TV & VIDEO - Jan. 16, 1991

On the Warpath: Bruce Herschensohn, KABC’s conservative commentator, and Ed Asner, the actor and liberal activist, debated the merits of war with Iraq on KABC Channel 7’s “A.M. Los Angeles” Tuesday, and war came out the big winner judging by the reaction of the show’s studio audience. The audience, which was made up entirely of relatives of U.S. forces stationed in the gulf, cheered whenever Herschensohn made his pro-war points and fell conspicuously silent whenever Asner argued for peace. Lisa Kridos, the show’s supervising producer, denied that the station had tried to stack the deck in Herschensohn’s favor, saying that the decision to invite the families of servicemen and women was made last week before the informal debate was planned.