Fake accent for ‘voice’ of Hussein?

Steve Winfield is a listed member of the Screen Actors Guild and, according to the owner of the “Fabulous Voices” Web site on which he once appeared, a translator with a particular flair for foreign accents.

Last week, for 17 million TV viewers, he was also the voice of Saddam Hussein during Dan Rather’s exclusive CBS News interview of the Iraqi leader. Apparently putting on an Arabic accent, Winfield -- who spoke with a seemingly everyday North American accent when he talked briefly to a reporter this week -- read Hussein’s answers to Rather’s questions.

The translation was “100% accurate,” CBS News said in a statement, describing Winfield as one of four translators it hired. The accent, CBS said, was meant to provide “a voice compatible with the piece.” A network spokeswoman said Winfield was supplied by a translation service; she said she does not know whether Winfield in fact speaks Arabic.

It didn’t violate CBS News standards and practices, the network said, and the spokeswoman said CBS has used such a technique previously.

But in an environment in which many inside and outside the media business worry about the blurring of the lines between news and entertainment, the notion of CBS News hiring someone to fake an accent has met with some gasps, a few laughs and a lot of puzzlement.

A CNN spokeswoman said the network’s standards would not allow a translator to fake an accent. Both NBC and ABC declined to comment, but executives at ABC and NBC agreed that the practice is not used in their news divisions; one ABC executive said that when the network hires a translator, he or she uses his or her own voice. A former top TV executive who asked not to be named called it “bizarre,” saying the standard practice at his network was always to have the translator read the translation in his own voice.

But Richard Wald, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and a former head of standards and practices for ABC News, said that as long as CBS didn’t pretend the speaker was Hussein, “there’s nothing wrong with having done it.”

“It would have been better if they had simply told” viewers, however, he said. “It’s always nicer to be straight with the audience.”

Clearly, Rather’s exclusive interview -- the one sought by all his competitors -- presented challenges that other interviews do not.

For security reasons, the Iraqis insisted on using their own camera crews, and they provided the translators seen on camera in the room during the broadcast. They also kept the tape for close to 24 hours before returning it -- with footage from three cameras edited into one tape -- to CBS, which then had to carefully scrutinize it to make sure nothing was cut, before making its own translation. ABC and CNN had to endure similar conditions more than a decade ago when their anchors interviewed Hussein. One executive at a CBS rival said his network would have gladly met the same conditions, uncomfortable as they are, this time around to get the interview. But the issue of the accent has many flummoxed.

CBS News declined to discuss why it did what it did except in the statement, which read: “CBS News employed three independent and respected Arabic translators to provide a 100% accurate translation of the interview. A fourth such translator recorded the actual audio in a voice compatible with the piece. The ’60 Minutes II’ report conveyed a fully accurate translation of the interview that was in complete compliance with CBS News Standards.”

Winfield, in a very brief telephone interview, confirmed that he was the voice of Hussein on the CBS program and described himself as the show’s “on-air interpreter,” before passing the phone to his wife, Judy. She said her husband “is conversant in a number of languages” but then referred other questions to CBS, saying, “It’s CBS’ process so they should speak about it.”

At the Web site Fabulous Voices, a clearinghouse for actors and others seeking voice-over work for everything from commercials to books on tape, owner Frank Henry described Winfield, who used to be part of the roster, as a translator in addition to his voice-over work, and said he specialized in putting on foreign accents. Another Web site says Winfield can do “sessions in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and German,” and has “directed translation projects in a myriad of languages including: Chinese, Japanese, Punjabi, Hungarian, Swedish, Russian and Czech.”