Logging Story Leaves NBC Red-Faced Again : Timber Group Tries GM Tack, Uses Suit Threat to Get Network to Admit Report Flawed

A timber trade group took a page from the General Motors playbook on Wednesday when it coerced NBC into acknowledging inaccuracies in an “NBC Nightly News” report on logging in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest.

The Intermountain Forest Industry Assn., which represents about 80 sawmills in the Northwest, hired a Washington law firm and threatened a lawsuit against NBC, following what it claims was an inadequate response to its complaints, as well as those of an Idaho state senator, loggers and others in the region outraged by the report.

General Motors threatened similar legal action earlier this month after failing to resolve a dispute with NBC over a report on the safety of GM trucks that aired on “Dateline: NBC.”

The network, in an embarrassing about-face, subsequently acknowledged that it had staged a fiery truck crash for the report.

“We’re not a big company like General Motors, but when we saw GM actually get a response from NBC, we said, ‘Wow,’ ” said Ken Kohli, spokesman for the trade association. “You get the feeling that the national media are untouchable--that they think nobody counts but them. But after GM, we thought you could get a response.”

The NBC report used footage from outside sources to illustrate the effects of logging on the environment in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest. The footage included pictures of fish that appeared to be dead and areas ravaged by clear-cutting.

The timber industry’s Kohli challenged NBC’s description of the impact of logging on the health of streams in the national forest and on the network’s acknowledged use of footage of the fish.

In its correction on Wednesday, NBC acknowledged that the video was misleading. The network said portions were mislabeled, leading the network to mistakenly air scenes taken from locales other than Clearwater.

But the network said the rather routine mistake would not have generated so much publicity had it not followed so closely on the heels of the extraordinary GM apology.

An NBC News official called the timing of the retraction “especially bad,” but said the network should not be “criticized for doing the right thing.”

NBC executives denied that they were pushed into a retraction by the timber industry. “A mistake was brought to our attention, we investigated it, verified it and corrected it,” the official said. “That’s what any responsible news organization would do.”

Nonetheless, the event became a major news story, coming hours after Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) took to the Senate floor to denounce NBC for the report, saying the network had “twisted reality and sensationalized the truth.”

The clarification by anchor Tom Brokaw has NBC News reeling further in the wake of the GM apology--and raises questions about both the impact of cutbacks on network news quality and whether any network news division will be timid in the future about going after a big target.

Indeed, in recent years NBC News has gone through painful readjustments as it has eliminated both domestic and foreign bureaus, cut back news staff and shifted resources from costly news gathering into producing more profitable magazine programs.

But NBC News officials denied that there was any connection between the cutbacks and the Clearwater National Forest story. They pointed out that the correspondent, Michael Lloyd, had 12 years experience at NBC News, and the producer, Cecilia Alvear, had eight years.

Furthermore, Lloyd and Alvear spent four days in Idaho interviewing U.S. Forest Service officials, conservationists and timber industry workers.

They also chartered a plane to shoot their own aerial footage. “We had all the money we needed on this one,” one NBC News executive said.

Kohli said his group initially contacted the reporter and producer of the story. Later, their lawyers went directly to NBC’s legal division.

“Even before the report aired, we heard from people in the Forest Service that they thought the NBC correspondent and the producer and crew had an agenda in their questions,” Kohli said.

“We thought they were looking for people in the U.S. Forest Service and within the community who would support the view that the national forests were being over-cut,” Kohli said. “They did talk to some disgruntled ex-Forest Service employees and environmental groups who did not share our vision of what should happen in terms of logging in the national forest.”

Although the timber industry was trumpeting NBC’s on-air correction as a public relations coup, network executives are privately concerned that such tactics may embolden others with less tenuous claims to threaten lawsuits anytime they see something they don’t like. Some observers speculated that Sen. Craig’s remarks were intentionally timed to embarrass NBC.

Indeed, the events of the last couple weeks have obscured what many believe is actually an uptick in the quality of NBC News in recent months.

“Dateline,” noted a former producer, looked like it actually had hit its stride until the GM disaster, and the “NBC Nightly News” in recent weeks under the new direction of Jeff Zucker has become harder-edged and “much more interactive.”

Hall reported from New York and Lippman from Los Angeles.