Marilyn, the Mob and ‘JFK’ : Television: The movie’s success inspires tabloid shows to revive dramatizations. ‘Hard Copy’ investigates Marilyn Monroe’s ‘suicide’ tonight.

The producers of television’s syndicated tabloid news shows say Oliver Stone’s film “JFK” has given their penchant for dramatizing events--even hypothetical ones--new credibility.

The daily tabloid show “Hard Copy” plans to test that theory starting tonight with a three-part series that, like “JFK,” dramatizes unproven speculation--in this case about the death of actress Marilyn Monroe. It will assert that she did not commit suicide, but was killed by henchmen for gangster Sam Giancana, who supposedly had been her lover.

“It seemed to me that with Stone’s movie elevating the notion of taking a big subject and dressing it up so graphically, the mood might be right to do Marilyn,” said “Hard Copy” executive producer Peter Brennan, who predicts increased use of the dramatization technique in the wake of Stone’s film.

“Hard Copy” will suggest that Giancana wanted to embarrass President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, by staging Monroe’s death at a time when Robert Kennedy was rumored to have been involved with her. Giancana and mob-linked union leader Jimmy Hoffa, the program will claim, were angry with the Kennedys--Robert in particular--for clamping down on organized crime, Brennan said.

The series, which will air tonight, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. on KNBC Channel 4 and KFMB Channel 8, will involve a mix of dramatization and standard news-style presentations, Brennan said. Monroe’s final moments will be portrayed, based on “Hard Copy’s” theory, in a dramatization featuring actress Stephanie Anderson.

The dramatic segments differ significantly from previous such re-creations on tabloid and news magazine shows, which were typically based on transcripts of interviews from people who were at the scene of a particular event. The ones in “Hard Copy,” like Stone’s dramatization of a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, are based on deductions by the show’s producers, based on their investigation.

“There’s sort of a cycle here,” Brennan said. “Magazines and television have been doing J.F.K. conspiracy specials long before Oliver Stone did it. But what he set the mood for--whether he did it well or not journalistically--was to elevate and magnify the notion of using the resources of Hollywood (to tell a news story).”

And while the trend toward using dramatic re-creations of news events has been waning, viewers should expect to see more of it, as tabloid producers in particular continue to take inspiration from Stone.

“Will people be doing more of them? Yes,” said John Terenzio, executive producer of the syndicated tabloid, “A Current Affair.” “When you have a movie as powerful as (“JFK”), it gets other people thinking (re-enactment) is a good technique.”

Andrew Stern, head of the broadcast journalism program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, said that it’s “absolute nonsense” to think that Stone’s controversial attempt to re-create the assassination of Kennedy somehow vindicates tabloid re-creations of news events.

Stone’s film, he said, was never considered to be journalism. And even allowing for that, “there’s a large difference between what Oliver Stone does and what ‘Hard Copy’ does,” Stern said. “I mean, come on, let’s not kid ourselves.”

Network news divisions, which have been experimenting with flashy magazine shows inspired by the syndicated reality and tabloid shows, say they have no plans to re-introduce re-enactments.

“We want to push the envelope to do different types of reality programming, but that does not mean we will do re-creations, which are expensive and complicated,” said Terry Byrne, president of NBC News Productions, which produces reality programs for syndication and for the network.

All three major broadcast networks used re-enactments when the trend toward them began in the late 1980s. But under a storm of pressure from media critics and journalists within their own ranks, the technique was speedily dropped.

The toughest criticism was of ABC News, which in 1989 presented a re-enactment of a case of espionage and neglected to label the scene as a dramatization.

“I think it’s a worry if you take facts of history and confuse them by using dramatic techniques and re-creations,” Byrne said. “The issue at NBC was that (the technique) confused the viewer about what was real and what wasn’t real.”

NBC has no plans to re-introduce the technique, Byrne said, and neither do ABC or CBS, according to spokesmen there.

“It all comes down to what you believe is the proper way to communicate something,” said Tom Goodman, spokesman for CBS News. The popularity of a film like “JFK” need not mean that news organizations should try the same techniques, he said.

“A film has a totally different style and different way of communicating from a news organization,” Goodman said. “They have one set of standards, and news organizations have other standards.”

But that leaves the networks scrambling to compete in a market that features increasingly sensational looks at supposedly real-life stories.

Byrne said that NBC Productions, instead of relying on re-enactments, will use other methods for making the material more dramatic than standard news footage would be.

For example, she said, producers of the upcoming syndicated special “The Search for Amelia Earhart” used point-of-view camera angles and employed a dramatic writing style. The program was shot on film instead of videotape to make it seem more vibrant.

CBS, which produces the reality/news programs “48 Hours” and “Street Stories,” will be using similar methods.

“We’re being very creative about the way we cover and report stories,” said Goodman. “However, we’re still not sacrificing or moving away from any of our tough CBS standards.”

Everette Dennis, executive director of the Freedom Foundation Center for Media Studies at Columbia University in New York, said that, in and of themselves, re-creations aren’t so bad.

“If they are done accurately, based on some documentation and evidence, they really are a literary device used to move the story along, much like a print reporter would write about a meeting in the White House based on interviews with people who were there,” Dennis said. “There are people who burned their fingers with it, so it became taboo.”

Not so at the tabloids.

“If the re-enactment is faithful to the facts, then it’s another aid to fuller understanding,” said Brennan of “Hard Copy.” “If it’s not (faithful), if it’s twisted, then you can distort facts with it.”