The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. These are the day's main news headlines. Ted gTurner announced a bid to take over CBS. CBS says it will fight him. The White House was criticized at a Holocaust memorial service. GNP gures showed a sharp slowdown in economic growth. The administration indicated it would compromise on aid to Nicaragua's contras. Jim?

LEHRER: The major story of the day is Ted Turner's lunge for CBS, and we devote a major focus segment to it tonight. A Wall Street analyst will look at the financial side of the proposition, a top broadcast executive who once worked for Turner will look at Turner, and then two informed observers, Norman Podhoretz of Commentary magazine and Fred Friendly, former head of CBS News, will exchange observations. Also tonight, we have a newsmaker interview with the two assistant state attorneys involved in the now-famous rape recant story in Chicago. News Summary

MacNEIL: Ted Turner, owner of the Cable News Network, today announced a bid to take over CBS. Turner offered CBS shareholders stock and assets in his Turner Broadcast Systems and said that amounted to a value worth $175 per CBS share. On Wall Street, CBS stock fell 3 5/8 to close at 106 and 1fi8, as analysts and investors resisted Turner's plan. After meeting with analysts, Turner saw some 200 reporters at a New York hotel and defended his move.

TED TURNER, chairman, Turner Broadcasting: We have decided to attempt to have the shareholders of CBS decide for themselves whether they would like to have Turner Broadcasting acquire control of CBS. That is the principal purpose of our proposal. I must point out, as we do in the registration statement, that the highly leveraged capitalization of the combined companies would have a serious impact on cash flow. However, as noted in the press release, we intend to dispose in an orderly manner of certain non-CBS broadcast operations which would provide additional cash to service and repay the debt.

MacNEIL: Turner's filing with the Federal Communications Commission acknowledged that CBS opposes the takeover bid. CBS chairman Thomas Wyman told shareholders in Chicago yesterday that any attempt to compromise the independence and integrity of CBS News would be fought. Today CBS said it would inform shareholders of the merits of the proposal when the company had evaluated it. In a major focus section after this news summary, we examine the takeover bid in detail and look at Turner's aims and the controversy about CBS News.

The other news of concern to Wall Street today was government figures showing economic growth even lower in the first quarter than estimated. The Commerce Department said gross national product grew at an annual rate of only 1.3% from January to March, the lowest quarterly growth rate since 1982. The White House said, "This was clearly below what we'd hoped for." On Wall Street the Dow Jones industrial average closed down seven points at 1265.13.

LEHRER: There was more said today about President Reagan's plans to lay a wreath at a Nazi cemetery next month in West Germany. The most dramatic words were spoken by Elie Wiesel to Secretary of State George Shultz. Wiesel is chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. He survived two Nazi concentration camps and has written several books about his experience. This morning, he and Shultz were speakers at a Capitol rotunda ceremony remembering the Holocaust. Wiesel spoke first.

ELIE WIESEL, chairman, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council: Did no one consider the pain and the shame some, if not most, Americans would feel upon learning that a President of the United States for whom we have genuine affection and admiration plans to visit a cemetery in which there are a good number of SS graves? Have our policy planners, Mr. Secretary, forgotten what SS stands for? Why then should anyone visit, and by doing so, honor their cemetery as though they had been nothing but patriotic soldiers who died for their fatherland?

We do not seek a contest with the President of the United States. There is a contest between all of us and the SS. Mr. Secretary, our pain is genuine, our outrage deep, and our perplexity infinite.

LEHRER: Secretary Shultz then departed briefly from his prepared remarks to respond to Wiesel.

GEORGE SHULTZ, Secretary of State: I share with you also the deep conviction that there is no place within the deep spirit we feel of reconciliation and compassion -- there is no place for understanding for those who took part in the perpetration of the Nazi horror.

LEHRER: Meanwhile, President Reagan continued to speak up in his own defense. Here's what he said about the cemetery problem to a group of regional news executives.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: I think that there's nothing wrong with visiting that cemetery where those young men are victims of Nazism also. Even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis, they were victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.

LEHRER: Tomorrow could bring another dramatic moment or two. President Reagan is scheduled to present a Congressional Medal of Freedom to Elie Wiesel at a morning White House ceremony. The event was scheduled long before the cemetery flap erupted. Meanwhile, Michael Deaver of the White House staff -- he's the balding man with horn-rimmed glasses -- was in Germany looking for a concentration camp for the President to visit next month. Today Deaver visited Dachau, the same camp that the President said last month he was not going to visit. Deaver will make his report to the President at the White House tomorrow.

MacNEIL: In Israel, observance of Holocaust Martyr's Day was nationwide. At 8 a.m. air-raid sirens signaled the beginning of a two-minute period of silence. This is how it looked and sounded on the streets of Jerusalem.

[clip of period of silence]

MacNEIL: In Lebanon, a vice president of the American University of Beirut was kidnapped from his home. He is George Sayegh, a Lebanese citizen in his late 40s who suffers from heart trouble and needs continuous medication.

In South Africa, the government announced it will give a limited amount of self-government to Namibia, a former German colony which South Africa governs in defiance of the United Nations. And a South African board of inquiry heard today from doctors who examined the bodies of 20 young blacks who were killed in a clash with police last month near Port Elizabeth. The police say they were being attacked by the blacks, but the doctor said 17 of the 20 died after being shot in the back.

LEHRER: There are sounds of compromise over aid to the contras. The Associated Press, among others, say Republican congressional leaders have worked out a new version with President Reagan, one that would restrict the $14 million to only humanitarian aid for the anti-Sandinista guerrillas in Nicaragua. Mr. Reagan's proposal allows it to be spent on military supplies if after 60 days peace talks between the contras and the Sandinistas have been unsuccessful. The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 15 to 13 in favor of that version late this afternoon. But it appears doomed to defeat in the House, which, with the Senate, is to vote on it next Tuesday. Mr. Reagan himself spoke of new flexibility on the question in comments this afternoon to that gathering of regional newspaper and television executives at the White House.

Pres. REAGAN: Frankly, I'm sorry that it's coming to a vote on Tuesday, and I think that was deliberate on the part of the leadership in the House of Representatives.

REPORTER: To embarrass you, sir?

Pres. REAGAN: To bring that vote up before we could really sit down and go at all the places where we had agreement and disagreement. Now, many of the people that I've been meeting with are basically supportive of the plan except they feel that there are others that are wavering one way or the other, that if we could make some alterations in the plan, keep basically the agreement or the arrangement that we have and the goal, but that there are places here and there and timing and so forth -- and I have made it plain to all of them, we'd love to talk to them about that. My feet aren't in concrete on this. Yes, there's leeway. We're flexible as to the details of this program. But how much time do you have? It's Thursday, and they've said the vote must be Tuesday. I think it is -- I think it's immoral to demand that vote that quickly.

LEHRER: Tuesday's Nicaragua aid vote was also discussed in outer space today. Senator Jake Garn, the Utah Republican, is one of seven crew members aboard the space shuttle Discovery. President Reagan made his customary last-day congratulations phone call to the astronauts, and Garn assured him he would be back by Tuesday and would vote "just the way you'd like me to." Earlier the astronauts held their customary last-day news conference from space. They talked about their failure to fix a broken communications satellite, among other things.

KAROL BOBKO, Discovery commander: What can you say? You know, we thought we had done everything exactly right, and I think we had, and it's just a disappointment when you go through all the training and then the final end product doesn't come out as you wish.

REPORTER: What kind of confidence did you have when you first heard of the fly swatter and what you were going to have to do with it?

Dr. RHEA SEDDON, mission specialist: Well, we knew that the people on the ground had worked pretty hard on putting something together. We weren't really sure what they wanted us to build, but bit by bit, the more they explained -- and they sent up some very interesting teleprinter drawings, if you can believe that -- and once we put it together, looked at it, and were told what we were supposed to do with it, I think we had pretty good confidence that it was going to work.

JULES BERGMAN, ABC News: Senator Garn, which would you rather be, a United States senator or a working astronaut?

Sen. JAKE GARN, (R) Utah: Jules, that's one of the easiest questions I've ever had to answer. If I were about 10 years younger I'd choose a working astronaut over being a senator so fast it'd make your head swim.

LEHRER: Discovery is due to land in Florida on the Kennedy Space Center runway at 7:16 in the morning Eastern time. CBS Takeover Bid

MacNEIL: As we reported, one of the big stories today is the announcement by Ted Turner that he will attempt to take over CBS, one of the nation's biggest media conglomerates. CBS has said it will fight to prevent the takeover. We have a major focus segment now examining the takeover details, Turner's motives and the independence of CBS News. First, to sort through the financial aspects of the Turner bid, we have a Wall Street analyst who specializes in the communications industry. He's Joe Fuchs of Kidder, Peabody.

Mr. Fuchs, how precisely does Turner, with his much smaller assets, plan to pull this off?

R. JOSEPH FUCHS: Well, you might describe it as with mirrors. Basically what he plans to do is issue nine different pieces of paper to each CBS shareholder with a stated value of something like, as you said before, $175. It's actually precisely $176.50 a share.

MacNEIL: If you were a CBS shareholder now, how quickly would you have something in your hand that you could convert into money worth $176?

Mr. FUCHS: Oh, you may never ever see that piece of paper. There are a number of steps, financially, that they have to go through. First they need approval from the SEC, and that is likely to take 30 to 60 --

MacNEIL: Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr. FUCHS: Precisely. Thirty to 60 days. Then we have to see whether CBS ghts in the courts and what kind of obstacles they put up. The tender offer itself could last an extended period of time. The normal is to go for 30 days. But they can be extended almost indefinitely.

MacNEIL: Why are Wall Street analysts reported to be so skeptical, and are you?

Mr. FUCHS: Two reasons. Number one, this hodgepodge of paper is very difficult to value. Many of us have put a value on it in today's marketplace of $150 to $160 a share. However, that value is contingent on the markets staying exactly the way they are right now, somewhere down in the future, and they're highly contingent on a substantial sale of CBS assets. And that is a big contingency.

MacNEIL: Now, CBS didn't exactly rush out today and say no and line up the cannons against. They said they're going to study it and advise the shareholders. Does that indicate that in some way they're concerned that shareholders might go for this? I mean, we're basing the opposition we've reported on what Wyman said yesterday.

Mr. FUCHS: Precisely, yeah. I think the -- my interpretation of that is that they are less concerned than if somebody had put a very simplistic offer of cash and some simple paper on the table. I think they have far less concern than has been in the case in a number of other aggressive acquisition moves.

MacNEIL: What about big institutional investors, like insurance companies who might hold big blocks of CBS shares? What will be going through their minds in the next couple of days -- who have a duty to the people they represent, and insurance plans and in pension plans and things like that?

Mr. FUCHS: The social issues totally aside in this one, they have a fiduciary responsibility to get the highest amount of dollars for their -- whoever they're representing. Now, the question is, is this the best way of achieving that? Would a reconstituted CBS under the Turner organization give you a bigger value today versus the next three years on a discounted basis if the CBS management held it? The other issue is, if you tender your shares and something else happens, can you reclaim them? And the answer is probably not.

MacNEIL: What do you think they would be -- I mean, is that a plausible argument, is it a plausible argument that these big institutional investors might say, "Hey, our fiduciary responsibility points to going along with Turner"?

Mr. FUCHS: It is possible depending on their evaluation of the dollar terms. The complexity, however, the contingency of the offer, the sale of those assets is likely to be a very large stumbling block that indeed might cause them, in their fiduciary responsibility, to not tender shares as opposed to hand them in.

MacNEIL: Considering that the stock was worth only $75 very recently and is now worth over $100, haven't a lot of people made quite a profit already and wouldn't they therefore be quite willing to sell right now?

Mr. FUCHS: Well, there have been a lot of the longer-term investors who in turn have turned over their shares already. I think we've got a substantial portion of the stock, Robin, in the hands of speculative investors. And they're in for the short-term trade. So as they smell either success or failure of this offer, you're likely to see the stock move rather violently.

MacNEIL: Now look at it the other way around from CBS's point of view, the management. They, it's reported, have borrowed a lot of money -- $150 million -- to give themselves a war chest. Maybe it's more than that; is it more than that?

Mr. FUCHS: They've actually got a line of credit arranged for one and a half billion dollars.

MacNEIL: My mistake. One and a half billion dollars. Now, is it in the shareholders' interests for them to be buying their own stock at this highly inflated price now, or this raised price, with money they've had to borrow to do it and therefore have to pay interest on?

Mr. FUCHS: The likely course of events is not to repurchase shares, because indeed what that would do is enhance the position of any adversary. For example, we know that Ivan Boesky has filed papers that own 8.7 of the stock.

MacNEIL: He's a financier not connected with the Turner --

Mr. FUCHS: Precisely. He's an arbitrageur not connected at all. The more likely use of those funds, if indeed it comes into play, is the acquisition of incremental assets. If CBS were to go out, for example, and buy Company X for $1 billion, in essence you would raise the price of poker by a billion dollars. And the deal is already with $4.6 [billion] at the face value right now, and if you raise that to five and a half billion dollars it makes for a very large mountain for Ted Turner to climb.

MacNEIL: When's the earliest we might see some resolution of this, do you think?

Mr. FUCHS: Well, I think the next move is going to be up to CBS. The CBS board must comment on this offer. If indeed they say this is unacceptable and they will fight it, I suspect we're going to see a fair amount of litigation, and then in 60 days -- 30 to 60 days -- the approval of the papers from the SEC, and then we will see whether the shareholders actually will tender shares in that kind of an offer.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Now to a look at the man who would be king of CBS, Ted Turner of Atlanta, Georgia. The descriptions of him all contain the same adjectives: brash, outspoken, unpredictable, colorful, difficult, arrogant and, most particularly, smart. He took an unknown Atlanta television station in 1970 and turned it into a so-called superstation, bouncing a signal off a satellite to reach a huge regional audience of some 33 million viewers. In 1980 he started the Cable News Network, a 24-hour news service most thought would flop. It's still operating and has a solid news reputation. His company owns two professional sports teams, the Atlanta Braves baseball team and the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. And he's a world-class yachtsman, having skippered his yacht Courageous to a successful defense of the America's Cup in 1977. Now there's this new adventure called a hostile takeover attempt. He was asked today how it made him feel.

TED TURNER: Well, obviously I'm excited. But -- and I've really enjoyed having you all here; this is a very impressive array, I might add. Don't we love the news business? But that's really all I can say. I can't say anything else. I'm really sorry, but everybody's been treated equally and will continue to be.

LEHRER: More on Ted Turner now from a man who worked closely with him in the television business. He's Reese Schonfeld, who was the founding president of the Cable News Network. He resigned in a dispute with Turner, and is now a vice president of Cablevision Systems Corporation, which is headquartered on Long Island, New York.

Mr. Schonfeld, what is your view of why Ted Turner wants CBS so badly?

REESE SCHONFELD, former president, CNN: Well, Ted has always had an enormous drive for power, and I think the power that he sees that any one of the three networks have is just so enormous that there's just no way he could resist that chance for too long.

LEHRER: You mean for power for power's sake, or power to do what?

Mr. SCHONFELD: Well, I think it's more for power's sake itself. A cohort of mine at Turner's and I used to debate whether Turner's greatest drive was for power or for glory. But we both agree that the drive for sex and money was a distant third.

LEHRER: I see.

Mr. SCHONFELD: He wants to be very, very well known and very, very powerful. And I don't think even he knows how he would like to use that power or really what he wants the caption under his name to read when he's declared Man of the Year. He just knows that's what he wants to be.

LEHRER: So what would you think he would do with CBS if he did end up controlling it?

Mr. SCHONFELD: Well, Ted told me that his -- he and I had several discussions, not all of them entirely amicable, over how we saw CNN and his role in it. And his version of it -- his vision of a journalist was really Hearst's. And I think he'd like to --

LEHRER: Was really what?

Mr. SCHONFELD: Hearst. William Randolph Hearst.

LEHRER: Oh, I see.

Mr. SCHONFELD: Dr.SCHONFELD: And he said that. And I don't think he'd deny it now. And Hearst wanted to use his institutions of journalism to get himself president of the United States. And I think that somewhere in Ted's mind -- well, he's even said, he's said to me and to others, that he sees himself someday as president of the United States.

LEHRER: What about Jesse Helms and the other conservatives who also have an interest in making some changes at CBS? If Ted Turner were successful, is he likely to make those kinds of changes? You know, get rid of Dan Rather and do all those things that Helms and his folks want done.

Mr. SCHONFELD: I doubt that he'd ever get rid of Dan Rather. Ted knows a winner when he sees one. But -- and his politics are really all over the place. Ted was basically a conservative, was a Goldwater supporter actively in 1964 and has been reasonably antimedia. You know his speeches -- "Presidents of the networks would all get medals if they arrive at the Kremlin for what they've done over the past 20 years," that kind of stuff. And he has a right-wing following, a very large one. But I don't think he's wedded to it in any way. I think he would go where he saw the ratings and where he saw the best chance to grab power.

LEHRER: You heard the list of adjectives that I read off at the beginning just a moment ago. What list would be on yours -- I mean, what adjectives would be on your list to describe him personally?

Mr. SCHONFELD: Well, you know, he's -- he named his two boats Tenacious and Courageous, and they're the virtues that he values most highly. He doesn't -- I don't think it would matter very much to him if he didn't really win CBS this time. He figures that with tenacity he'll come back and get back in it, something else, another way. He doesn't give up. He is very smart, and he'll keep coming and coming and coming, and I think that I see that as his greatest strength. He believes that will can triumph over intelligence any day in the week.

LEHRER: How smart is he?

Mr. SCHONFELD: He's quick. When we started Cable News Network, he didn't know who Dan Rather was. A year and a half after we were on the air and after I had hired Dan Schorr, he wandered into my office one day and said, "Reese, is Dan Schorr a liberal?" But he knew nothing about news and prided himself on knowing nothing about news, until he got into the business. And yet he's been smart enough in, of course, the past five years to pick up enough of a knowledge to be able to operate a news network fairly satisfactorily.

LEHRER: Do you think this is a smart move that he's doing now?

Mr. SCHONFELD: I see it from his point of view, and I'm reading into his motives, he had nothing to lose. I had heard that in -- he had planned to go after ABC in the fourth quarter of this year. When he saw Cap Cities grab ABC before he got his chance on it, he -- and this is real Turner -- he said, "I'm not going to wait for anybody. Who knows what'll happen to CBS? I'm going to go for them now, and if I lose it won't be any worse than if I wait and somebody else gets them before I get in the ballgame."

LEHRER: And your feeling is, even if he loses this, Ted Turner isn't going to go away; there'll be something else?

Mr. SCHONFELD: Oh no, Ted Turner's not going to go away for a long time.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: The other part of this story is the future of CBS News, one of the leading information sources for millions of Americans. Before Turner appeared on the scene, conservative Republican Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina and an organization called Fairness in Media launched an attempt to buy enough CBS stock to become, as they put it, "Dan Rather's boss." Fairness in Media, which accuses the network of liberal bias, said it will ask its supporters to back Turner's takeover bid. Asked about the independence of CBS News, Turner made this comment today.

Mr. TURNER: We do not intend to make any fundamental changes in the CBS television network. Instead we would seek to improve the quality, objectivity and diversity of CBS programming. I want to make it very clear that Turner Broadcasting is acting on its own and has no connection with any ideological or other group in this transaction.

MacNEIL: At a meeting of stockholders yesterday in Chicago, CBS chairman and chief executive Thomas Wyman saw a threat to the independence of CBS News and therefore a threat to the country.

THOMAS WYMAN, chairman, CBS Inc. [April 17, 1985]: Over the past several months we have faced challenges from several parties who would either oversee or overturn the organization which has provided news and information for 58 years to the American public. We are clear that the integrity and the independence of CBS News are inextricably linked. Those who seek to gain control of CBS in order to gain control of CBS News threaten that independence, that integrity and this country.

MacNEIL: With us now is Fred Friendly, producer of Edward R. Murrow's See It Now series, later president of CBS News. Mr. Friendly is now professor emeritus at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and director of its Media and Society seminars.

Mr. Friendly, is this attempted takeover, as chairman Wyman implied, a threat to the country?

FRED FRIENDLY: I think all hostile takeovers of anything as sensitive as broadcasting news is a danger to the country. I was impressed with Mr. Fuchs' analysis of money. I'm not worried about Senator Helms. He's not going to raise any money like that. I don't think Mr. Turner will. Money follows money, as we heard. Big money is required here. What concerns me is that the broadcast industry, which came into being in radio in the '20s and television in the '50s, was envisioned as something that's in the litigation -- it's in the legislation, as something like a national park or a university. It has become in these 60 years a commodity, like pork bellies, in which people at Wall Street trade in it, because that's where the buck is. That's not the way it's supposed to be. In my last debate with Mr. Paley, chairman of the board, I said to him over a dispute about Vietnam coverage, I said "why do we have to double our profits every four years?"

MacNEIL: CBS chairman.

Mr. FRIENDLY: And he said something that I've never been able to purge from my memory. He said, "That's a good question. I guess the biggest mistake we ever made was going public."

MacNEIL: But they are public now --

Mr. FRIENDLY: That's right.

MacNEIL: -- and they're big deals on Wall Street. How do you -- I mean, should there be any attempt made to slow down or control or interfere with this kind of trading?

Mr. FRIENDLY: I think what's going on now is a big time for an alarm bell. A late warning bell. I don't want CBS to take over CNN, and they don't want to. It'd be just -- almost as bad for that much power to be there. And I certainly don't want Mr. Turner or somebody else to come along hostilely and take over a network. I think that the FCC and the SEC ought to get together and say there's a stop on hostile takeovers of communications companies until we work out a policy. If it's not Mr. Turner it's going to be somebody else.

MacNEIL: What would the grounds be for doing that, to interfere with the commercial trading of broadcasting?

Mr. FRIENDLY: Well, because it isn't first a commercial operation. It was licensed originally -- and you're really talking about stations, talking about five stations that are licensed in the public interest, convenience and necessity. They promised when they got those licenses, and the other 190 other affiliates, to operate in the public interest. That's their first responsibility. The FCC and the Congress has welched on making them keep that promise. In England, where they have a similar system with their commercial networks, as you know -- you worked there -- they take away licenses, they take away franchises from companies because they don't activate their companies in the public interest. That's what we ought to do.

MacNEIL: On the charge by Accuracy in Media, and perhaps somewhat implied by what Mr. Turner said today about wanting to improve the objectivity and diversity of CBS News, how do you -- do they give you anxiety, these charges that CBS is liberally biased?

Mr. FRIENDLY: Dan Rather worked for me. I didn't know his politics then I don't know them now. I don't know Cronkite's. I never knew Murrow. The charges against Murrow were just as heavy. He's honored now 20 years after his death. I think all -- one of the problems we have with newspapers and broadcasting is the multitude of voices which gave birth to the First Amendment is now greatly diminished, because in most cities we have one newspaper, sometimes two -- 95% of the cities have one newspaper; there are only three commercial networks; there's public television, which does a terrific job; and people don't get to read the 15 papers that my father could send me out to buy when I was growing up in New York. There's always going to be criticism; it's healthy. I think CBS is not perfect. They're not totally objective. Nobody is. Neither are you. You try to be fair. They try to be fair. I think commercial television is as fair -- I think sometimes it's so fair that it diminishes its impact. I don't think that's what's wrong with it. I think what's wrong with it is the drive for profit-center news at the expense of the documentary and other serious programming, which has diminished.

MacNEIL: Mr. Friendly, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Finally, the views of conservative writer Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine and a critic of what he sees as a political bias at CBS News.

Mr. Podhoretz, is CBS too fair?

NORMAN PODHORETZ: No, I don't think so. Mr. Friendly may not be able to detect political views in some of the people on the air, but I think millions of other Americans, including this one sitting here, find no difficulty in detecting a political point of view, political perspective, in the language that's used, in the emphases and nuances that are put on the recounting of particular stories. My own feeling is that CBS is probably no better or worse than the other major networks in this regard, although some think that ABC has been changing for the better, from a conservative point of view. But CBS seems to get the lion's share of attention because, I suppose, it's the one whose news programs have the most historical prestige and are most closely and widely watched.

LEHRER: How would you describe the bias of CBS?

Mr. PODHORETZ: Well, most people who charge bias say that it's a matter of liberal ideas, attitudes. I think there's a certain truth in this, but as I read what's been going on in recent years, what you see, particularly in international affairs, is what I would describe as a kind of mindless neutralism in the conception of the Soviet-American conflict, which is the key issue in international affairs in our time. You get the impression -- not just from CBS; I think from most of the major media and the major networks -- that the world is confronted with two equally vicious, two equally aggressive, two equally dangerous superpowers, and the people on the media have appointed themselves as the tribunes or spokesmen for humanity, which is endangered by the antics and carryings on and irrational conflicts of these two powers. And it's in that point of view, which is inherently skewed, and in my opinion also false to the facts, that you see most of the bias in the coverage of international affairs. On domestic affairs there's another problem, which has to do with what Ben Wattenberg, for example, has called the refusal to report good news when the news is good, and the compulsion to see only bad news about the country.

LEHRER: Do you see -- to the business at hand, do you see the Turner takeover attempt as a bad thing for America?

Mr. PODHORETZ: Well, my own feeling is that the question of management is secondary. I suspect if Ted Turner took over CBS or anyone else took over CBS, he'd find himself with 99% of the same personnel. I don't think the issue is one of management policy. I think the issue is one of professional consciousness and the willingness to recognize what the problem is, and the willingness from within the organizations and what you might call the professional culture of the news world, to take steps to rectify a problem which too many of them keep denying exists. And many of them will, you know, scream First Amendment at the first breath of criticism.

LEHRER: What about Mr. Friendly's point that hostile takeovers like this in the broadcasting industry should be prevented by law because it's a dangerous situation?

Mr. PODHORETZ: Well, I don't have a strong view. It doesn't seem to me to be any more dangerous than similar processes in other parts of our society. Whether or not it was so intended in the 1920s, the fact is that news has become a business -- that is a reality. Conceivably we might be better off if we moved in a different direction. But the British, who Mr. Friendly mentioned and whom I agree with him in admiring, seem to be moving in the opposite direction, toward us. They're about to -- there's a big fight going on about allowing commercial advertising on the BBC.So I don't think it's a realistic hope that we can push into a noncommercial direction, and I think the hope --

Mr. FRIENDLY: That's not what I said.

Mr. PODHORETZ: Well, then I misunderstood you. But I think the hope lies in a different direction, which has to do with some effort to reform from within. And the beginning of wisdom is to recognize the reality of the problem and the justice of many of the complaints, which most news people I know are not only reluctant to do, but are almost intransigently unwilling to do.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Mr. Schonfeld, let's go to you first. Do you agree that there's justice in a lot of these complaints of networks like CBS? Mr. Podhoretz says there isn't much to choose between them on this ground, that there is mindless neutralism in reporting the U.S.-Soviet conflict, and an inherently skewed point of view at home?

Mr. SCHONFELD: I think I tend more to agree with Mr. Friendly that the networks are objective to the point of being bland. On almost all their newscasts they devote an equal amount of inattention of 30 or 40 seconds now to all sorts of important stories. They take the quickest and easiest way of saying something, and in doing that they inevitably skew everything they do, but from a point of view of "How can I get it in?" rather than "What am I trying to prove?" or "What point am I trying to make?" So, no, I don't think -- I think that so long as you're trying to do all your news in 30 minutes a night, you're going to get news that looks pretty much like what all three of the networks look now.

MacNEIL: Mr. Podhoretz?

Mr. PODHORETZ: Well, you know, John Maynard Keynes once said that men of affairs, practical men who imagine that they have no ideas, always turn out to be the slaves of the ideas of some defunct economist. And I think the same rule can be applied to many journalists who think they have no ideas or ideological bias or political views. It almost always turns out -- rst of all, there is no such person. But it almost always turns out that the less conscious people are, especially if they're determinedly unconscious in their political views, the more they are manipulated by those views. And I think there's nothing incompatible between the description that we've just heard of the haste in getting it in and so on, and a sometimes even unconscious or semiconscious or half-conscious shaping of the news on the basis of ideas that are imperfectly recognized.

Mr. SCHONFELD: I really object to the whole idea of objective news. The great problem with the word "objective news" -- objectivity is a two-way street. When you say an objective network, you presuppose an objective viewer, and there isn't one objective viewer sitting here in this room. In the old days when there were seven newspapers in the city of New York, each one could choose the paper that --

Mr. FRIENDLY: There were 15 newspapers.

Mr. SCHONFELD: Well, my old days are seven.

MacNEIL: To relate this to the takeover attempt, either Helms' or Turner's, do you think then that it would be good discipline for a network like CBS to be taken over or threatened to be taken over on grounds that they're not objective?

Mr. PODHORETZ: I think that's an excellent question. Because I believe that far from having a chilling effect of a bad kind, some of the libel actions that have been brought and some of these takeover attempts are forcing people who, as I said before, have been intransigently unwilling to face up to the issue, at least to think about whether there might be some merit in these complaints, and to look to their own procedures, the way they present stories, the way stories are edited, and also to their own, as I would call it, culture, professional culture.

MacNEIL: Mr. Friendly?

Mr. FRIENDLY: You know, when Mr. Podhoretz talks about the Soviet Union in broadcasting, it has the ring of 25 years ago. He wants the broadcasters in the news companies to be ideologues like he is, who believe that the Soviet Union aims to destroy us and that life on this planet will be extinguished by them unless we go to war against them. I slightly exaggerate, but that's --

Mr. PODHORETZ: You wildly exaggerate.

Mr. FRIENDLY: But that's what you're really talking about. You don't think that CBS and the other networks are anti-Soviet enough. I don't have, and they don't have -- and I'm not their defenders; they don't need me -- they are as concerned about the Soviet Union and us and life on this little planet as much as you are.

Mr. PODHORETZ: Well --

Mr. FRIENDLY: Let me finish, as I let you finish, Mr. Podhoretz. They do believe that it's worth listening to what is said in the Soviet Union, that we both have enough power to destroy each other, and to simply sit back and say we're not anti-Soviet enough -- which is what I think I heard you say -- is not journalism. The first president, head of CBS News, wrote something very relevant -- I carry it with me for students and my betters. He said, "What news analysts and reporters are entitled to do and should do is to elucidate and illuminate the news out of common knowledge or special knowledge possessed by them or made available to them by this organization or through its sources. They should point out the facts on both sides" -- including the Soviets; that's me adding that. "They should bear in mind that in a democracy it's important that people should not only know, but should understand. And it's the reporter's function to help the listener, the viewer to understand, to weigh and to judge and not do the judging for them." CBS lets people judge.

Mr. PODHORETZ: That is precisely what CBS and the other networks do not do. And I don't think Mr. Friendly would take a good example of what I call a neutralist position if we were talking about Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. The fact is that those of us who believe that the Soviet Union is morally and politically an analogue, equivalent, really, to the Soviet Union [sic] and that the threat of Soviet totalitarianism is on a par with the threat of Nazi totalitarianism -- those of us who believe that do not think that this kind of "objectivity, both sides of the news" conveys the reality to the viewer. On the contrary, we think it conveys a distortion and even a fundamental lie.

MacNEIL: I take your point. We have a little more ground to cover here before we finish, and I'd just like to move on and ask you, Mr. Fuchs, what do you think of Mr. Friendly's belief that because networks owning news organizations, broadcast compani ;rU are spercial and operate in a licensed area, that the FCC or the SEC should move in now and stop all such takeover activity and set new ground rules and regulations?

Mr. FUCHS: Well, the system that we operate under is one of great balance. The balance is economic in its leveler. The consumer every night votes which news organization or which entertainment program he wants to see. So in the first place, the American public chooses what it watches from a great multiplicity of offerings by the Nielsen meter every night. Just the same way we elect a politician. There may be some inefficiency in it, but that's a leveler. The second economic -- related economic leveler is that the advertiser in turn spends money or contributes to public television as individuals, and that also is a leveler. You cannot mount good news or good entertainment programming without sufficient economics. And as it relates to this takeover, Robin, the shareholder will now vote. And Ted Turner actually did say that: the shareholder will now have an opportunity to elect --

MacNEIL: Well, am I hearing you say, "FCC and SEC stay out of it. This is just pure business, an operation like any other"?

Mr. FUCHS: Well, of course, my role is more to comment on what's going on. The FCC has taken the policy that they will neither be a sword nor a shield in these events and allow the economic interests to fight it out, and may the better man win.

MacNEIL: What do you think, Mr. Schonfeld? Do you think that there's a role here, as Fred Friendly thinks, for the FCC to step back in and toughen regulations?

Mr. SCHONFELD: Well, the point -- this takeover would not have been possible five years ago, just because of time. In those days the FCC, which was in more of a regulatory mood, would have insisted on looking over the transfer of each license, would have considered challenges from opponents. If Ted Turner is talking about selling one of the CBS television stations, say KMOX, there would have been so many challenges against that sale from so many groups, that it would have been four or five years, and maybe more, before the sale could have been completed, and this whole offering would have been ludicruous, because it's contingent on things that wouldn't have happened for seven or eight or nine years.

MacNEIL: In other words, it's the mood of deregulation, so to speak, at the FCC, which has made this possible?

Mr. SCHONFELD: Yes. If the FCC -- one reason that broadcast companies were never considered --

MacNEIL: And do you disapprove of that? Do you have a view on that, Mr. Podhoretz?

Mr. SCHONFELD: I disapprove of it, ultimately.

MacNEIL: You'd like to see more regulation. What do you think?

Mr. SCHONFLED: No, I'd like to see the same regulation that existed before.

MacNEIL: Oh, that used to exist. We have just half a minute.

Mr. SCHONFELD: Under the same rules.

MacNEIL: What do you think?

Mr. PODHORETZ: I think it's unrealistic to believe that we can move back or away from the recognition that what we're dealing here with is a commercial enterprise. And I think it's a waste of energy to try. And I even hope that the disciplines of the marketplace might in the end have some salutary effect on the operations of the news organizations.

MacNEIL: Well, Mr. Podhoretz, Mr. Schonfeld, Mr. Friendly, Mr. Fuchs, thank you for joining us. Rape Recantation: The State's View

LEHRER: The Chicago rape story recant is next. Why did the state's attorney's office not believe Cathleen Crowell Webb? The two assistant state's attorneys who were involved in the case are with us for a newsmaker interview to be conducted by Judy Woodruff. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Jim, the attorneys are with us, and before we talk with them, a little background on where the case stands as of this moment. Today the attorney for the man convicted of rape some six years ago, Gary Dotson, said he will tomorrow file an appeal for clemency from Illinois Governor James Thompson. It's the latest development in a baffling case that has left the 28-year-old Dotson still in prison for a rape his victim now says never happened.

[voice-over] The latest act in this drama began three weeks ago when Cathleen Crowell Webbrecanted her story that she had been raped in 1977 when she was 16 years old and living in Chicago. Mrs. Webb, now married and the mother of two, even went on national television to say she had lied about the rape because she was afraid she had become pregnant by a teenage boyfriend. On April 4th a jubilant Gary Dotson was released on bail from prison, where he had already served six years of a 25-to-50-year sentence.

REPORTER: Gary, did you ever think it would come to this? I mean, did you ever have hopes in all those years you were here that something like this might happen?

GARY DOTSON: No, not really. After a while I just gave up.

REPORTER: You felt there was no hope?

Mr. DOTSON: No. I was content to finish off my time.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But Dotson's freedom was short-lived. At a court hearing a week later, Chicago's Circuit Judge Richard Samuels, who originally sentenced Dotson in 1979, said he didn't believe Mrs. Webb's recanted testimony, and he ordered Dotson back to prison. For many, the ruling came as a total shock.

CATHLEEN CROWELL WEBB: I have told the truth. I lied in 1979, and I'm telling the truth now, and that man is innocent.

WOODRUFF: Mrs. Webb has vowed to continue her fight to free Dotson. This week her lawyer said she had passed a lie detector test confirming her new story. We have a chance now to ask why what she said was not believed as we talk with Peggy Frossard and J. Scott Arthur, the two Cook County assistant state's attorneys who successfully challenged Mrs. Webb's story in court last week, and who up until now have not appeared on national television. They join us tonight from Chicago.

Ms. Frossard, you said when you first heard Ms. Webb's recantation that you believed her. Is that right?

PEGGY FROSSARD: That's correct.

WOODRUFF: Why was that?

Ms. FROSSARD: Because as I viewed her on that television show, she struck me as being very straightforward and very open and very candid.

WOODRUFF: Well, if that was the case, then what caused you to change your mind?

Ms. FROSSARD: Probably too many reasons than we have time to discuss this evening, but five areas in particular. I would begin with discussing the way in which she acted on the night that she was raped. Her reluctance to speak to any male police officers, a desire on her part and an indication that she would feel more comfortable speaking with a female police officer, which is very, very usual in rape cases -- that would be number one. Then when she spoke with that police officer, she dug her nails into that police officer's arm as she described in great detail not only what her assailant, the rapist, Gary Dotson, looked like, but also what the car looked like and what his friend in the front passenger seat of that car looked like. In addition to that, as she described what had happened, as she described that two-hour ordeal in that car, at certain points during her description of that night of terror she broke down and cried at certain times. And then on her way to the police station -- excuse me, on her way to the hospital she gave additional information about the description of the man who had attacked her. She also described to her mother the way that she was raped that evening. And I think very compelling in my mind is the fact that her parents sat down with her before she ever testified two years later in a courtroom against Gary Dotson, and said to her, "Cathy, we know that to put yourself through this rape trial and to testify would be extremely traumatic. And if you chose not to do so, we would be behind you 100%," which I believe gave Cathy an excellent out at that time to not go ahead with that testimony and possibly convict an innocent man.

WOODRUFF: But she still went ahead with it.

Ms. FROSSARD: She most certainly did. In addition to that there are several other factors that really, I found extremely compelling, and that to this day have not been answered. The fact that --

WOODRUFF: All right. Let me stop you there and turn to Mr. Arthur, and ask what about you: did you ever believe her recantation?

J. SCOTT ARTHUR: My original reaction was different from Peggy's. Unlike Peggy, who came into this case knowing absolutely nothing about the original trial, about the original rape, I did know something about it. I was working in the same courthouse when the case came in. I was aware of the facts of the case. Similarly, or differently, I never did see Cathy on national television. When I was advised of what she had said on national television on the Today Show, I said to myself wait a minute, this is the case that happened in Homewood, where a young lady was leaving a business late at night, going through a dark parking lot, where she told us how a car that was driving in a circle around a light post came and tried to run her down. Gave incredible details about an attack that then ensued, where individuals dragged her into a car, caused a lot of injuries to her body, destroyed her clothing, raped her, did other almost maniacal things to her -- laughing, taking a jagged piece of glass and scratching letters or nonsensical words on her abdomen. And then --

WOODRUFF: But even so, she's come back eight years later and said that the reason she did this was because she was worried, she was concerned her parents would find out she had had sexual relations with her boyfriend. Why wasn't that believable?

Mr. ARTHUR: If you take that approach, and if you want to start with that as being a fact and being truth, then you can go backwards and you can analyze the case backwards, and say, "Okay, fine, you did not -- you were not raped that night, Cathy; you were not raped July 9th. What about these other items of physical evidence? What about the injuries?" Well, Cathy says, "I did them to myself." "What about your clothing?" "I did that to myself." "What, however, Cathy, about the condition of your clothing, your underclothing?" She went to a hospital within hours, an hour of the time that she was found. She had on her panties, several items of very significant physical evidence. She had a seminal stain that was something like two or three inches by 11 inches in length. It was full of spermatozoa. "Cathy, if what you're telling us is you were in fear of a sexual act with your boyfriend three to seven days earlier, what are you doing wearing these panties on this night of Saturday when you're supposedly concocting a rape?" That makes no sense. A woman in that situation simply wouldn't do that. Those items of physical evidence would not be there.

WOODRUFF: Ms. Frossard, still, isn't it pretty powerful when someone comes back a number of years later and says, "Look, I was lying. This never happened"? Isn't that pretty powerful testimony?

Ms. FROSSARD: What I thought was extremely powerful testimony was the evidence in the testimony that was elicited over the 10 hours of hearing that was conducted in Judge Samuels' courtroom over the last two weeks. I think that there was some very powerful testimony that showed in the American courtroom where the truth-seeking device of cross-examination and direct examination and the rules of evidence apply, that her testimony was simply unworthy of belief.

WOODRUFF: What about the lie detector test that she says bears up what she says?

Ms. FROSSARD: Well, a couple of things on the lie detector test. Lie detector tests historically have not been recognized as scientifically reliable, and that is precisely why they are not used or admissible in evidence in most courtrooms. In addition to that I think that there is certainly a group of people who are very well versed in lie detector tests who indicate that what the lie detector test is not -- what it tests is not whether or not a person is lying, but whether or not a person believes what they are saying at that time is either true or right.

WOODRUFF: Well, let me ask both of you, why is it that a person who is serving and should continue to serve in prison for a crime that the alleged victim says never occurred? I mean, there seems some fundamental -- something fundamentally wrong there, isn't it?

Mr. ARTHUR: Well, the reason is very simply this, that that's not what she has said all along. In fact, in 1977 she said exactly the opposite. She said that this person was responsible for what was a very brutal attack on her. There was evidence to corroborate the fact that she suffered a tremendously brutal attack. There was evidence that corroborated that this person was indeed the person who did it. She said that in '77 to the police, she said it to her mother, she said it to medical people; she went into a courtroom in 1977 and said it to a judge, who determined that there was indeed probable cause to believe what she was saying then.

WOODRUFF: But why then --

Mr. ARTHUR: Well, she then went through a very lengthy jury trial. She said it then. And the point is this: if all you look at is what has been produced in the media over the last few weeks, and you ignore what was presented in a courtroom years and years ago, much closer in time to the actual event, you are not in the same position that Judge Samuels was when he had to balance what indeed he was hearing now with what he heard then.

WOODRUFF: All right. If you're saying you believe what she said in '77 but not now, why in the world would she come back with a story like this if she were lying now? What would be her possible motive?

Mr. ARTHUR: That's a very tough question, and all of us have had trouble dealing with that. We all have some feelings on that, but that would be speculation and we are not in a position of public responsibility to speculate. That could perhaps jeopardize what might be going on in the future.

WOODRUFF: Ms. Frossard, any comment from you on that?

Ms. FROSSARD: I think there are probably as many theories as to why she's coming forward now as there are people, and that really isn't the issue here. The issue here is whether or not she was telling the truth when she testified before Judge Samuels on April 4th of 1985. I would suggest that if you look at that record and if you again look at the record from April 11th, 1985, that testimony, that evidence simply does not stand up when we apply the rules that we've applied in the American courtroom for hundreds of years. It simply does not pass muster. That testimony was -- she was evasive, she was not straightforward, she was contradictory on some very crucial points.

WOODRUFF: Ms. Frossard, I'm afraid we're going to have to let it go at that. But we thank you both, Ms. Frossard and Mr. Arthur, for being with us this evening.

Ms. FROSSARD: You're welcome.

WOODRUFF: Jim?

LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this day. Ted Turner, the Atlanta entrepreneur, launched a hostile takeover of CBS. He said he would make no fundamental changes in the network except to improve the quality, objectivity and diversity of its programming. Wall Street analysts were generally skeptical of Turner's chances for success. And there are reports Republican congressional leaders have crafted a contra aid compromise that would specifically forbid spending the Reagan-requested $14 million for military supplies.

Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.