Commission on Families Hammers Hollywood : Television: Industry representatives defend ‘Murphy Brown’ as a realistic, positive show. Presidential appointee says networks have lost their morality.

A commission set up by President Bush to study the decline of the American family sparred with members of the Hollywood community Thursday over the country’s most controversial single mom--fictional television anchor Murphy Brown.

Commission member Alphonso Jackson, who heads the Housing Authority in Dallas, set off a fierce exchange when he accused the television networks of setting a double standard. TV featured Murphy Brown’s pregnancy in a positive light, he said, but would never do the same in a program about black welfare mothers.

“I think that Hollywood has lost its morality,” Jackson said.

Industry representatives came to the show’s defense in a spirited round-table discussion at the Challengers Boys & Girls Club in South Los Angeles.

The CBS sitcom--which Vice President Dan Quayle decried in May as evidence of the country’s declining moral values--portrays a lifestyle that many are living, the TV representatives said. “Murphy Brown,” they said, offers a positive message about a financially stable woman’s ability to make a choice about parenthood.

“This is a phony issue,” said Steve Sunshine, who was a writer for the TV show “Webster.” “Is ‘Murphy Brown’ the cause of mothers out of wedlock?”

Earlier in the day, members of the National Commission on America’s Urban Families conducted a fact-finding tour of Los Angeles social service agencies that assist families in need--from the Chinatown Service Center to the Parents of Watts Neighborhood Center.

Headed by Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft, the commission was set up in March to investigate ways to strengthen the American family. The Los Angeles visit coincided with the naming of the final presidential appointee to the eight-member commission--Lou Dantzler, founder of the Challengers Boys & Girls Club.

During the day, commissioners heard a 17-year-old mother explain how parenting classes at the El Nido Services Center helped her take control of her life. A father told about his struggle to keep his son out of gangs. A 27-year-old single man described how he raised his five siblings when he was a teen-ager so they would not be sent to foster homes.

Alice Harris, who heads the Parents of Watts center, said crumbling families will continue to be replaced by gangs unless other forces move in.

“If the children don’t get values and initiative in the home, they have to get it somewhere,” she said. “This is a mom-and-pop center. If you come in here, you’d think I was everybody’s momma.”

The tour lost its decorum in midafternoon, when the focus switched from real-life parents to Murphy Brown. Community volunteer Pamela Galvin stormed out of the discussion because she said the commissioners were looking for a scapegoat for family problems.

“ ‘Murphy Brown’ has nothing to do with this,” she said. “This commission was put together in March. Where was the interest in the family in the beginning of the Administration? The government can afford to bail out the savings and loans. But people are out of work, frustrated. That’s what causes family problems.”