Not Every TV Bulletin on Noriega Was a News Coup

Frustrations have been building for months. So once again, it’s time to unleash the fury of . . . The Gripe Line. First, a good news/bad news gripe.

We Interrupt This Program . . . . But why? News bulletins are often arbitrary and unmerited, giving undue emphasis to relatively unimportant events.

An example of good use came Tuesday morning, when ABC, CBS and NBC repeatedly interrupted their regular programming for accounts of a possible coup attempt in Panama, where strongman Manuel A. Noriega has been a scourge to the United States.

The early information was sketchy and conflicting. In its role as the nation’s instant news source, CNN inevitably succumbed to the scattershot “another-report-we’re-getting” syndrome. And there was this from KCBS reporter Harvey Levin:

“As you’ve just heard, Panama strongman Manuel Noriega has fallen from power as the result of a coup.” Levin announced it at a 10 a.m. newsbreak. He spoke those words, firmly and resolutely, moments after Harry Smith of CBS News had echoed ABC, NBC and CNN in reporting that there was not yet outside confirmation of Noriega being ousted. Perhaps Levin had independent sources in Panama.

The bulletins became less frequent as the morning wore on. Confusing? Yes. Yet merely informing viewers that something of consequence was happening in strategically important Panama--more definitive details to follow--was ample reason for the bulletins.

That was hardly the case last month when all three networks interrupted their prime-time programming for live reports on the USAir crash in New York City’s East River that took two lives. Few details were available at the time. Yet the mere presence of these bulletins--regardless of their content--gave undue weight to the story by giving the erroneous impression that a disaster may have occurred.

It appeared that these hair-trigger bulletins from the networks were motivated by competitive pressure and by having accessibility to the crash site, which translated into pictures.

But that did not translate into good judgment.

The TV Witness Protection Program . What else would you call it when the identity of someone being interviewed is supposed to be hidden for his or her protection? But who is kidding whom?

One method of concealment is electronic breakup--a section of the picture turning into a sort of cubist blur--that is designed to hide a person’s face on newscasts. It works fine--until the person moves suddenly, leaving the blur behind. Oops, there’s the face.

Another method is outright disguise, as on Monday’s “Donahue” show featuring three women claiming to have been molested by clergymen. Their flimsy disguises--wigs and sunglasses--were a joke. What’s more, they spoke in their normal voices, making them easily identifiable to anyone who knew them.

A third method is positioning and lighting, a la the recent “CBS This Morning” interview with a 13-year-old girl whose mother had delivered her to a man to be raped as payment for drugs. After the rape, the mother and the man got high together. They’re now in jail.

At one point, CBS shot the girl in a sort of silhouette, with a shaft of the background light briefly hitting her face and allowing viewers to get a glimpse of both her eyes. At another point, she was shown from the rear. Meanwhile, she, too, spoke in her natural voice.

Yes, her identity was shielded, but only from people who didn’t know her in the first place. For all the others, it must have been an easy call.

One wonders about the promises made to interviewees who desire their identities to remain secret, or possibly in the case of the young girl, promises made to the authorities charged with protecting the interests of a minor. And one wonders about the reactions of interviewees upon learning the promises haven’t been kept.

Although the case involving the teen-ager and her mother had already been widely publicized, the girl’s identity had not been revealed. Victimized first by her mother and the rapist, she was now victimized again by a TV news program using her to fill a few minutes of air time.

If the implications weren’t so sobering, all of this would be almost comical. It recalls those old movie Westerns in which bank robbers shrewdly disguised themselves by raising their kerchiefs over their mouths and noses, as if this alone would hide their identities from those who knew them, even though they were wearing the clothes they always wore--including those kerchiefs.

Some of the methods used to disguise TV interviewees are so inept that you wonder if they’re deployed merely for effect, to inject suspense. What I’m waiting for is the interview where the only person wearing the disguise . . . is the interviewer.

The Bleep That Doesn’t. We’ve all seen it happen, usually in theatrical movies aired on regular television. But what in the bleep is gained from erasing potentially offensive words from a sound track when the deleted words are so obvious that only an idiot couldn’t fill in the blanks?

Credits That Don’t Credit. These are the after-show credits that roll by so fast that they can’t be read.

Political Pundits on Talk Shows . One day, someone will blow the whistle on these people by tallying how often they have been wrong. Aside from that, some people can’t tolerate them on a gut level.

In his latest book, “Harp,” John Gregory Dunne describes his reaction to watching Patrick Buchanan, Robert Novak, Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke and Michael Kinsley on CNN:

“I detested those people I was staring at on the tube, the op-ed grandees who moonlight as talking heads, that symbiotic army of the knowing who would explain the political process to us, at least as they wish us to believe it functions.” Then Dunne quits softballing and gets tough:

“ Plump is the word that fits them best. They are plump of body, plump of mind, the cholesterol of smarm and self-importance clogging every mental artery, bloated bladders of hot air (blowing) the most noxious kind of knowingness out through the cathode tube. They have nothing to tell me, these Kondrackoids of the process, they have nothing to tell any of us about the United States of America.”

But give them credit, they sure are arrogant.

The Commercial You Can’t Bear to Hear . The reason is the irritating voice on the commercial. It belongs to Robert M. Haft, president of Crown Books, who sounds like Mickey Mouse when he says: “If you paid full price, you didn’t get it at Crown Books.”

The Commercial That Won’t Die. You’d have to drive a stake through its heart to kill that long-running spot for Jack Stephan Plumbing & Heating. The actor has been changed, but not the awful script. Playing around with the name--”Stephanski” and so on--wasn’t funny 10 years ago, it isn’t funny now and it won’t be funny 10 years from now when, undoubtedly, this dopey commercial will still be running.

Sort of like The Gripe Line.