WGBH Journal; Tv And Diplomacy

We're very fortunate to have with us Mike tidy on my right from Channel 5 who has been a reporter for quite a number of years he was a correspondent with ABC in London. He's been with Channel 5 for a number of years and has been a reporter for both newspapers and television for a good while. Michael really have a good feeling on short notice and on my laughter we have an old timer with the World Affairs Council Roger Fisher who is professor of international law at Harvard University. Roger is most of you know is the originator of the advocates a very successful well-known program on public television. Roger is also among his other talents an expert on the Middle East. He spends a lot of time out there and I understand he's going out again very shortly. So Roger I'll turn the program over to you now to get started with stand fake because I asked the question yes there should be guidelines on television and diplomacy I got into television by mistake.

Ten years ago as professors sometimes do I was invited by a station of which I'm very fond of GBH to come on educational program we've all seen these roundtables I get for professors to sit around a circle and the moderator has to fill a whole hour on a subject called Indochina or whatever it was the time you first asked a professor of history and you say Mr. Smith tell us the history of Indo China please. And he says I give a two year course on that. And they said Well just briefly the history of Indochina and he says well it's too complicated you can't understand it. It's very difficult but if you you shouldn't talk about it unless you really know what moderator says thank you and now Mr. Jones you're an economist tell us about the economics of Indochina and he says well it's very complicated I give a course on that. Robert 10 Co-Prosperity Sphere French investment Japanese and says thank you very much and now I miss jones you're an anthropologist and she says Well unless you unless you've lived in a Buddhist

village you shouldn't discuss this subject. Thank you very much than they say to me Mr. Fisher You're a lawyer tell me is it legal what's going on and I said that's very complicated and it's very difficult. And they say thank you now please predict what's going to happen. We all make predictions at the end of the program. You've been convinced if you stay there on that the situation is inevitable. Complex. The experts disagree and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. And we've gone ahead with a little dis education miseducation and I called up David Ives after that program and said David have lunch with me I will never again appear on your program. And he said You must have been insulted calm down I'll buy you lunch. So we had lunch and then I talked with Michael Rice now. Station manager there and we got a very nice lunch with wine and he said now how would you do it and I said I'd do it just the reverse from the way you do it. Instead of looking backward

and saying it's all inevitable and complicated. I would try to look for a particular points and see what constructively you can do about that point. I said I can't help but contrast what it's like sitting at one of those terrible roundtable sessions with what used to be like arguing cases the Supreme Court. I never came to the court and said Ma'am please the court this case is too complicated for you fellas to understand it's mine and it's been litigation for 12 years they're really not much you can do. I would come on in a very brief time I would say look it's yes it's complicated but there's only you don't have to decide it in tonight there's one point we're talking about I'm going to say this my opposing colleague is going to say that within 30 minutes or an hour you'll understand the case and you go for. And I say that's what you want to do. And he said Are you serious and I said one more glass of wine I'll be very serious. And the result was I was challenged to try and produce a program which we then got going which eventually became a local program and this funding became the advocates

and I was defiant dared to take a year off and try and run it. And I did that and then Ever since then I have been a center like other television people understand why television is the way it is. And something about it. But my main field is international relations to international law international conflict and I've combined these in some ways not only advocates series in May June 1970 we had a program on the Middle East in which I had the great good fortune of interviewing President Nasser and King Hussein the last Westerner to get an interview with Nasser before he died and I was also on the program. And then once you've done that then you can meet our fan and you can meet anybody else you want and goes on and on and on. Three years ago I did a series on public television called Arabs and Israelis. Three we did seven half hour seven 30 minute programs trying to make people understand it understand how it looked from both sides and we

essentially tried it and I got the cooperation of Egypt Israel Syria Jordan Lebanon the PLO all to cooperate with the program let us produce that each side make its point of view now. Television is dynamite. It is the most powerful weapon in a conflict situation. Yes because otherwise it's kind of word of mouth and what something said what is said on television instantly is very big and very powerful and very important not everything unsaid but it can be is a very explosive ingredient. The con the difficulty comes up that what a crisis is is large stakes something very important. Great uncertainty as to what's going to happen and very little time in which to

have it happen. What's new does is very much like what's a crisis you would like it to be big and important. You would like it to have just happened right now very instantly speedily. And if it's certain what's going to happen it's not very exciting. If there's a great big question mark what next. That's news. Now the danger is that when a television personality whether it's Barbara Walters or myself asking someone or Walter Cronkite or Jack Chancellor or asking somebody a question there is an enormous incentive to get the biggest name. Agan said that its aim to get him to say the most. Controversial. Sudden position is different from what you expected. As you could and have it won that he answered spontaneously and

interview without having thought about it because then it's more likely be provocative if you've submitted the question a month in advance and ask the foreign service to prepare a draft. It's unlikely to be news. So we have a situation in the world today where television has the opportunity to make every situation worse. One war one war that was caused substantially caused not by television journalists but by journalists was the Middle East conflict of 67. Nasser in speaking about Sharm el-Sheik having asked the U.N. to get out and being tough gave an hour in a 45 minute address to the Air Force Academy of Egypt after speaking for an hour and 20 minutes without notes. He referred to the fact the London Observer has had reported that he was going to give up sovereignty over Sharm el-Sheik and he said

I will not give up sovereignty over John I checked the Israeli flag will never fly over Sharm el-Sheik the Israeli flag will not fly through Sharm el-Sheik. This is Egyptian. He didn't announce the closing of the Straits of Tiran he didn't send us journalist rushes up to him afterwards and said when you said the Israeli flag was not going to fly to Sharm el-Sheikh did you mean to say you're going to let Israeli go ships through the Straits if you'll just take the flag not. He said no that was the blockade of Sharm el-Sheikh. It was produced by a man who could talk to big frequently Nasser and by a press man who could saw angle for getting a very exciting news which provoked a crisis. Now we want to get some discussion with you but let me just advance a couple of propositions. Basically the newsman's standard

format is just at the nose no editorializing Please just the news just as I say we can't do that in television journalism. We are too much the news the journalist who is there with his camera. I cannot operate on the assumption that anything I can get him to say that will be in the headlines is the best that can be done. We will be provoking conflict. We have got to know when to turn off the camera as we discovered in this country in the in this disturbances in the sixties the students what I would call a demonstration a get a telephone and call a television crew to come and some of the crew would come and say OK here come the come television cameras start throwing the rocks start having a violence. The media was being manipulated in Beirut back in 7 the one I guess it was 70 to PLO man a Fatah representative came to me and said you have a film crew here I understand. I will give you an exclusive interview with the next three people going on a suicide mission

Israel. You can have the last coverage before they go in and they will have and it will take you a blindfold you and take you to a place and you can interview these guys just before they go in and then you can release the footage the minute the raid comes off will give you the footage and you can release it youll have an exclusive footage. And I said sorry no game. He said What do you mean. I said it's not not that's not my department he's looking cell of my own you know how many minutes we got on BBC with the last raid we got seven minutes of prime time on BBC. We had three minutes on John Chancellor we had two minutes on the morning news on CBS the last ray did this you're crazy. I said I'm not going to advertise I don't want anybody more committed to a radio was before and the only condition I might interview him is if I can try and talk him out of doing it and have me filmed putting all the reasons why I think the damn fool thing to do and they have to answer and

will have an argument about it and then we'll consider whether to use the footage. Needless to say that was not their idea of public relations. I think we have to understand and we have to try with all the risks to use television to construct the interview I had with Nasser in 1980 was a case where I tried in my own way to do this. Now that the war of attrition was on the canal neither side could. Say they want to stop without looking soft but I've been crazy and going on. I spent four hours in a bomb shelter and Suez being bombed by Israeli planes just as I'd been in a bunker being shelled by Palestinian stuff and I go out without mutual understanding of how you stand regarding me shell but I put my plan to put an ass I was told by the ambassador Don't ask me about a cease fire our position is against a cease fire.

Don't even ask you about it but start putting questions to him and I said What do you want Israel to do tomorrow that you could be most constructive. He says withdraw. I said you don't expect gold in my air to withdraw without a deal. He said no they ought to sit down and work out a package deal package deal. And I said Would you accept a one year ceasefire if they agree to sit down and work out a package deal. He said it shouldn't take a year. I said six months six months now except six. Well he didn't have to take the initiative saying I'm suing for six months ceasefire but he had publicly said if they would sit down and work out a package deal he accept a cease fire and or the Treasury secretary Rogers used that in the Rajah's initiative which

for whatever other difficulties it had did produce a cease fire in the summer of nineteen seventy and I got a very nice note from Secretary of State saying you know it's it was you're getting that answer that question and let us go ahead. That's what I call a success. But it was not very big nose is big news in Iran front page about Iran carried it in all over Cairo. Didn't make much news here. Gradually developed. But it was trying to use television by some news television and Sadat's trip to Israel was produced in part but it's known also the right answers aren't my guidelines are is. Thank in advance for trying to be constructive and generally try to get them to say what they are willing to do not what they think the other side is lying. Don't don't attribute motives I don't want to hear from the Israelis but the Palestinians are up to. I want hear from the Israelis what the Israelis think they're up to. I don't hear from the Palestinians what the

Palestinians are willing to do. I would like to use television have their best put their best foot forward and if we can use television that way we can be constructive and I won't have to come on the way it is just about now as Walter Cronkite says the world. You really can't do anything about it because that's the way it is. Good night like right here. I suppose I'm happy I'm supposed to have some things to disagree with you about I don't disagree with much of what you say except for the fact that if you know what you obviously do know about television you would have stayed in the business instead of going back to Harvard. But that's something else. I think he's right I think that television is the only medium that has the capacity to produce revisionist history before the fact. And they do that now you worked in public television which I submit is different than working for the daily newscast of a network and there are problems and working for that before I knocked the hell out of the networks for the one that I worked for let me just say that in defense of the networks they spend an awful lot of money and there's an awful lot of money riding on the decisions they

make and how they cover the news around the world. For example in the eight days of the Saddam visit in the Middle East. The network spent almost as much as they did in the one thousand days of the hostage incident in Austin Holland and to tell you what they spent there would probably knock your eyes out ABC spent 1.1 million dollars NBC spent $100000 and CBS which brought up the rear in that instance spent about eight hundred thousand dollars that's to provide about 20 spot news stories of an average length of a minute 45 seconds of the American public and the networks spent that much in 8 days in the Middle East. And because there's that much money riding on it they have to try to get on the air those things that are sexy. Meaning the big names the newsmakers who are involved and the best pictures meaning the best violence or the best action. Now I disagreed with that philosophy. I left the network partly for that reason that there was so much arbitrariness involved. But what it meant was that I'll give you an anecdote to explain this that the networks place the greatest premium on getting those things which are most saleable which will increase ratings because a

single rating point is you may or may not have read would pay Barbara Starr Barbara Walters salary twice over a single rating point in a year. The anecdote is this. It's late November and Peter Jennings was the chief European correspondent for ABC is in Damascus talking to Syrian President Assad and talking by telephone to his old friend the president of Egypt Sadat and Mrs. That says that he's going to talk the next day to his cabinet and announce that he's probably going to propose a trip to Israel big news big scoop. Peter Jennings Jennings is a fine reporter. He doesn't have time to get a crew down to Cairo but he does have time to do the story for ABC News. And so at about 9 o'clock in the morning their time in our time over there he calls a desk in New York and says I've got Saddam saying he's going to go to Israel it's great. It's all locked up. I can do a stand up report on the scene from Syria say we're going to catch up to him etc. etc. he does that story it's transmitted by satellite at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Damascus time immediately after the transmission the satellite transmission

which is called the bird in that world lingo Jennings and crew get what's referred to in the business as a hero gram from Roone Arledge. It goes on about this long and it says Peter and crew great work it's the kind of thing we want to do since I've become president this is what we feel that great teamwork and everything can produce good going top professionals blah blah blah we're real proud you see a later sign room. About an hour later CBS news comes on the air and Walter Cronkite has to live behind his shoulder. They have somehow managed to commandeer a hotel room in Israel that has I'm sorry in Cairo that has a dot over his shoulder saying what he told Jennings but Jennings doesn't have him on the air and so comes another room Graham. This one also to Jennings and it's the same length and it says I was discouraged to see on CBS News about five minutes ago or so that talking with Mr. Cronkite directly with a satellite hookup. It's doubly discouraging to know that we spent all that money expended all that manpower and all that work and we didn't get him on the air. I went on for another two paragraphs which I won't relate but the bottom line was do better.

That's the way it is in broadcasting and that's the kind of pressure that the reporter in the field has to work with you can work your butt off to get one of those names not get him and be told to do better. More important than that I mean that got both of them into the news what the News Watch column and Barbara Walters had to come over and if you said on the airplane it was terrific and Gryphus Newswatch column in Newsweek the next week they were both written up as being really terrific and they got the scoop and it was wonderful. But the problem for the other reporters in the field is that once you get there to the scene in this case of the Middle East you don't have the leeway to report the story as you see it. You have to expend almost all of your energy and time in the networks money getting more big names getting more things that are sexy looking for action so that in the Middle East for instance in Beirut this time around the night before Sadat went Israel to Egyptian embassy was bombed and two guards were killed. We were there. We went there and we got the film of it and we paid for an extra satellite transmission a unilateral bird that cost seven hundred dollars a minute and we shipped in that piece got on the air the next day. A more important

story happened. The Palestinian refugee camps in and around Beirut and down in the south and tired cetera which had recently been at war with Israel decided they were going to stage mass rallies and also allow their people to give interviews now you know from dealing with them that the P FPL and all those people don't like to do interviews but they suddenly called some of the people in the press our bureau in on them and said we want to talk to you. So they talk to us. All they did was talk to us and explain what they wanted to do. They said things that were fascinating to me for instance from Bassim al Sharif who's the PFB elegant if you know him he was involved in the blowing up of the planes in 73 in the desert. He said that the whole point of the Palestinian movement at this juncture is to wait out the Israeli position that just as Israel filled a new country with that many more people over the years they would wait 30 years and by the increase in population finally won the war. And I thought that that was kind of interesting just from the point of view of an observer and I thought that I could build that into the fabric of the think peace in the Middle East and in what it was no action in it. And that's the way it happened. Almost all the time in all the

coverage overseas and I can go on for a long time about examples of that type of coverage all over Europe in the Middle East I was only at six months I don't know at all but I did know enough to know that unless you could provide the networks with what they want meaning sexy pictures big names etc. etc. it was going on the air because it was going to prove ratings. And that's the way it was and. You cannot apologize for and on behalf of the people of New York because they were going to the same pressure you do. But the fact of the matter is that if those interesting things are happening in the Palestinian refugee camps but there's no story there. And King Hussein calls on the sides to hold a press conference and you know he says nothing when he has a press conference. You go to do King Hussein. And we went down to Jordan and left what I thought was a legitimate good meaty story involving the Palestinian refugees to go listen to King Hussein speak for two hours and say nothing. He did not say he was going to side with Sadat he did not say he had talked to Assad he didn't say anything at all except that he had made up his mind yet that peace got two minutes on the air. Out of 25 available minutes on that night's network

news and much later I packed it in. I just couldn't see the point of it. That's basically the way it was in the Middle East I can. You want about other stories and other things that went on on the foreign news that comes and the editing is frankly done at the at the network based on what's available and their description of it that is you know we did the first of the there's a series called world now with all of these with the advocates on GBH in the very first one of these that shorted on a crowded plot of window and you could just there are some interesting things that would cause the news and there was there's a coup in time you know the ticker tape whether it was a coup d'etat in Thailand. First question do we have footage. If we don't have footage we'll mention it if we have footage of maybe a few minutes difference and that's one thing that the the the availability and they were scouring visit Japanese have footage does anybody have footage we can buy if we haven't got footage it makes it less important as we have some little

airplane crashes a guy jumps out of an airplane crash and you happen to have footage of it. That's a great evening story for you or an auto accident depending on the availability of visual material and. They'll pull their blood down. Nobody gets in the pictures and there's no story in television. There is no story. And that's part of a style question that is right now is a sense that in Turkey there is a higher level of violence than there is in Northern Ireland that is there is more. More terrorism more people have died in Turkey than Italy will say since January in terms of terrorism anti-government attacks the Turkish constituency in this country is is small compared to the Irish or the Italian constituency and the press reports from Italy and

Ireland are substantially better than film television crews than they are in and in an opera. And the fact that that 70 to people as between January up today I think some trainspotter around 75 people have been killed in street violence of people trying to provoke the democratic governments of the military of justification coming in apparently the main excuse to get the military government back we have a very democratic government in Turkey is a fantastically You know elections Demick democracy like that. That's not new so I don't know about that. The violence is not really a concern to the domestic constituency that so that doesn't get here and the television doesn't report on it. Level 1 thing you must learn and I'm sure you did. And working with politicians overseas is that they can shut you off when they want to and you really have nothing to fall back on in the Middle East they just give you this. Which means. Wait so it goes whatever it is that's the end of it there is no adversary relationship they hold the ball all the time and some stories by virtue of the fact that

action occurs and things happen you can ask a question that they can't avoid answering you can pose a question rhetorical or in your narration that they're forced to confront one way or the other. And so it does help. But overseas now that doesn't exist for the most part. And you're just all by yourself and you very often feel as though you're all by yourself and you've got nothing to go on but what they're going to give you and they don't always give you much. Well I would like that you disagree. But like you said there is a quality in which the typical journalist exposé approach of being an adversary. Deprives us of understanding how someone sees what he's doing. That is Mike Wallace. Does the Shah of Iran you know is it true you beat people in torture people do that or the questions are. And we don't get we don't understand the Shah very well of how he sees it I want to skeptical person saying what's your theory of why this is

going on what's your side of the story be oh no don't just be a handout but try to get the audience to understand how he sees let him hang himself in his own words. And let's not have the exposé journalist come in and say boy I am a tough American I know human rights you're all a bunch of kooks and natives and telling about it. Now that tradition is not just American journalists. The in the in connection with the series called World on GBH we're trying get foreign films as others see it in the world as I see it turns out that most young filmmakers are not establishment characters guess what. If you want to go into business you go to big business you don't take a camera around and freelance filmmaking and sell there's a bias among young filmmakers of being of exposé. Reporter crusader. Look at the way the industry is ripping off the countryside look at what the medical profession is ripping off look at the lawyers are ripping off look at their doing and there are very few documentaries that are films that try

to say I want you to understand what this Sudanese railway corporation thinks they're doing and how they see the world through their eyes and this adversarial relationship tends to be very judge mental and deprives us of the background to understand the people with whom we have problems. Tools to a wide extent I think.