Just the Facts, Please

There is a place on television for entertainment, including so-called docudramas, but there needs to be a place for presenting the news and analysis that are so important to keeping Americans informed and aware. What’s essential is that the line between the two always be clearly drawn and scrupulously observed. Using actors to stage events under the guise of presenting facts doesn’t just blur that line, it virtually removes it.

Now we are told that NBC News plans to end its much-criticized practice of dramatically “recreating” events on its “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.” The program will remain on the air, but it will be severed from the news side and relocated under the network’s entertainment division, where it belonged in the first place. The network’s belated but commendable decision recognizes the mistake NBC News made a few months ago when it began using actors in depictions that left many viewers confused over whether what they saw was real or faked.

It’s sad that CBS News still feels no ethical uneasiness over its use of actors to dramatize real-life events on its “Saturday Night With Connie Chung” news program. A network spokesmen says there are no plans to abandon this hocus-pocus. That’s a shame, because what CBS News is doing diminishes the journalistic credibility it has worked so hard and so admirably over the years to establish. In good journalism there is no room--and certainly no need--for recourse to the bogus, the dishonest, the illusionary.