Channel 2 Steps Up to the Defense Stand After Ito Is Criticized for Interview

Deep thinkers . . .

Not that some stations would ever pretend their anchors are something they’re not or anything, but the following memo recently went out to KCBS-TV Channel 2 news writers:

“When scripting questions for anchors to use in interviewing guests . . . please write the questions on the left side of the script . . . not the right side! Anchors prefer to have the questions on their hard copy . . . on the left side of the script . . . not in the prompter on the right side.”

Where in-studio guests possibly would be able to observe for themselves that these anchor intellects are reading questions written by others?

If only some anchors had TelePrompTers in their brains when they did attempt to ad-lib. Or was 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. KCBS anchor Michael Tuck reading from a script Tuesday when--injecting his own opinion into what is labeled a newscast--he raised the sour grapes issue concerning a Los Angeles Times editorial critical of Judge Lance A. Ito for agreeing to an exclusive interview with Tritia Toyota that was run this week on Channel 2? Tuck wondered aloud whether The Times would have taken its condemning position had it been the recipient of Ito’s generosity.

What seems to have eluded Tuck is that no one has slammed Channel 2 for doing the interview--there’s hardly a news organization around that wouldn’t have wanted to question Ito outside the courtroom--only the judge for making himself available to the station after being so publicly critical of media excesses regarding coverage of the Simpson-Goldman murder case. By helping feed the whipped-up frenzy, Ito, not Channel 2, was the one straddling a double standard.

In further rebuttal, Tuck weighed in with another unlabeled commentary following Wednesday’s taped Ito interview segment. “The judge has criticized the media for irresponsible or erroneous reporting,” he said (or read) to Toyota and his co-anchor, Ann Martin. “This (the interview) is not irresponsible or erroneous. What do you say?”

Martin and Toyota murmured their agreement, apparently satisfied that they had demolished the detractors.

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Again, they just don’t get it. Infinitely more windblown than the segmented interview itself--consisting mainly of benign musings unrelated to the Simpson-Goldman case--has been Channel 2’s rhetoric in promoting it. By week’s end, Ito had come face to face not only with the low-key Toyota but also with November ratings sweeps madness.

On Wednesday, in fact, Ito indicated he was having second thoughts about the interview after a prospective alternate juror he was quizzing in the double-homicide case mentioned seeing one of the full-page newspaper ads Channel 2 bought to promote it. He wouldn’t have agreed to the interview, Ito said, “if I had known they were going to do that.”

He should have known, given the record of Channel 2, a station that not only has made some horrendous gaffes in its own Simpson-Goldman reporting but also continues to air and heavily advertise syndicated programs dedicated to sensationalizing the case, such as “Hard Copy” and “Geraldo.”

Preceding Tuesday’s 4 p.m. “Action News,” for example, was a “Geraldo” episode that featured a computer-generated, “blow-by-blow” depiction of the murders of Nicole Simpson Brown and Ronald Lyle Goldman, plus “graphic blood evidence” allegedly linking O.J. Simpson to the murders. And oh yes, there on the set was a white Ford Bronco like Simpson’s famous one that has become an integral part of the prosecution’s case.

Not to worry, though, for “Geraldo” had promised to start the program with a warning to Simpson jurors and any other potential viewers “who are at all squeamish” to turn off the show immediately. When it comes to exploitation, there’s nothing squeamish about Geraldo Rivera.

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And speaking of talk shows and interviews, if Katie Couric’s questioning of David Smith on Tuesday’s “NBC Dateline” and Wednesday’s “Today” programs weren’t sad enough on their own merits, NBC News did its best to massage viewers’ tear ducts by deploying sorrowful music with funeral and home-movie footage of the two tots that accompanied Couric’s chat with their remarkably composed young father, whose estranged wife is charged with the South Carolina murders of their sons.

Where have all the standards gone? There was a time when applying music to news coverage was a no-no because its purpose--like an editorial--was to manipulate the responses of viewers rather than allow them to judge the material on its own merits and come to whatever conclusions they saw fit.

Music plus news equals show business, something that too many newscasts increasingly rely on. Alas, the music will stay, as will self-serving ratings-sweeps stunts disguised as news, such as Thursday’s and today’s cynical relocation of “Today” co-hosts Couric and Bryant Gumbel to the Los Angeles set of their network’s hit medical series, “ER.” And while in the neighborhood, these kids managed to find time to drop in on NBC’s hit comedy “Friends.”

One morning Couric and Gumbel are doing legitimate news, the next shilling for their employer’s entertainment series.

And hey, on “CBS This Morning,” is that a penetrating interview that host Harry Smith is doing this week with David Letterman (“How’s your mother?”) or what?

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It’s increasingly routine for news-driven morning shows to become display windows for programs that their networks want to sell to viewers. Thus, because it is a ratings sweeps period, Charles Gibson, co-host of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” this week interviewed Ted Koppel, host of ABC’s “Nightline,” about the latter’s weeklong series on prisons.

Specifically “A Night on Cell Block H,” Wednesday’s program tracking Koppel’s overnight stay at Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C., while armed with only his tiny Super 8 minicam. Among other things, Koppel mentioned to Gibson that the prisoners he interviewed were “forthcoming.” Sure.

Any peek at a forbidden universe is interesting, no matter the circumstances. Plus, Koppel is a real smart guy who’s been around. And give him credit. When most TV reporters venture inside the Big House wearing a denim shirt during ratings sweeps, it’s Charles Manson they want to see.

But think about it. If you’re incarcerated, just how candid are you going to be when chatting with a famous TV journalist who’s toting even a teensy-weensy camera?

Early in my own career, I did a series of articles from inside Joliet State Prison in Illinois and thought I really had something. Nevertheless, a veteran prison chaplain there ridiculed my naivete in believing that what I had heard from inmates during my two days at Joliet in any way approximated reality. He noted that because I was interviewing men with their own agendas in a controlled, cocooned, unnatural environment, I would come away with impressions that would be mostly valueless, if not downright distorted and inaccurate.

Although I was too heady to heed him at the time, he was correct about my foolishness, and I recalled his words while watching “Nightline” Wednesday night. I didn’t see the rest of the Koppel series, and perhaps the other evenings were crammed with remarkable insights. But Wednesday?

One inmate with whom Koppel chatted said he agreed with Dan Quayle about a need for more family values. “That’s what’s wrong with this country,” he said.

“You and I are not big guys, right?” Koppel said to another inmate, a young, nice-looking fellow with long brown hair. “Guys who want sex pick on a little guy, right? That ever happen to you?” After hemming and hawing, the man said it hadn’t.

Another inmate insisted to Koppel that he was Elvis Presley. “Does a man have to play a fool to survive?” Koppel asked with the same earnest but stiff demeanor he displays with U.S. and world leaders. When Elvis responded with a quizzical look that seemed to ridicule Koppel, the ABC anchorman replied, “That’s a serious question.”

Of course it was. But where was Henry Kissinger when Koppel needed him?

On the positive side, “Nightline” didn’t play “Scarface” music during the prison interviews, and no one had to ghostwrite Koppel’s questions.