Water-Torture Journalism

By Thomas Griffith

Newswatch

That $120 million libel suit by General William Westmoreland against CBS and Mike Wallace might well turn into an acrimonious debate about how the Viet Nam War was lost and why. "There is no way left for me," said Westmoreland in suing "to clear my name, my honor and the honor of the military." However a court later decides, any viewer who saw the CBS broadcast in January 1982 probably remembers most vividly a nervous Westmoreland--under tough questioning by Wallace--squirming, licking his lips, answering falteringly. The lesson: never go on camera with Mike Wallace unless you are well prepared.

So it was something of a shocker last month when Media Critic Hodding Carter opened an inquiry on public television into the subject by describing Wallace as a central witness who "was not available to our cameras." Meaning that Wallace dishes it out, but can't take it? That set off another miniround of acrimony. Wallace concedes that CBS brass for a long time had shielded him and his colleagues from the press until there was what Wallace calls a "free the slaves" movement at CBS. That gave Wallace a chance to speak for himself, and he was ready to. By that time, because either Carter was away on assignment or Wallace was, they never got together for a face-off on camera. Still, Carter had a lively broadcast, and the New York Times devoted nearly a column to it.

Next day, however, in a strange "Editors' Note," the Times rebuked its own TV critic, Reporter Frank Prial, and his editors: "Nothing in the Times account suggested that the criticism of CBS by Inside Story was fresh, substantive or otherwise newsworthy ... By the Times's standards of news judgment and fairness, the article was too long and too prominently displayed." This somewhat sententious apology had been ordered up by Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal, who speaks of "my naive astonishment" at the reaction it provoked. People accused him of disliking Hodding Carter ("I don't know him well enough to dislike him") or of bowing to pressure from CBS (says Wallace: "Can you imagine me trying to pressure him?").

Had the Times story been too long? Over on the food page, Critic Craig Claiborne often gets as much space to describe the place and circumstances where he discovered a fish sauce. Was there nothing new in Hodding Carter's critique? It added as much, or as little, to public knowledge as had the original Westmoreland broadcast. CBS's charge that the Saigon top brass had misled L.B.J. about enemy troop strength relied largely on evidence from a former CIA analyst, Samuel Adams to whom CBS paid $25,000. But Adams had previously made his case elsewhere and often: in congressional testimony, in court, in a Harper's article. To this old story CBS added the engrossing dramatics of witnesses defending themselves. The network also added hype, although it now regrets referring to a "conspiracy." Conceding some flaws in the preparation of the program, CBS still defends its accuracy. Using some on-camera witnesses of his own, Carter criticized CBS for lack of balance: "Even if you're sure of guilt, there's a vast difference between a fair trial and a lynching."

Well, Rosenthal had not meant to imply that Carter offered nothing new; Rosenthal says that it was the Times account that offered nothing new: "The wording may have been unclear in my stumbling way."

So let us moisten our lips and start afresh. Rosenthal thinks it is not enough for a newspaper to correct factual errors; he wants to get at the "more serious defects" of stories that are loaded, overplayed or underplayed, the kind, he says, that as editors "we tear each other's hearts out" about afterhours. He deplores "journalism by water torture," an article that adds one little new fact and then lengthily repeats familiar allegations. On this ground, he felt the Carter review too long. Mere wordiness does not trouble Rosenthal as much as do stories that are repetitiously derogatory to somebody or to some institution, in this case CBS. The aim of his new "Editors' Notes" is to rectify "what the editors consider significant lapses of fairness, balance or perspective." So far, about half a dozen of these contrition boxes have appeared. The ambition is admirable, but it may need the literary touch of a Russell Baker often keep such notes from sounding stuffy or selfconscious. Too often they leave the impression of being things the editors should have thought of earlier. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.