference.

Now hop over to CNN, whose most prominent public-affairs programs tilt unmistakably to the right.

There is “Evans and Novak,” where arch conservatives Roland Evans and Robert Novak apply their political spin to interviews of public figures. There is “Cross Fire,” mislabeled as a left-versus-right program while pitting overmatched centrist Tom Braden against forceful conservative Pat Buchanan. And there is the relatively new “Capital Gang,” whose lead panelist Buchanan and co-executive producer Novak debate issues with liberal columnist Mark Shields and the Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt, whose political leanings are not publicly discernible.

In other venues, conservative William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line” endures, and, in a much bigger way, so does the syndicated “McLaughlin Report,” where aggressively right-wing John McLaughlin emphatically shapes discussions of topical events with Buchanan, Novak, conservative Fred Barnes, middle-of-the-roaders Jack Germond and Morton Krondracke and a weekly guest labeled liberal .

This is balance?

Politics aside, all of these people are members of The Club. So are journalists appearing on the PBS series “Washington Week in Review” (where females do appear semi-regularly) and just about any other public-affairs program you can mention.

The same goes for guests, who are inevitably drawn from a familiar corps of gray-talking gray-suiters.

The media too often go on automatic pilot, be it newscasts or morning shows. “We’ve all been trained to do the same thing. . . ,” Steve Friedman said when he was executive producer of NBC’s “Today” program. “For a senator who makes a difference, you go for a Sam Nunn. . . .” And so on and so on.

It’s less a matter of politics than of energy and enterprise, for the news media are basically lazy, often relying on quotable and dependable old standbys instead of taking the time to seek out new voices that could widen the debate.

Additionally, the camera itself creates its own stars by conveying authority and credibility, with one appearance on TV as an expert almost always multiplying into many. The problem is getting that first appearance if you’re outside the narrowly defined mainstream.

That, perhaps more than anything else, is what FAIR’s study is all about.