CNN Brings the Famine Story Out of Africa : Television: While the Big Three networks face financial woes, Ted Turner’s cable news operation scores another journalistic coup.

The contrast was glaring. As troubled NBC News made plans this week to slash costs again by reducing its Boston staff and closing its bureau there, burgeoning CNN spent $300,000 on a flood of enterprising reports that detailed the famine threatening 30 million Africans.

CNN socked it to the Big Three networks again with its weeklong reports.

Not content to rest on the laurels it earned during the Persian Gulf War just a few months ago, Ted Turner’s cable network showed why it has become television’s premium news service with its series of dramatic in-depth stories from Africa that culminated Friday with a one-hour special about relief efforts, shown once in the morning and again in the evening.

But this was a different, and perhaps more significant, kind of victory for CNN.

The Gulf War was a front-and-center story of obvious, huge and immediate interest to everyone. Starving people anywhere should be of interest to everyone, but Julia Roberts’ broken marriage plans probably got more coverage on Los Angeles’ local TV stations this week than the tragedy building in Africa.

In the face of a tough story to which it was committed, CNN took an ingenious step--putting into practice what could be called preventive reporting.

Using its worldwide influence to alert not only Americans, but also viewers around the globe, to what is happening, CNN’s “Famine in Africa” series not too subtly advocated concern and help for those in trouble.

At the same time, CNN quickly and decisively staked out the story as its own in pure journalistic terms. It was good reporting and, even better, reporting with a heart and a conscience.

The other networks have had stories about the famine, but they were driblets compared to CNN’s hours of coverage.

Friday’s one-hour special, for instance, was able to delve at length with the insufficient relief operations, including the views of Philip Johnston, president of CARE, on how preplanning can help prevent future famine.

CNN’s only flaw was scattering its reports throughout so many of its newscasts, a tactic that built momentum and was promotable, but made it tough for viewers who couldn’t catch every story to appreciate the sweeping coherence of the ambitious project.

With the wealth of material from its correspondents--Christiane Amanpour, Richard Blystone and Gary Strieker--CNN might do well to edit it into a single major blockbuster program, and repeat it several times for the benefit of viewers.

Still, if CNN’s stirring series had a flaw, it was only in how best to present an enormous, complex human story that ranged from raw, emotional footage to high political and military matters on a continent plagued with drought, crop failure and civil war. But at least CNN’s main concerns are with the news events themselves.

At the news divisions of NBC and CBS, the concerns these days increasingly involve which bureaus to close--NBC also shut down its San Francisco operation earlier this year--as well as which reporters and executives to let go as the financial ax falls again and again.

To get a perspective on news priorities, it is worth noting that several Los Angeles TV anchors are paid salaries that are at least triple the $300,000 that it cost CNN to cover the African famine for its remarkable series.

At the network level, top anchors such as Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings probably are paid six or eight times--or more--what CNN’s Africa series cost.

But at CNN, anchors don’t matter that much, the news is what counts--not who’s presenting it--and the Turner network now has a staff estimated at 1,700, far greater than the shrinking departments at ABC, CBS and NBC, where the cockeyed priorities are coming home to roost.

It could not have been more noticeable that it was CNN’s reporters --Amanpour, Blystone and Strieker--who were given the spotlight all week during the series from Africa, and not any of the anchors.

Only ABC News, the leader among the Big Three, seems secure these days among the traditional network organizations. ABC’s “World News Tonight,” by the way, drew strong viewer response with its own series this week about poverty and children in the United States.

What has to be embarrassing to the traditional networks is that CNN’s Africa series is the kind of journalism that CBS’ Edward R. Murrow might have done in TV’s earlier years. Passionate advocacy, when the cause is humane and legitimate, is no stranger to superior reporting.

We saw CNN’s Blystone in Mulevale, Mozambique, telling us after the death of a youngster: “The little boy you just saw suffering here a few minutes ago is not suffering anymore.”

In a refugee camp of huts and unspeakable living conditions in Teferi Ber, Ethiopia, Blystone, nodding toward a woman, inquired of an interpreter: “Ask her what she had to eat today.” The interpreter replied: “So far, she hasn’t had anything.”

Nearly 6 million tons of food are needed to help the victims of malnutrition, we were told. Millions of people may die--as they did during the African famine of 1984 and 1985--unless aid is forthcoming, we were also told. CNN not only has beaten its competitors to a foothold on any coming story, it has also become a catalyst for action.

This cannot displease Ted Turner. For while CNN is uniquely objective because of its worldwide penetration, programs on Turner’s TBS superstation have made it unmistakably clear that his cable television empire has a human-rights agenda.

TBS is the leader in programs that support saving the environment--witness Sunday’s National Audubon Society special “The New Range Wars.” And it is instructive that the Better World Society, which Turner founded, is “dedicated to making people aware of global problems that threaten life on our planet through solution-oriented television programming.”

On Wednesday at 5:05 p.m., for example, TBS will present the Better World Society’s “Top Guns and Toxic Whales,” a futuristic view of “a world in which environmental refugees, pollution and scarce natural resources become the irritants that lead to social instability and even international conflict.” Former President Jimmy Carter is a guest; Anthony Hopkins is the narrator.

In New York, NBC must worry because its “Nightly News” is being bumped from 7 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the city by “Love Connection.” CNN’s problems are different. This week, it could devote its worries to 30 million Africans facing a famine.

Was it worth $300,000?

Every penny.

A better world--with no anchors breaking the piggy bank.