NEWS ANALYSIS : Frenzy to Ice the Harding Saga Freezes Out Standards : Media: The powerful and the populous of the press are leaving no blade unturned in their quest of skater.

Into this besieged city last week arrived Connie Chung, swelling the CBS News assault force to more than 30. Her purpose: to make a new friend.

She came to get THE INTERVIEW--ahead of Diane and Barbara and Jane and Katie. She came hoping to nudge out the free-spending tabloid shows, armed not with cash but with the blinding candlepower of a network anchor.

To be the one to get Tonya Harding to speak. To ask, leaning toward her confidentially, THE QUESTION: Did you do it?

“The way to do that in this day and age is, one, to pay money, which the networks won’t do, or two, develop a close personal relationship, so the person you are pursuing trusts you,” said “CBS Evening News” Executive Producer Erik Sorenson. “And the only way to do that is to be there in person.”

So Chung, co-anchor at CBS and host of the broadcast magazine show “Eye to Eye,” has been narrating her share of “CBS Evening News” since last week from the shopping mall rink in Portland where THE SUBJECT practiced.

“We will probably go all the way with it,” Sorenson said. “Connie will follow her all the way to Lillehammer.”

There’s rarely been anything like this--and maybe, some say, there shouldn’t be. The runaway Tonya Harding story--did she conspire to injure rival ice skating star Nancy Kerrigan?--has everyone galloping to get ahead, and it is raising questions about where the American press is headed.

If it is the media’s mission to put news into perspective, have they succeeded? If their mission is to separate fact from speculation, have they done so? If their mission is to honor constitutional traditions and play watchdog over the legal system, can they be satisfied? If their mission is to avoid being manipulated by newsmakers and to challenge stereotypes, have they managed?

Journalists are divided on the answers, even though most constitutional law experts believe that the hurricane-force coverage will not threaten fair trials for those involved--even for Harding, if she is charged.

But there is wide agreement, even among those who love the story, that the sheer amount of coverage--which has driven an assault case to heights once reserved for assassinations and wars--illustrates three hard and sad facts about the news media:

* Tabloid television now colors decisions of even the most serious press institutions.

* A big story is almost instantly inflated to apocalyptic proportions by the ever-intensifying frenzy of media competition.

* Standards have all but vanished when it comes to passing along speculation and rumor as “news.”

“There were no distinctions drawn here between the Washington Post and the New York Post, or the local news story and the ‘CBS Evening News’ or the other networks,” said Marvin Kalb, director of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Barone Center for the study of press and public policy. “Without any doubt this is part of a broader problem.”

In the 24 days between Jan. 7--the morning after skater Nancy Kerrigan was whacked above the knee--and Feb. 2, the day after Tonya Harding’s ex-husband pleaded guilty in the injury plot, ABC, NBC and CBS aired 377 stories, an average of 16 a day.

And that does not include local TV news or the four nationally syndicated daily tabloid TV shows.

Newspapers were no less eager. In the same period, the New York Times ran 41 stories, the Los Angeles Times 37, the Washington Post 46, in each case a story on Page One about every 2.5 days.

There is news even when there is no news. On Monday, CBS reported to the nation that Tonya Harding was parked illegally and rushed in bare feet to plead with a tow truck driver to spare her new pickup.

At least five instant books are under way. The Oregonian, the Portland newspaper, has one such book in progress, titled “Fire on Ice,” with a planned press run of 250,000.

Three Kerrigan books are also headed for publication this month.

Harding herself has hired a separate law firm--her third--merely to handle negotiations with book, TV movie, film and news people. “She could end up making more,” speculated CBS’ Sorenson, “than she would have from skating.”

Why has this story taken off?

Because it has all the ingredients of drama--romance and betrayal, tragedy and greed, triumph and suspense, all unfolding as the clock ticks down to the Winter Olympics.

“Then you get into the whole business of fair play, and the soap opera, and the sense of good versus evil, and with the ramifications of money, the Olympics and, heaven help us, the American Way, I don’t think we are overdoing it,” says Jeff Gralnick, the executive producer of the “NBC Nightly News” with Tom Brokaw.

Even some press critics say they have no problem with what the press has done. “I think there is an exceptional amount of public interest,” says Everette Dennis, executive director of the Freedom Forum, a journalism think tank in New York.

But the Kerrigan/Harding story does represent a change in the way the press covers crime, a change occurring without much reflection.

In the 1960s, amid concern over the media’s rush to judgment against Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the American Bar Assn. set up a commission to develop guidelines for how the press should behave in covering crime.

The Reardon Guidelines, as they became known, were voluntarily accepted by press associations in many states. At the time of an arrest, it would be OK for the press to report basic background information about the accused, along with the substance of the charges, the circumstances surrounding the arrest and the names of the people handling the investigation.

But the guidelines urged the press not to report statements about the character or reputation of the accused, the contents of any confession, the results of any lie-detector or evidentiary tests, the expected content of any testimony, or speculation about possible pleas of any accused.

Compare that to today. Practically everything you know about the Harding story would be outside those guidelines.

“The old ‘free press, fair trial’ standard has totally broken down,” said the Freedom Forum’s Dennis.

Portland was prepared for the assault wave of the news media the same way the California Territory was prepared for the Gold Rush. The district attorney has no press aide. A duty sergeant handles press calls at the sheriff’s station.

The results were just the same: Hungry treasure seekers overran the place, and bawling anarchy broke out on the streets.

Within days of the crime, a Boston TV station reported erroneously that Harding was about to be arrested. This was spread nationally in a story marked “urgent” by the Associated Press. A day later, a Detroit radio station repeated the rumor, and it again became part of the story.

Soon, from the balcony of the Portland Marriott, it was possible to see two parking lots sprinkled with satellite trucks and four separate live shots going on from different parts of the city. Free-lance video camera operators could make $700 to $1,200 a shift.

One network magazine show hired a former professional ice skater, wired him with a cordless microphone and had him skate near Harding and pick up anything he could. The tabloid shows sent friends of Harding’s friends video cameras to take pictures of her if they could and send them to the shows, a practice now becoming widespread.

“ABC World News Tonight” hired a handwriting analyst to examine notes retrieved from a garbage dumpster that might or might not have been incriminating and to speculate on whether they were Harding’s.

In the 21 days following the attack on Kerrigan, the Oregonian published 265 stories, nearly 13 a day.

Even slow days are manic. “Harding’s Fate Left Hanging,” was the huge headline Jan. 20, a day without news. Not much had really changed by Feb. 2: “All Eyes Turn to Harding.” The next day: “Harding Keeps Quiet.”

The Oregonian became both news gatherer and newsmaker. If knowledgeable insiders were not talking to the public, they were talking to hometown reporters of the Oregonian. So confident was the newspaper of its sources, the Oregonian largely dropped the traditional “sources said” in its reporting.

When it came time to declare that Harding was “virtually certain to be arrested,” it was the Oregonian saying it. And other news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, ended up quoting the Oregonian.

On Jan. 29, a spate of reports suggested that investigators had been looking at telephone calls made on Harding’s credit card to her so-called bodyguard. These calls supposedly occurred just before Kerrigan was attacked, an attack to which the bodyguard reportedly has confessed.

In 10 paragraphs of its daily roundup dispatch, the AP quoted the Oregonian, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit station WJBK-TV, each with a thread of the story.

The trouble was, even if the calls were made, nobody could possibly know what was said, or even whether Harding herself made them. So what was the significance of the reports? Mainly to suggest that the noose was tightening around the skater’s neck.

Wayne Westling, professor of criminal law at the University of Oregon, marvels at some of the speculation by reporters.

“I just had a call from a stringer for a Japanese television network. He wanted to know what the prison sentence would be for Tonya Harding--and then he listed a potential series of charges. I’d say that’s putting the cart way ahead of the horse.”

Then there are the tabloid shows. Take one evening last week: “A Current Affair” had a “world exclusive interview” with Jeff Gillooly, Harding’s ex-husband. “Inside Edition” had a sidewalk interview with Harding. (A spokeswoman declined comment on whether it had paid Harding for the time). “Hard Copy” had the second part of its “exclusive” interviews with the team of “hit men”: Shane Stant and Derrick Smith. “American Journal” featured Harding’s fitness trainer.

Gerald Epps, professor of constitutional law at the University of Oregon in Eugene and a former Washington Post reporter, suggested that the press has an institutional desire to see Harding in the Olympics--thereby keeping alive a big story.

By this line of reasoning, CBS in particular would have the strongest incentive, since it is broadcasting the Olympics.

Sorenson denied the suggestion strongly. CBS is hardly alone in covering this story, he pointed out.

But Sorenson does see the influence of the tabloids. “The popularity of these syndicated news programs like ‘Hard Copy’ and the attention they pay to these ongoing soap operas have certainly bled all the way over into the rest of journalism, including the newspaper world.”

Chung has been co-anchoring for nearly two weeks from Portland, for instance, because she needs to be there to woo Harding for her more tabloid-like magazine program, Sorenson explained.

Could the press not cover the Harding story? “No,” said Kalb of the Shorenstein Barone Center at Harvard.

So how does a news organization maintain restraint? Editors and news directors could simply draw a line, play the story modestly and then speak out about why they are doing so and engage the press in a debate, Kalb said.

But the kind of editors and producers who might have done that belong to an earlier generation, Kalb contended.

Today, the press scrambles for the interview and spends part of its time watching itself.

Last week, Oregonian columnist Pete Schulberg watched too.

“The crowd of onlookers began building around 3 p.m. Tuesday at the far end of the Clackamas Town Center Ice Chalet. Lined two- and three-deep, they strained for a peek at the woman of the hour--someone whose face is a regular fixture on the evening news.

There she was--awash in lights, peering right into the camera lens. Tonya? No.

“Connie!”

Rosenstiel reported from Washington and Balzar from Portland.

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