Emmys for Deep Truth Go to . . .

This was to be a column about the Emmys.

But Sunday’s Emmy telecast, along with many other entertainment programs, was postponed after those catastrophic acts of deadly terror in New York City and Washington. This time the show wisely is not going on.

Here in advance, though, are a few symbolic Emmys, for this terrible time is a defining moment not only for Americans and for President Bush’s leadership skills, but also for television in news and entertainment.

One Emmy goes to whoever can create a television movie or miniseries about Terrible Tuesday that does not exploit the carnage or rely on the usual disaster-flick cliches and gimmicks.

There is, of course, the thriller aspect: Who, how, why? And count on Hollywood already sifting through the debris for individual stories and opportunistic writers already pounding their word processors.

Instead of rushed accounts based on the inevitable quickie books, however, how about something that travels thoughtfully beyond the panoramic rubble of the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and obvious individual and collective pain, to greater universal truths that define us as a society and possibly as a dysfunctional world community torn by constant combat?

There are, of course, the easily perceptible heroism and compassion that have altered the rest of the nation’s concept of New Yorkers as 7 million gruff, horn-tooting cabbies. And also the focus on values exploding from this tragedy that for now has driven Gary Condit back to oblivion, where he belongs.

Yet other nuances won’t quickly advertise themselves. They may emerge only gradually, taking weeks, even months to bubble to the surface.

It won’t be easy. There will be competitive pressure to do a story or stories fast and first. There will be record bidding on rights. The predators will be circling, the tabloids writing fat checks, the mainstream media growing jumpier.

TV being TV, moreover, the call will go out for stock characters and cheap theatrics en route to a conventional feel-good finale that any of us could supply at this moment: Wave the flag, hit the hankies, go to credits.

There are thousands of converging stories to tell, however, surely among them many that are not only honestly emotional--how could this not be seen as gut wrenching?--but also suited to storytelling that is not by the numbers. Hollywood has the talent, but has it the will?

More important ...

Awards galore too for something that would require even greater courage at a time when we are hastily thumbing through our Rolodex of scapegoats, looking for familiar names and cultures.

That would be a movie or miniseries about innocent Arab Americans or Muslims in the U.S. who are stigmatized and shunned--perhaps even physically attacked--because of seething anger over those calamities in New York and Washington. Even though it’s logical to assume that Tuesday’s casualties include some of them.

As this is being written, Saudi Arabian terrorist leader Osama bin Laden is emerging, at least in media accounts, as the primary suspect, with Afghanistan’s radical fundamentalist Taliban regime again identified as his host, and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as a possible accomplice. What’s more, this week’s newscasts included brief footage of small groups of West Bank Palestinians responding euphorically to the terrorist attacks here, however misleading those images may have been in mirroring public opinion among all people there.

Yet newscasters have been generally responsible in urging angry Americans not to stereotype their neighbors, as KCBS-TV did admirably in Los Angeles and as NBC’s Tom Brokaw did again Wednesday, segregating the previous morning’s calamity from the nation’s millions of Muslims and Arab Americans who “are not terrorists.”

Hate calls are said to be coming in, nonetheless, along with reports of mosques being defaced, making it likely that collective guilt will be imposed.

Especially given how often Tuesday is being titled another Pearl Harbor, and how often Muslims and Arabs are depicted monolithically in movies and TV as coldblooded terrorists, born to bomb.

Bin Laden himself is evidence that the stereotype is not baseless. Yet it’s the absence of balancing images on the screen that’s damaging, creating the impression in many circles that America’s Muslims and citizens of Arab descent bow each morning to fanatical killers in other lands.

History turns on moments like these, making this precisely the time for someone in TV entertainment to belly up and attack, if not erase this hateful caricature.

How? By depicting on the screen the dangers of knee-jerk mislabeling, as if we should need reminding after the internment of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Creating and airing such a story would take guts and maturity, traits worthy of many Emmys.

Meanwhile ...

Another symbolic Emmy to anyone getting on the air a movie accurately relating the crushing pressures on the media--notably television--to cover a breaking story of the magnitude of these terrorist attacks and their agonizing aftermath.

Try this challenge: You’re on TV live, deciding what is true and what is not from chards of information flying at you like debris from those obliterated twin towers at the World Trade Center.

The broadcast networks and 24-hour news channels passed the strenuous stress test Tuesday, and many cheers to ABC’s Peter Jennings for being this week’s most dogged TV reporter-commentator when it comes to aggressively seeking answers about the gaping intelligence hole through which terrorists were able to climb apparently undetected.

But on Wednesday, this wall of professionalism began to crack. At one point, during the continuing, commercial-free live reporting, everyone but CBS News was airing coverage from Boston stations of that commotion at the Westin Copley Place hotel, where a police SWAT team and other authorities were said to have entered with a search warrant.

“Some people have been taken into custody,” CNN anchor Aaron Brown reported carefully. “I don’t want to call them suspects. The police aren’t calling them suspects.”

Others were less judicious, applying the loaded word “suspect” at will, even though the people taken into custody were later released, according to reports Thursday.

On ABC, meanwhile, a Boston TV reporter began upchucking every tidbit he had been fed, including that police suspected some of the city’s cab drivers--their foreign origin implicit--of being part of the terrorist conspiracy. Although an inflammatory blanket indictment, out it went on the airwaves like a wildly fired Scud missile.

“A lot of this information is coming to us now, and we’re going to try to sort it out,” the reporter added. Here’s a thought: Sort it out first, then report it.

Well ... no one says this movie has to be entirely flattering.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.