Dinkins Praised for Defusing New York Anger : Racial relations: The mayor appears to be succeeding in recapturing the media spotlight. His ‘gorgeous mosaic’ theme had almost become tatters.

After being accused of weak leadership in editorials and on picket lines during recent racial turmoil, Mayor David N. Dinkins appears to be succeeding in his campaign to recapture the media spotlight so vital to setting the agenda in New York City.

He has delivered a dramatic and well-received televised address calling for tolerance, stumped throughout the city for racial harmony and justice, and convened a huge unity convocation at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

In the process, he has focused attention on New York’s tabloids and local television stations, suggesting that these media too often have trumpeted the venom of self-proclaimed leaders with few followers.

On Thursday, the mayor received praise from the New York Times, which earlier this month had seriously questioned his leadership.

An editorial, titled “A Civic Leader,” hailed Dinkins for regaining “the moral initiative, elbowing the exploiters of hatred off the front pages and the nightly news.”

“With racial animus rising, the quiet conciliator became civic leader,” the Times said. “ . . . There could be no finer exercise of political skills.”

It was an exercise that began two weeks ago when Dinkins conferred with worried advisers in his office at City Hall.

Tabloid headlines were reporting tensions rising. The trial of two young white men accused of slaying a black teen-ager attracted a dozen television vans to the Brooklyn courthouse to cover the trial arguments and the angry pickets who were demanding guilty verdicts. A defense attorney in the case was punched.

Several miles away other demonstrators conducting a four-month boycott of two Korean-owned grocery stores cursed customers who ventured into the shops. Separately, remarks by a City College philosophy professor that blacks were mentally inferior to whites sparked a melee in which nine people were arrested after the professor had spoken at Long Island University, a few blocks from the court in Brooklyn.

“We said, ‘Look, we have to get out here and make a statement to the city about what must be done,’ ” said Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch, recalling the mood in the room. “We cannot let this become like a range fire. You get a little spark here and it catches on.”

Dinkins and his advisers perceived that City Hall was losing both the battle of the sound bites and the battle of the street images. Pictures of anger were filling television screens. Unless themes of reconciliation could take center stage, corrosive questions about the mayor’s leadership would continue. Danger existed that the mayor’s 1989 campaign theme of the “gorgeous mosaic” of New York could become tatters.

The decision was made to create counter images on television--images of civic leaders pulling together at church services and at demonstrations for a more harmonious city.

Stanley Hill, the head of District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees--a union of 140,000 members that strongly supported Dinkins in the election--was called at home to a meeting last weekend at City Hall to help prepare for a rally in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

“We wanted to reach out to as many people as possible, labor, the clergy, community groups, ethnic groups, local leaders. We worked all day Sunday organizing,” Hill said.

The rally Tuesday night was a clear success. The huge Gothic cathedral was filled to overflowing. Dinkins was well received when he called for new activism in the fight for tolerance and respect. And to the delight of the mayor and members of his Administration, the two-hour service in the Episcopal church was broadcast commercial-free after the 11 p.m. news by WCBS-TV that night.

At the rally, Hill began his speech by holding up the front page of New York Newsday featuring a picture of two first graders, one black and the other white, smiling and holding hands.

“I wanted everyone to see this picture,” the union leader said.

“It’s up to us tonight, and every night, to make sure that the New York they grow up in is the city we want it to be for them--and all of us--a city of decency, and unity and respect.”

In his speech to the city on May 11, Dinkins had a boilerplate line calling for the media to fight bigotry by teaching tolerance in public service announcements and programming. But when the mayor read the sentence, he clearly struck a nerve. The audience in the City Council chamber suddenly rose for a standing ovation.

Three days later, at a Queens College journalism conference, the mayor criticized the press for giving inflammatory statements undue space.

Dinkins called on the media to cover those with less confrontational views, “even if we’re not as loud, even if we don’t speak in perfect sound bites.”

Deputy Mayor Lynch sees the campaign for a gentler New York as just beginning, and he is under no illusions. In a time of austerity when groups will be competing for a share of a smaller municipal budget, more than rhetoric and rallies will be required.

On Thursday, Dinkins unveiled a 1991 budget of $28 billion that cut city services in all areas except for the homeless, drug addicts, AIDS sufferers, education and public safety.

“The hard stuff is how to make government responsive, getting confidence in government for the people who feel disenfranchised,” Lynch said.

” . . . We’ve got so many people disenfranchised from the work force in some neighborhoods in the city, particularly African-American and Latin neighborhoods. We’ve got unemployment up to 45%. People just idle,” he added. “Those are the people who our detractors organize to go march. . . . It’s their general frustration and disillusionment.”