Peace at Last? Not That You’d Know Here

Mini-news travels fast in Los Angeles, maxi-news, slowly.

Take the quintessential L.A. television of Wednesday afternoon, which affirmed how much easier it was to negotiate an end to the war in Yugoslavia that day, incredibly, than to bring about a pause in soap operas aired here.

It was about 12:45 p.m. when cable’s 24-hour news channels reported the signing of a peace agreement that promised stoppage of NATO’s 11-week bombing of Yugoslavia and the forces of President Slobodan Milosevic that stood accused of atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

In rare understatement, CNN called it “a very important breaking story.”

How important? As it broke, KABC continued the vamping of “All My Children,” while KCBS did take a short breather from “The Bold and the Beautiful,” and KNBC did interrupt “Another World” for a network report.

It was bad enough that ABC did not break into programming to update viewers of the peace plan’s approval, but the other networks’ coverage could hardly be called extensive. And local stations don’t need network feeds to interrupt soap operas with live announcements of the news.

How acutely symbolic that stations that breathlessly preempt entertainment programs for live coverage of cops chasing anonymous fugitive motorists across Southland freeways and elsewhere--not hesitating at times even to blow off entire newscasts to telecast these mostly trivial pursuits--found the apparent peace breakthrough unworthy of substantial attention.

Joy rides, yes. Joy from peace, no. It’s illuminating to see L.A. newscast priorities haven’t changed.

Not that easy days are necessarily ahead, for just because President Clinton stated Thursday that “the Kosovars will go home” doesn’t mean that that perilous mission will go smoothly. And not that the pact signed by NATO and Milosevic’s military couldn’t ultimately collapse, given the Yugoslav leader’s reputation for trickiness.

But here Wednesday was a huge step in the war-ending process, a seminal one that led to the next day’s official suspension of NATO airstrikes and U.S. troops and other international peacekeepers moving toward Kosovo as Serb units began departing.

“I have some very good news,” Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson, NATO’s commander of the Kosovo operation, announced Wednesday. Not good enough, however, to capture much attention from L.A. stations until hours later. Not good enough at that time for those anchors who babble endlessly during chopper-monitored chases under the banner of “Breaking News!” Instead, a little later Wednesday, as Secretary of Defense William Cohen outlined the accord at a televised press conference, KCBS was a “Guiding Light” monolith, KABC showed a couple groping each other frantically in advance of having sex on a “General Hospital” desktop, and a woman on KNBC’s “Sunset Beach” remarked, “I’d like to check on Benji and make sure he brushed his teeth.”

A perfect pairing with the halitosis on Los Angeles airwaves.

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Wednesday’s coverage also brought new evidence that not all who practice journalism are from the same cookie cutter, and also that journalism is no science.

Under the first category comes Geraldo Rivera, who, in addition to a talk show, anchors an evening newscast on NBC-operated CNBC. And there he was on that newscast Wednesday--just back from the Balkans, where American volunteers in the Kosovo Liberation Army greeted him like the media celebrity he is--interviewing Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel about what may lie ahead for Kosovo.

After the eloquent Wiesel ended his comments, Rivera replied: “I love you, man.” The new journalism.

Under the second category, Wednesday’s peace agreement was greeted by gunfire in Belgrade and Pristina, the Serb-occupied capital of Kosovo, which CNN attributed to Serbian troops shooting into the air to celebrate the war’s end.

Simultaneously, however, the Fox News Channel was nervously reporting “apparent antiaircraft fire in Pristina.” Concurrently, MSNBC said it was unable to confirm whether the gunfire represented jubilation or protest by Serbian troops.

Later that day, “The CBS Evening News” showed nighttime antiaircraft fire in Belgrade that anchor Dan Rather titled a “final act of destruction.” Different eyes seeing different things, however, the Associated Press reported that in Belgrade and Pristina, “people celebrated by firing weapons in the air and honking horns.”

Did someone mention honking horns? Then bring on the news choppers. And speaking of that mentality. . . .

Just as Wiesel reiterated to Rivera his opposition to imposing “collective guilt” on all of Kosovo’s Serbs just because some collaborated with oppressors of their ethnic Albanian fellow citizens (“There could be a bloodbath unless we are careful”), so too is it unfair to lump good TV journalists with their IQ-challenged colleagues.

In this war of survival, however, the cabbages are surely winning.