Inside the World of CNN

By RICHARD ZOGLIN ATLANTA

IT IS WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, THE woman who has accused William Kennedy Smith of rape has just begun to testify, and producer Bob Furnad is having a Maalox moment. After two days of mostly pallid testimony by other witnesses, prosecutor Moira Lasch has suddenly called the accuser to the stand. But Furnad, who is running the control room, has just learned that Terry Anderson, the last American hostage to be released, is scheduled to make his first appearance in Damascus at 3:30 p.m. -- smack in the middle of CNN's trial coverage. What should Furnad do: continue to cover the long-awaited testimony of the accuser in the most publicized rape trial in history or cut away to Terry Anderson's press conference?

As the crunch hour approaches, the atmosphere in the control room becomes subtly charged. Furnad, legs jiggling nervously, lunges toward the monitors, computer screens and phone buttons arrayed before him, yelling orders. CNN president Tom Johnson shows up, hovering in the background. Ed Turner, another top CNN executive, appears, looking worried. "Of all the convergence of events," he says. "Six years they hold the guy . . ."

The decision is made quietly, almost imperceptibly: no matter what is happening at the trial, CNN will cut away to Anderson. Their best hope is that his appearance will coincide with the trial's afternoon recess, due to come at 3:30.

The half-hour break arrives on schedule, but Anderson does not. "Come on," mutters Furnad, "it's gotta happen before 4 o'clock." On the air, reporter Charles Jaco is killing time by talking to a legal expert. Finally Anderson / appears. Furnad shifts into overdrive: a switch back to Atlanta anchor Lou Waters; a shot of Anderson arriving; a split screen showing Anderson's Associated Press colleagues in New York City; a phone interview with John Anderson, Terry's brother.

Terry Anderson is talking now, but Furnad's main concern is the West Palm Beach courtroom, where testimony is resuming. "C'mon, Terry, speed it up," he urges. At 4:20 Anderson finally finishes. Turn on the anchor's mike ("He's leaving! Talk, Lou!"), cut to a commercial, then back to the trial. Only seven minutes of the accuser's testimony has been missed; her emotional account of the incident is yet to come. Count it another CNN success.

But hardly an unmixed one. Unlike its much praised performance during the Persian Gulf war, CNN's pantyhose-to-towel coverage of the Smith rape trial was controversial. The all-news network pandered to tabloid tastes, critics complained, or ignored more "serious" news, or cut away too often for commercials, or invaded the victim's privacy, or tried to guard it too assiduously. Nonetheless, the trial illustrated the essence of CNN: the coverage was live, dramatic, exhausting, messy and irresistible.

The trial also proved to be a tricky test for the people who decide what mix of news CNN will beam to its global audience. As the network's impact has grown, those decisions have become more crucial. To the extent that the images CNN chooses to show -- Boris Yeltsin defying coup plotters or a reporter sifting through bomb damage in Baghdad -- are important in shaping people's attitudes and governments' policies, a handful of news executives in Atlanta are among the world's most influential journalists.

Ted Turner may be the only one who ever thought CNN could come so far so fast. When Turner first launched the upstart 24-hour news operation in 1980, under the guidance of its brilliant but volatile president Reese Schonfeld, it had a staff of 300 and a newsroom tucked into the basement of a converted country club. Technical flubs were common: on the very first hour of CNN's first day, a story about baseball star Reggie Jackson was cut short when the transmission from New York suddenly went dead.

Today CNN has a staff of more than 1,700, a global reach in excess of 75 million homes and a budget that keeps growing while the three broadcast networks cut back. Its headquarters are spread over several floors in a hotel- and-shopping complex in downtown Atlanta, formerly called the Omni and now dubbed CNN Center. The network has established its credibility, and it makes money: a profit of $134 million in 1990 and most likely more in 1991.

Yet the crucial decisions are still made in seat-of-the-pants fashion, chiefly by three top executives. The veteran of the trio is Ed Turner, a charter member of the CNN staff, who is probably best known (as news stories quoting him invariably point out) for not being related to owner Ted. As executive vice president in charge of newsgathering, Turner is responsible for CNN's worldwide network of 95 correspondents. He is the soul of CNN: serious, pragmatic, not flashy but fiercely competitive. "No, we don't throw money around like the networks," says Turner about CNN's relatively tightfisted operation. "But who's expanding and who's shrinking?"

If Turner is in charge of getting news into the building, Furnad, senior executive producer, is the man responsible for getting it on the air. An 18- year veteran of ABC News who joined CNN in 1983, Furnad is a feisty field general who can berate his troops for a technical slipup one minute and praise them warmly the next. Staffers stand in awe of his poise and judgment under fire. "As wild as he is," says anchor Bobbie Battista, "there isn't anybody I'd rather have in there."

Overseeing the entire network is Johnson, the former publisher of the Los Angeles Times who was installed by Ted Turner as CNN's third president in August 1990. Much of Johnson's impact at CNN comes from the contrast he provides to the man he replaced: Burt Reinhardt, a respected, budget-conscious but rather aloof news executive. Johnson, 50, is an affable Georgia native with a Rolodex full of political contacts, dating from his years as an aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He has taken a hands-on approach to CNN in more ways than one. During the gulf war he brought cookies to bleary-eyed staffers working on the weekend. When ABC signed up Mikhail Gorbachev and Yeltsin for a joint interview after the failed coup, Johnson flew to Moscow and personally negotiated with them to do separate interviews on CNN first.

Johnson is a relative newcomer to television, a fact regarded as a handicap by some, a strength by others. He admits he is still learning the medium. "I'm not going to try to become an expert in TV technology," he says. "I want to surround myself with people who are better than I am in the various disciplines. My job is to lead."

, Some CNN insiders feel his leadership has been lacking. There is much talk these days at the news channel about the need to forge a new direction for the '90s, and a suspicion that Johnson has not found one. If the gulf war was a watershed event for CNN (ratings hit a one-day peak of 9.5, meaning 5.4 million homes were tuned in during an average minute, in contrast to a year- round average of 410,000 homes), the aftermath was something of a crash to earth. Viewership dropped, not just to prewar levels but even, for a time, slightly below. CNN is still struggling to find a way to consistently attract more than a relatively small core of news junkies.

Toward that end, Johnson is trying to stress more perspective and analysis in CNN's reporting and to find more "anchors who are journalists." He has hired veteran reporters like Deborah Potter (from CBS) and Brent Sadler (from Britain's ITN), and is trying to woo Bill Moyers away from PBS. CNN has also set up a 60-member election unit, which will produce a daily half-hour program of campaign news starting in January.

AT THE SAME TIME, JOHNSON is pushing to expand the all-news network into new venues. CNN has a daily news-feed service that supplies stories to 265 broadcast stations, a radio network with nearly 600 affiliates, and a Spanish- language service. In January it will begin supplying specially tailored packages of news and features for airports and supermarket-checkout lines. Talks are under way to provide a similar service for McDonald's. CNN in health clubs, rail stations and post offices could be next.

The goal is to find as many uses as possible for the raw material that pours in every day to CNN's newsroom. The workday officially begins at 8 a.m., with a meeting chaired by Ed Turner to review what stories are expected that day. Producers and writers then repair to circular desks, where they assemble the various hours of programming that make up CNN's schedule. Unlike the broadcast networks, which gear their activities to two or three shows each day, CNN is on a never-ending deadline. Breaking news is shoved onto the air as soon as it arrives. And somewhere in CNN's world it is always prime time. Says Stephen Cassidy, senior international editor: "It's like working for a boss who's up 24 hours a day."

The pace can be exhausting. One former CNN newswriter describes a "feeling of chaos" in the newsroom: "There were a lot of young producers and tape editors doing a lot of shouting." But most staff members praise the operation's informality and lack of bureaucracy. "My counterpart at ABC would have to go through 15 committees," says Simon Vicary, an executive producer who specializes in international affairs. "I can just turn my head around and get a decision made."

Ted Turner takes little part in day-to-day operations (though he approves major budget expenditures and contributes occasional story ideas, many of them relating to his environmental concerns). But his influence can be felt in everything from a prohibition against the word foreign (the preferred word is international, a choice that draws rolling eyes from many staffers) to the loyalty and long tenure of a high proportion of CNN employees.

CNN also reflects Turner's belief that TV news can be done far more cheaply than it was at the once profligate broadcast networks. CNN salaries are still lower than those at the networks, though the disparity is shrinking. (A correspondent joining CNN today typically makes $60,000 to $70,000, while a rookie network reporter earns around $100,000.) And CNN gets more out of its people. Unlike the networks, where correspondents have to fight for airtime, CNN uses practically everything its reporters file. "There's a constant effort to maximize profit for labor expended," says Jerusalem bureau chief Charles Hoff. "It's like a meat-packing plant that uses every piece of the animal." (Among CNN's cooperative ventures is an agreement with TIME to share poll data.)

Under Johnson, CNN's penny-pinching habits have been somewhat relaxed. Early in the Smith trial, for example, Furnad learned that Greta Van Susteren, one of CNN's Washington-based legal experts, had to be in Detroit for two days the following week. The cost of setting her up in a Detroit studio would be $2,000. Furnad was inclined to get another Washington commentator, but Johnson decided to spend the money. Result: Van Susteren was on hand for the verdict.

Conscious of CNN's role as the de facto network of record, Johnson and his colleagues are especially sensitive to matters of fairness and balance. The news network has been diligent about running in full the candidacy announcement of every major-party presidential aspirant. Live coverage of presidential press conferences is another CNN tradition. But when Bush called a session during the Smith trial to announce that Samuel Skinner would be his new chief of staff, Furnad chose to stick with the trial. Johnson ventured into the control room during the conference and nervously watched as Bush took questions, unseen by CNN viewers. "I still feel some anguish about that," he said later.

Even in handling the trial itself, an instinct for fairness carried CNN through the slow stretches. "If you leave out one witness because he or she is dull, you lose a building block," said Furnad. "We have some obligation to the audience to be consistent in the way we cover it." Viewers may have been alternately bored and titillated, but they were not shortchanged. For all the salacious material, CNN's coverage was sober, well balanced and informative. That it was a ratings hit as well (the average audience was 1.9 million homes, nearly five times normal) should come as no surprise -- or be cause for dismay. After years of churning out the news, CNN has earned the right to its blockbusters.