Are Networks Using Big Stories to Promote Their Big Stars?

It’s astonishing how TV news executives sometimes assign specific people to big stories merely to give those people exposure and enhance their images.

Take Nicaragua, land of turmoil, change and uncertainty, and now a laboratory for democracy.

Who should surface there to survey the scene for NBC’s “Today” program and to interview Daniel Ortega before he relinquished the presidency Wednesday to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro?

Deborah (“Ortega told me with pride. . . .”) Norville.

Although Norville is already back in New York, “Today” featured her videotaped reports from Nicaragua this week. There she was on Tuesday with Ortega, pressing him to answer the brutal question he feared most: “We talked to one observer who told us that if he were nominating someone for the Nobel Prize, he would nominate Mikhail Gorbachev and Daniel Ortega. What do you think of that?”

Backed into a tight corner like this, Ortega was forced to admit that he appreciated the compliment.

Why was Norville sent to Nicaragua right before this long-besieged nation’s historic transition of power? Only two explanations seem plausible: One (a scary thought) is that NBC had no one better to ship in to supplement Ed Rabel, its correspondent there. The greater likelihood, though, is that the news division was using Nicaragua as a hard-news backdrop for Norville, misleadingly costuming its newest star in a cloak of journalistic versatility that it hoped would impress viewers.

Viewers, after all, are what “Today” needs these days, in that Norville’s succeeding of Jane Pauley as Bryant Gumbel’s sidekick has been accompanied by a slide in the show’s ratings. Once No. 1, “Today” is running second in its morning time slot behind ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

In one sense, Norville in Nicaragua was a refreshing departure for a show whose plum foreign assignments have almost always gone to Bryant Gumbel. He apparently passed on this one.

Bright as she may be, however, Norville isn’t qualified to report political stories from Nicaragua. Not that it makes much difference to her bosses, who have designated her a news star regardless.

You have to say that the duties of Norville and other morning show hosts are nothing if not eclectic, and an elastic face and brain are required to accommodate the clashing moods. One moment somber, the next silly.

Soon after her taped Ortega interview, Norville was on camera with Gumbel, joking with him about the sex habits of working couples.

On Wednesday, she was in Nicaragua again via videotape, standing on a dirt street among the desperate poor of Managua. On Thursday, back in New York, on the same morning that Rabel reported from Nicaragua about the national polarization with which Chamorro must deal, Norville played “Lady of Spain” on the accordion amid a spray of bubbles.

Of course, if things get really hot in Nicaragua, “Today” can fly her right back.

Meanwhile, look who visited there this week. None other than KABC-TV Channel 7 commentator Bruce Herschensohn who, as did just about everyone else mentioning the story, predicted peril for Chamorro, the 14-party National Opposition Union leader, in a nation where countless levers of power remain in Sandinista hands. That was a fair forecast.

However, there was a troublesome dynamic involved in having an arch conservative political idealogue and longtime Sandinista basher like Herschensohn get on the phone from Central America and fill the role of reporter during KABC’s 5 p.m. newscasts. It simply should never happen, and the same prohibition should apply even if Herschensohn were a fiery liberal commentator and Sandinista apologist.

No one--no reporter, regardless of qualifications or intentions--is completely objective. But Herschensohn, who regularly accuses the media of bias, doesn’t even try to be objective.

That is acceptable in his role as commentator, but not in the reporter’s role he has been playing this week on Channel 7. What made his reporting critical was that there was virtually no other Nicaragua coverage on the newscast but Herschenson’s. On Tuesday and Wednesday, at least, his eyes were the only eyes.

Herschensohn made a stop before Nicaragua. On Monday, he phoned in from El Salvador. On Tuesday, he phoned in from Managua and again talked with anchors Paul Moyer and Ann Martin. She offered up the classic question.

“What’s the mood in Nicaragua. . . ?”

A quick study, Herschensohn knew exactly what the nation was thinking. “I’d say the people are hopeful, but when you talk to top brass, they are pessimistic. . . .”

Herschensohn worried about the Sandinistas and their army, which for the moment remains virtually intact. Moyer asked him about the Contras, who had promised to disarm. Herschensohn replied: “I gotta tell you, the issue is not the Contras. They form an important wedge. The issue is the Sandinistas.”

After Herschensohn’s report on Tuesday, after the discussion of the problems facing Chamorro and Nicaragua, after everything, Moyer had a final question.

Moyer: “Are you in El Salvador?”

Herschensohn: “No, Nicaragua.”

Moyer: “You’re in Nicaragua.”

It was Tuesday. Yes, it had to be Nicaragua.

On Wednesday, it was still Nicaragua. And still Herschensohn.

Concerning that day’s Chamorro inaugural, Herschensohn reported that outgoing President Ortega got a “terrible reception by the people” as he entered the sports stadium for the ceremonies. What he didn’t report--and what every network newscast and the Los Angeles Times did report--was that Chamorro too was booed and bombarded by water bombs as she entered the stadium.

Herschensohn reported that Vice President Dan Quayle “received the loudest cheers . . . of any foreign dignitary.” What he didn’t report--and what other media did report--was that Quayle was also booed.

Maybe Herschensohn was right and everyone else was wrong. Or maybe he was in West Covina.