TV REVIEW : Compelling ‘Killing Fields’ Still Skirts Crucial Question

Tonight’s “CBS Reports: In the Killing Fields of America” is a sort of “48 Hours” in triplicate, with some of the network’s top news bananas going on a three-hour blitz of U.S. cities to identify and define what Mike Wallace calls “the war we are waging against ourselves, the war of American violence.”

If a program that dwells largely on misery can be highly watchable, this is that program. It’s the kind of story TV is able to tell with high-sheen eloquence: easily identifiable good guys and bad guys, lots of emotion, tight shots of victims and survivors, concern on the faces of interviewers.

With skilled reporter-producers having done the groundwork, Wallace, Ed Bradley and Dan Rather zip in and out of a combined nine cities, effectively relating the woes associated with gang, family and other elements of violence that pack nightly newscasts. The interviews are tight and polished, the editing flawless--affirming that the producers who guided the production, veterans Paul and Holly Fine, know this turf extremely well.

At its best, “Killing Fields” takes time to eulogize victims--raising them from the anonymity of crime statistics--and to honor individuals emersed in personal crusades to put a dent in homicides. As human interest, some of these stories--like the cop running the kind of alternative athletic program for gang members that many congressional conservatives oppose--are compelling and inspiring.

Much like infinite other TV treatments of this topic, however, “Killing Fields” identifies the cancer, again and again and again, but not the cause. “How did America get so violent?” Bradley asks at one point, almost rhetorically. It’s a question--the crucial question--skirted by “Killing Fields” as it goes about its business of crime chronicling in ways that at times recall the techniques of such “reality” shows as “Cops,” adding its own voice to TV’s already crowded chorus.

* “CBS Reports: In the Killing Fields of America” airs at 8 tonight on CBS (Channels 2 and 8).