‘Class Photo’ Puts Hope and Despair Into Focus

Geared to the speed that comes with techno-journalism, television news programs too often fall back on conventional wisdom as an alternative to grappling with life’s nuances and complexities.

A happy exception is tonight’s wondrously good, single-story “Dateline NBC,” which begins with the faces of fourth-graders in a class photograph from 1981. These are African Americans from P.S. 309 in Brooklyn’s rugged, murder-a-week Bedford-Stuyvessant neighborhood.

What had happened to them? Have the best of their possibilities been realized? “A lot of them probably were locked up or dead,” correspondent Len Cannon had surmised.

An “NBC Dateline” team--Cannon, producer John Block and associate producer Geraldine Moriba-Meadows deserve much of the credit--spent nine months finding out, and the results are at once life-affirming and heartbreaking. Plus, largely surprising, given the assumptions of many outside such neighborhoods that their young residents--affirmative action or no affirmation action--are sunk even before they start.

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Drugs and disappointment surface, but also much, much more, including some notable comparisons between the boys and the girls and a reunion that is Charles Kuraltish with an edge.

There is nothing conventional about “Class Photo,” starting with its intriguing hairpin curves and commitment to meticulously probe the lives of these kids--measuring their dreams against their realities--without being judgmental, assigning blame or burdening viewers with the usual obligatory talking heads from government and academe. And Cannon’s excellent work here is a primer on sober reporting minus schmaltz or any of the other maudlin ruts that such stories often slide into.

Here he is with Sylvia Jamison, an amazing success story who rose above “what people said I wouldn’t rise above.”

Cannon: “Have you ever sold drugs?”

Jamison: “No, thank God, no.”

Cannon: “Have you ever used a gun?”

Jamison: “No, I wouldn’t know how to hold one.”

Cannon: “You ever mugged or robbed anyone?”

Jamison: “No.”

Cannon: “And why is that? You grew up in the very same neighborhood, tough, unstable environment as the boys did.”

Jamison: “It’s not me.”

The “Dateline NBC” hour concludes on a note of promise, but not quite happily. As these former classmates resurface for this latest snapshot, you’re heartened by those who achieved something positive, saddened by those who didn’t. And you wonder what the next 14 years will bring.

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JAWS 4? Consistency is a stranger to “Dateline NBC,” evidenced by last Wednesday’s installment, when it found a story that it really could sink its teeth into.

“People are afraid,” the man told the camera. “They’re afraid to go out at night. They’re afraid of something as simple as going to your car to get something if it’s dark. You don’t do that without thinking twice.”

Is the terror over gangbangers? Drive-by shooters? Serial killers? No, even though Californians have seen their share of them--along with earthquakes and devastating fires. No, “Dateline NBC” appears to believe that we face an even greater menace.

MOUNTAIN LIONS!!!

Its story dealt with California’s mountain lion controversy and a renewed effort to repeal Proposition 117, the 1990 law banning the killing of mountain lions except those that attack or otherwise endanger humans or livestock. Fueling momentum for repeal are a rise in sightings of the big cats in unexpected places--as suburbia increasingly usurps their natural habitats--and a growing number of attacks on humans, two of which resulted in fatalities in 1994.

One woman was killed while walking in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park near San Diego, the other while jogging in a state recreation area about 100 miles east of Sacramento. Although tragic, their deaths from mountain lion attacks--California’s only such documented fatalities in 80 years--hardly qualify as the “mounting death toll” described in “Dateline NBC” anchor Jane Pauley’s introduction.

The story was reported by John Larson and produced by Pat Bates. Their five anti-117 interviewees together were granted more than 2 1/2 minutes of air time, their three pro-117 interviewees less than a minute--a gaping disparity.

And that doesn’t include Larson’s loaded language and other contributions to the story’s near-hysterical anti-117 tone, which had you thinking at times that the topic was not 6,000 mountain lions--that’s what some estimate their California population to be--but 6,000 Jeffrey Dahmers.

The issue here is not which side is right and which is wrong in the mountain lion debate, but that “Dateline NBC” has no business favoring either side.

The segment’s anti-117 crowd included Assemblyman David Knowles (R-Placerville), backer of a bill that would repeal the measure and allow California Department of Fish and Game officials to selectively issue permits for control measures against mountain lions, which could include sport hunting.

Larson did not challenge Knowles--even when the assemblyman warned ominously of mountain lions eating not only pets but also “perhaps our wives and loved ones”--or anyone else in the segment who appeared to hold similar sentiments. He also let stand a Ventura County man’s statement that a mountain lion “murdered” his dog on his front porch, as if equating a cat’s instinctive predation with the behavior of human slayers.

The reporter did, however, ridicule a bill by Dominic Cortese (D-San Jose) that would create a 24-hour mountain lion-sighting hot line, as part of a public database of lion activity for those who feel threatened by the cats. “Neither of the women killed were next to a phone booth,” Larson snidely snapped at Cortese, ignoring the long-range intent of the hot-line proposal. “What good is that going to do?”

Larson also weighed in on a 1994 incident concerning campers in Mendocino County, in which a woman reported killing a mountain lion with a knife after it had bitten off her husband’s thumb. The campers said the cat had returned to attack them after first dragging off their squealing dog.

“Believe it or not,” said Larson, sounding incredulous, “some wilderness advocates side with the cat, blaming the attack on [the campers].” He appeared aghast that Mark Palmer, executive director of the Mountain Lion Foundation, would assert that the campers should have immediately returned to their cars during the night after the dog was attacked. Nor did Larson note that incidents of attacks on humans by rabid mountain lions--the one that attacked the campers had rabies--are said to be extremely rare.

“Now you would think that cries to do something--anything--to lessen the lions’ numbers would echo across the state,” Larson said at one point, appearing to lament that there apparently was no such echo. He said that mountain lions “have friends in high places,” but did not mention that opponents of the bill to overturn 117 charge that its true purpose is resumption of sport hunting of mountain lions. Nor did he investigate or even mention their claim that, based on the experiences of other states, hunting the animals would not curtail their attacks on humans or livestock.

“Dateline NBC” tonight is just terrific. Last Wednesday, it sped down a one-way street, never looking back.

* The “Class Photo” report on “Dateline NBC” airs at 10 tonight on NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39).