The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Margaret Warner interviews one of Russia's leading reformers; Terence Smith looks at the new media alliances; Haynes Johnson, Michael Beschloss, Doris Kearns- Goodwin and Michael Kinsley follow with a discussion of their effect on journalism; and finally, Elizabeth Farnsworth explores the rebirth of quiz shows on television. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: U.S. officials said today they're keeping an open mind about a new political alliance in Russia. Acting President Putin agreed yesterday to divide control of parliament with the Communists. In Washington, State Department Spokesman James Rubin said, "there's no cause for alarm."

JAMES RUBIN: The fact that the Communists have a role in the Duma does not mean that Mr. Putin is unable to move forward on his stated support for continued economic reforms and strengthening democratic institutions in Russia. We will have to see. We're going to judge Mr. Putin and the Duma by its actions and not by the maneuvering that created the current structure.

JIM LEHRER: In Moscow, about 100 pro- reform legislators boycotted parliament for a second day. They charged that Putin's alliance could lead to a Communist dictatorship. We'll have more on the Russian political situation right after this News Summary. In Chechnya, Russian forces intensified their drive to capture all of Grozny. Troops fought street by the street, and commanders said they were closing the circle on rebel fighters. Elsewhere, helicopters and artillery pounded rebel strongholds in the southern mountains. In this country, the U.S. Supreme Court today took a new look at the free-speech rights of abortion protesters. It heard arguments over a Colorado law that bars demonstrators from coming close to people entering clinics. The author of the statute is now a congresswoman. She commented after the court session.

REP. DIANA DeGETT: We don't think it's too get a burden to ask the protesters not to stand in front of patients and try to physically and psychologically block them. We still allow all of those protesters to have speech. We just don't allow them to get within 1/16 of an inch of someone's face.

JIM LEHRER: A demonstrator suing to have the law overturned said this:.

JEANNE HILL: I think we're going to have our First Amendment rights back this summer. I think we have a court that respects our First Amendment rights in this country, and I think all of you and everyone in this country should be happy that we have a court that's strong on our foundational rights.

JIM LEHRER: The court is to rule in the case by July. President Clinton today announced a $110 billion health insurance proposal. It would be the biggest expansion in coverage since Medicare was established in 1965. The plan calls for covering more children and parents, among other things. It's one of several proposals Mr. Clinton has made leading up to the State of the Union address next week. The Justice Department announced a record settlement today in a health care fraud case. A national chain of kidney dialysis centers is to pay $486 million in fines. The government accused National Medical Care Incorporated of using Medicare and other programs to pay for hundreds of needless tests. The Massachusetts-based company had no comment today. The Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez went to federal court today. They challenged an order by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. The I.N.S. has ruled the 6-year- old belongs with his father in Cuba. A lawyer for the family said this about the case.

SPENCER EIG: We have asked the federal courts to step into this matter, not to decide the issues in the case, not to take custody away from Elian's father, not to decide whether or not Elian should go back to Cuba, simply to compel the U.S. Government to give Elian a fair hearing and his day in court.

JIM LEHRER: The Pentagon said today it will take weeks to learn why a missile interceptor failed a test last night. The prototype was fired from the Marshall Islands. It was supposed to strike and destroy a mock warhead over the Pacific Ocean. The test was a key element in developing a ground-based missile defense system. President Clinton may decide by summer whether to deploy the system. Former film star Hedy Lamarr was found dead today at her Florida home. Authorities said she apparently died in her sleep. She came to the United States from Austria in the 1930's and became a Hollywood sex symbol. She was billed as the world's most beautiful woman, starring in such films as "Algiers," "Tortilla Flat," and "Samson and Delilah." She was 86 years old. And that's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to a Russian reformer, media alliances and the journalism they produce, plus the rebirth of quiz shows.

FOCUS - INSIDE VIEW

JIM LEHRER: An insider's view of the latest developments in Russia and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: Between the war in Chechnya and upheavals in the Kremlin Russian politics are in turmoil. After five months of pounding the breakaway Chechen republic, Russian troops are now battling their way toward the center of the capital, Grozny, but the Russian army is taking more casualties than earlier in the conflict, and criticism of this once popular war is beginning to surface. In Moscow, political forces are still trying to find their footing with a new parliament and a new president in power. Last month elections to the lower house of parliament, the Duma, diminished the strength of the Communists and increased the seats held by the Reformist Party. Ten days later, President Boris Yeltsin'ssurprise New Year's Eve resignation made Prime Minister Vladimir Putin acting president. Already popular for his aggressive prosecution of the Chechen war, Putin immediately became the favorite to win a full term in the upcoming March 26th presidential election. Putin signaled that he and his new Unity Party would join forces with centrists in the parliament like former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and Former Finance Minister Anatoly Chubais to push economic reform. But yesterday, to the surprise and dismay of reform bashers, Putin struck an alliance with the Communists to reelect Communist legislator Gennady Seleznyov as speaker and to divide up control of the key committees between them. Seleznyov and the Communists have consistently opposed market reforms. The deal drew an angry reaction in the Duma.

YEVGENY PRIMAKOV, Former Prime Minister: (speaking through interpreter) I withdraw my candidacy for speaker. It is profanity, what is happening here.

SERGEI KOVALYOV, Member, Russian Parliament: (speaking through interpreter) All that is happening here resembles an old Soviet slogan, that the KGB is an armed group of the party. Sorry, I cannot participate in this winishness.

MARGARET WARNER: More than 100 centrist lawmakers walked out of the Duma in protest, boycotting the vote for speaker, and when the Duma reconvened today, the reformers stayed away.

MARGARET WARNER: With us now for an insider's view on these developments is former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar; an economist by training and a free market reformer, he was the first man to hold that job after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He's now a leading member of the reform-minded party in the Russian Duma. He's in the United States promoting his book "Days of Defeat and Victory."

Welcome, Mr. Gaidar. Explain to us why you think Vladimir Putin made this deal with the Communists.

YEGOR GAIDAR: Well, it was very clear and very pragmatic, and also from my point a very serious mistake. Seleznyov, the person who was elected the chairman of the Duma...

MARGARET WARNER: The new speaker.

YEGOR GAIDAR: The new speaker. He's a political loser.

MARGARET WARNER: A political loser?

YEGOR GAIDAR: Yes. He fled from his constituencies in St. Petersburg because he was afraid to confront competition with Mr. Stepashin. He lost the elections in Moscow region for governorship. He will be weak and easy to manipulate. And then as a prize for the support of Seleznyov, he begins to hoard the control over a lot of the key candidates of the state Duma. So it was very pragmatic and very cleaver. But also from...

MARGARET WARNER: Wait. Let me just ask this question, though. You say pragmatic. I mean, what would be Putin's thinking? Why would he do this?

YEGOR GAIDAR: Well, because he will get the speaker of the Duma who is easy to work with, because the payment for this support will be the support of the Communists in the division of the key Duma opposition. So from the short-term point of view, clever decision, but also serious mistake because it's easy to make a deal with the Communists about nominating Seleznyov as the speaker, but then government for instance will have to push a new land court with the private property and land. And Communists, I can assure you, will not support this idea. And then the government to have...to ask for the support of a part of exactly those part the Duma which it... Is isolated from the key Duma opposition during the last two days. And it will not be very easy.

MARGARET WARNER: Would you... If you'd been in parliament yesterday, would you havewalked out?

YEGOR GAIDAR: Yes, of course, as our party go.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, all of you reform-minded legislators, even though you're in different parties, you all expressed hopes of working with Putin on reform. I mean, what do you think now? What do you think about his intentions?

YEGOR GAIDAR: Well, I think that in no way he would like to put in danger markets or private property.

MARGARET WARNER: He would like to what?

YEGOR GAIDAR: He would not like to put in danger markets or private property. So the worst scenario with Putin is a scenario status quo: Increased political stability, less danger for the market mechanisms, but absence of a clear for-reform strategy is worst-case scenario. Best-case scenario is that he will be able to implement the program of economic change, which was discussed in Russia during few last years, which was impossible to move through the present parliament, which is probably possible to push with the support of the government through this parliament. And of course our hope is that he will support this program.

MARGARET WARNER: But do you think now that he's made this deal with the Communists it is possible for him still to push the reform plan that they've been opposing all this time?

YEGOR GAIDAR: Of course, because it was the very concrete deal, involved one very concrete matter, connected wholly with the chairman of the Duma. He thinks that... Probably thinks, of course; it's better to ask him. He probably thinks that it's quite another matter of what kind of legislative program he would like to push through Duma. And to some degree it's true.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay, let's turn to the war in Chechnya, and we've read here that the Russian public supports it, liberals like yourself have been supporting it, or at least not speaking out, as a fight against terrorism. But now of course the causality figures are mounting. How long do you think Putin can main political support for this war?

YEGOR GAIDAR: Well, I think for substantial amount of time. You see, Russian public attitude towards events in Chechnya change drastically in August of last year, even before the bombing, during the Dagestan events and invasion from Chechnya to Dagestan territory. Now, from this point, it was strong perception of the major part of the Russian society that it is the duty of the state to defend life and security of Russian citizens. And it hasn't changed basically during last few months.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you and other centrist members of parliament share that feeling and still believe that?

YEGOR GAIDAR: Yes, I think so. The war is terrible thing, and I was strongly opposing the previous Chechen war because then it was first of all the war connected with threat of whether Chechens have a right to form independent states or not. And we discussed this matter. But from my point of view, it's not a matter that should be decided on a battlefield. Now it's another matter. It's a matter of whether the Russian citizens have the right for the protection, have the right that their freedom and their life be protected by their own state. And here the position is quite different, of course. It's the obligation of our state. Of course, those who do think that the war is nice, splendid adventure, that it's some noble adventure, they just do not understand anything about wars. Wars are always terrible, nasty, bloody things, and I would like very much this war to stop as rapidly as it could. I do understand also that the conflict will not be eliminated - we will have long problems like in Lebanon, like in Northern Ireland, but the elimination of a big, well-organized, well- armed regiments, detachments of the terrorists of course should be done.

MARGARET WARNER: That is one of the... President Clinton not only criticized of course the tactics, but he is saying it's bad for Russia, that it is going to be a Vietnam, another Afghanistan, that there is no military solution.

YEGOR GAIDAR: Well, I do agree with this absolutely. There is... It will be bad for Russia and it is bad for Russia. And I as a Russian politician would like to do a lot to avoid it and have tried to do a lot to avoid it. But just imagine, well, attitudes in Russia toward Chechnya War in '94-'96 were exactly like American attitudes toward Vietnam War: Nasty, unnecessary, dirty, lewd, casualties, et cetera. And that's why Russian public opinion pushed the government to stop this war. But let you imagine that Vietnam is not 10,000 kilometers from here, it's here in Texas. And then after you stop the war, you are having invasion in Russian territory-- in American territory. I would assure you that the attitude of the American public opinion would be quite different.

MARGARET WARNER: So what, if any, impact does the criticism from the West, the U.S. and Europe, have on thinking in Moscow on this matter?

YEGOR GAIDAR: On Chechnya, not very serious. I think no position of the west could change seriously attitudes in Moscow toward the fact that organized detachment of Hatab and Musav should be destroyed. Of course, we as Russian public, as Russian politicians, should push our government, our military to care more about human rights of those, about the humanitarian side of the conflict, about the refugees and the problems and about the support of the refuges, and I think if Russian public opinion concentrated on these issues which are absolutely real, it would be much more positive.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Finally, how different do you think the U.S.-Russia relationship would be under Putin than under Yeltsin?

YEGOR GAIDAR: Well, under Yeltsin, our relationship in states were very different at different stages.

MARGARET WARNER: Yes.

YEGOR GAIDAR: I think that with Putin there will be less enthusiastic, less ideological, more pragmatic. I don't like the present trade-- trend in the relationship between Russia and the United States. I think that they are moving in the wrong direction. I hope it will be shot down. I think that Putin, being pragmatic, will not... Would very rapidly understand that the campaign that you have to have a good, working, concrete, efficient relationship with states. I hope that will happen also on the American side after presidential elections.

MARGARET WARNER: But as you know, American policy-makers are trying to figure him out, and they're saying, "here's a guy that was in the KGB. For, what, 15 or 20 years. On the other hand, he was a reformed-minded deputy mayor in St. Petersburg." Which of those is more important?

YEGOR GAIDAR: Well, everything in Russia is complicated. He really was in the KGB for 17 years, in intelligence. He really was working in a rather liberal St. Petersburg city government, and was also associated with a lot of reformers, and his views on the economy are genuine and open. I am quite sure that he will not be bad on economic policy. I don't think that he will be not pragmatic enough, not understand the realities of the modern world. How much the more or less inevitable thinking in the terms of plots will implement his decision-making process, we will see.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well thank you, Mr. Gaidar, for being with us.

YEGOR GAIDAR: Thank you.

FOCUS - MEDIA ALLIANCES

JIM LEHRER: Now, alliances between newspapers, television news divisions, and their internet counterparts. Media correspondent Terence Smith reports.

TERENCE SMITH: More and more news organizations are sharing their products these days. Newspapers are forging alliances with broadcast news divisions, television networks are exchanging video footage, and some of the biggest news operations are cooperating to put their joint efforts on-- where else?-- The internet.

ANNOUNCER: On cable, online.

TERENCE SMITH: Why? Because they all envision the dawning of a new news century, with instant access to news 24 hours a day, real-time video, and most important, worldwide reach.

STEVE COLL: All of us in the general interest newspaper business online right now are trying to build audience, trying to create community, trying to establish our publishing presence.

TERENCE SMITH: Steve Coll is managing editor of the "Washington Post," which recently announced an alliance with MSNBC, which is in itself a joint creation of another alliance, that of software giant Microsoft and the broadcast network NBC.

STEVE COLL: They offer a way to a global audience that is rapid and complete and something that we simply could not build ourselves.

TERENCE SMITH: The "Post," which also owns "Newsweek," the nation's second- largest news magazine, has begun sharing stories and reporters with MSNBC Cable and Internet.

ROXANNE ROBERTS: And then they're going to blow in hot air, which would make it just like any other White House event.

TERENCE SMITH: In return, the "Washington Post" gains access to MSNBC's video, which the post management considers vital to the survival of its own web site.

SPOKESPERSON: Hello, Buffalo!

TOM BEARDEN: As part of the arrangement, "post" stories are featured on msnbc.com, which is by far the most popular news web site on the internet, with an average of a million visitors a day. Another new amalgam, newsweek.msnbc.Com, will be up and running early this year.

TERENCE SMITH: Did you feel under competitive pressure to do this?

STEVE COLL: If you ask the question -- do I think that it's essential that the "Washington Post's" reach online continue to grow and continue to grow rapidly, now and not next year or the year after it; that we are in a very important transition where space is being define and audiences are being built? Absolutely yes.

TERENCE SMITH: For news organizations across the country, the pressure is on to establish an Internet presence before the public's web news habits are firmly entrenched. Surveys show that younger readers, those most prized by advertisers, are less dependent on newspapers and more comfortable with the Internet. While many news organizations offer web sites, few are making money. There will inevitably be a fallout.

TOM WOLZIEN: Somewhere between here and there we are going to wind up with a huge implosion.

TERENCE SMITH: Tom Wolzien is a media analyst for financial investors.

TOM WOLZIEN: The guys that are left standing are going to be the ones that have quality product, that are aggressive in their marketing, and have formed appropriate alliances to assure their long-term survival.

TERENCE SMITH: News online is far more economical than print on paper, saving the costs of paper, printing, and delivery. But as newspapers plunge more deeply into cyberspace, they run the risk of competing with themselves.

TOM WOLZIEN: Newspapers have a real problem in that their readership is getting older, their classified advertising and potentially display advertising is being cannibalized by the web. They have a choice: They can either do nothing and ultimately die, or they can take part in it and perhaps cannibalize themselves to a certain extent, but basically come up with a new economic model over the next decade, and survive.

TERENCE SMITH: News sharing is not new. CBS and the "New York Times" conduct joint polls. CNBC shares news with the "Wall Street Journal." The "Post" has polled jointly with ABC News, and provides reporters for news broadcasts including the NewsHour. But as media ownership becomes more concentrated, the competitive pressure to join forces increases. Merrill Brown is editor-in-chief of MSNBC on the internet.

MERRILL BROWN: These days, it's mandatory that you walk in to a sales call with a national advertiser, and if you can't bring internet-, television-, magazine-like components to the table, you are at a disadvantage against larger integrated media companies.

TERENCE SMITH: On Wall Street, the young TERC's and their customers have come to expect rapid access to information from a variety of sources.

SPOKESPERSON: Where did it close at?

TERENCE SMITH: The popularity of instant business news on cable and the Internet...

SPOKESPERSON: We've got access volume here in the early going...

TERENCE SMITH: ...Is a harbinger of the role the internet is expected to play in the future of news.

SPOKESPERSON: I'd set out a strong buy, but accounting irregularities...

TERENCE SMITH: The "New York Times," which is expected to announced shortly an alliance of its own with ABC and Disney's Go Network, recently acquired a 6% interest in TheStreet.Com, a three-year- old financial news web site.

SPOKESMAN: Not related to the one-day boost in price?

SPOKESMAN: I don't know.

TERENCE SMITH: The venerable "times" and the upstart thestreet.Com established a joint financial newsroom late last year.

DAVE KANSAS: I think it speaks to the sense of intense fear about the future that they are willing to make an alliance like the one they have made with us, and others are trying to do the same thing.

TERENCE SMITH: > Dave Kansas is editor-in- chief of TheStreet.Com.

DAVE KANSAS There is a lot of cultural resistance at the large newspapers to the online revolution. And what you are seeing is the leaders of these organizations throwing more grenades into the newsroom, so to speak.

TERENCE SMITH: The challenge is to meld stories and styles attractive to both the older, general news audience of the "times" and to the younger, technologically savvy readers of "The Street."

JACK LYNCH: Thestreet.Com is very sassy and irreverent, and the "times" is the "times."

TERENCE SMITH: Jack lynch, an assistant business editor at the "times," now heads the joint newsroom.

JACK LYNCH: But we are looking to move aggressively into the internet, and to be a major player there. That means we have to figure out how we want to treat the news in a way that brings more depth to it than just pure wire stories.

DAVE KANSAS: The Internet is a different place, a different medium. They need to learn about that. But we always need to be grounded in the basics of good journalism, and I think that combining the gray lady with the young punk can create some really good journalism, and some excitement online.

TERENCE SMITH: Few argue that these alliances don't make sense from an economic standpoint. But what are the effects on journalism itself? Will these alliances mean less coverage and fewer reporters deployed in the field? And can the news-gathering styles of detail-intensive print and picture-oriented television really work together? Merrill Brown:

MERRILL BROWN: You can't go shooting pictures at the same time you are, you know, chasing a fire truck and trying to get the story down in words. We understand all that. But there are a lot of settings when using these skills together are to both the journalists' benefit and the end users' benefit.

TERENCE SMITH: Last month, three networks-- ABC, CBS, and Fox-- announced yet another kind of alliance in which they'll share video footage for their affiliates. Justifying the arrangement, network executives pointed out that a lot of news video footage is generic. "If it's available to everyone," they argued, "why not join forces and save money in the gathering and distribution of those pictures?"

TOM WOLZIEN: Whether they take the money that is saved and turn it in to do a better job to differentiate their product in their investigative reporting, or whether they just pocket the money and improve the bottom line remains to be seen.

TERENCE SMITH: And as conglomerates cooperate with each other, critics question whether their news operations will be vigorous in covering stories that affect them.

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: It seems to me to be elementary that you try to avoid entanglements like these, and yet these kind of entanglements seem to be the norm now.

TERENCE SMITH: Mark Crispin Miller is the director of the Project on Media Ownership, and a professor at New York University.

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Here you have the leading newspaper in our nation's capital now formally involved in a joint journalistic venture with a news division that is owned by General Electric, which is among other things a major defense contractor, also deals heavily in nuclear power, and has also been a very controversial corporation because of its own practices worldwide. Now, how likely is it that the "Washington Post" will pursue stories about GE as aggressively as they would have if there were no connection there? This is not conspiracy theorizing, this is simply realism.

TERENCE SMITH: Steve Coll of the "Washington Post":

STEVE COLL: It is fully our intent to cover NBC and General Electric and Microsoft and every other party to this agreement just as aggressively, fairly, and completely as we would have, had we not entered into this agreement.

TERENCE SMITH: Merrill Brown says NBC's alliance with Microsoft has not stopped MSNBC from vigorous coverage of its partner.

MERRILL BROWN: Look, conflict of interest in media is as historic as media is. Local newspaper editors made decisions for years because they would either hurt or harm the interests of favored local advertisers. And they failed or succeeded in journalism based on their ability to manage those decisions properly.

TERENCE SMITH: Critics complain that alliances involving newspapers and TV inevitably diminish the natural competition between them.

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Is it possible that in a democracy, the news is too important to be left to the whims of huge corporations, to be left to the vagaries of what we call the market? We have to have this debate, because as things are going now, the news is at risk. And when the news is at risk, democracy is at risk.

TERENCE SMITH: But proponents of these alliances argue that with the internet, there is more room for different points of view.

STEVE COLL: At the same time that this consolidation is occurring, a countervailing trend, which is technology itself-- technology is opening an infinite number of channels, literally infinite on the web. It is making possible inexpensive self-publishing and community publishing to a scale and to an extent that America hasn't witnessed since the penny press. So I don't know how to evaluate the final result in reference to the public interest. I think it is a legitimate question, but I do think that the wind is blowing both ways.

TERENCE SMITH: What seems certain is that the wind will keep blowing in the direction of more alliances and more consolidation.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the journalism produced by the various new media partnerships and mergers, and the return of quiz shows.

FOCUS - NEW AGE JOURNALISM

JIM LEHRER: Are all the media alliances and AOL-Time Warner type mergers ushering in a new era of journalism? We get the views of NewsHour regulars, presidential historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss and journalist and author Haynes Johnson, plus those of Michael Kinsley, editor of the Microsoft-owned on-line magazine Slate.Com. He has been a regular contributor to CNN, as well as the editor of "Harper's" and the "New Republic" magazines.

Michael Kinsley, is the news at risk as a result of all this media coming together?

MICHAEL KINSLEY: Well, the first thing you have to realize, Jim, is there has been a huge explosion, as someone said on that segment before, of new outlets because of the Internet. I mean, MSNBC didn't even exist a few years ago. So this fact that it now has an alliance with the "Washington Post" does not seem to be to be much of a threat.

JIM LEHRER: And do you see that generally, that none of this -- add in AOL, Time Warner to all the things that Terry just reported on, this whole trend that he says is going to continue and all the signs look that way -- is it something that those of us who care, anybody who cares about news should be worried about?

MICHAEL KINSLEY: Well, I guess there are two things potentially to worry about. One is fewer news sources. And as I say, I think that's not something to worry about. A.J. Liebling said that freedom of the press is for those who own one. And now anyone for a few hundred dollars can be his own press lord or her own press lord and have the kind of scope that only a few people had as recently as ten years ago. The other concern is conflicts of interest, which Mark Crispin Miller talked about in your previous segment. And that also seems to me to be a little farfetched. You know, all the things that can corrupt journalist, what his... the company that owns his outlet is doing with another company half owning a third company does not rank very large.

JIM LEHRER: Haynes, how do you see it?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Well, I think he's right about the change, the explosion, everything we've heard here. And there are risks. Let's face it, The bottom line is to serve a large number of people. What we're watching in the news today is news is entertainment, news is spectacle, news is scandal, and the more you have of that, the more you're going to get of the same. You're getting focus groups already in local television telling those stations what it is they want to cover, not because it's maybe news, but because it's a larger spectacle. And I guess those of us, we worry about it. Certainly Michael is correct that this is... We can all have our own little printing press, as Mr. Liebling says. We can own it ourselves. I love Slate that he runs. I'm an old journalist in the old media. Every morning I get up and I plug in and I read Slate and I read Salon, and I think it's terrific stuff in there. But you're seeing the pressures building on how you cover news, what is news, how do you define it, what's really important, what is the public interest? And this is a question that's not new. It's not new. Nor is it going to be solved tonight or next year. But it is important for the country.

JIM LEHRER: What's your state of worry, Michael Beschloss?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, I think one worry is not perhaps that we won't have access to new sources of information, because that's what the Internet does. The glory of the Internet is that here we are with an endless number of web sites, as was said in the piece. You can have a neighborhood kid starting up something for $200 or $300. And traditionally in the history of the Internet, that has been able to compete with "Time" Magazine and the NewsHour On-Line and Slate Magazine, which I should say I read every morning also and enjoy very much.

JIM LEHRER: Are you hearing this?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Right.

MICHAEL KINSLEY: Thanks for the plugs, everybody.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Delighted to serve. But the thing I would worry about is that with these mergers, like the AOL/Time Warner merger, there is in the future the possibility that you might have a situation in which broadband brought information and data into your home and gave a preference to, let's say "Time" magazine or the NewsHour On-Line and made it much tougher to get to that kid's web site in the neighborhood and doesn't keep that level playing field, which has been the glory of the Internet. One of the best things I heard in your interview with Case and Gerry Levin last week, the two new heads of AOL-Time Warner, was that they're going to make a huge effort to make sure that that level playing field is going to be preserved.

JIM LEHRER: Doris, how do you see it?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, what worries me is it's been so muted, the discussion of all this, as if it's not really a big problem. And whether it is or not, we have some evidence from the past that we're not looking at. Even when Time and Warner got together, I'd love to see somebody do a study to see, did "Time" magazine put on its cover more covers that had to do with Warner pictures than they would have before? We have Viacom and CBS. Have people looked into whether that's made a difference? We've had MS And NBC. I'd love to see journalists exercise. This is their trade. This is what they should care about. What's so interesting, as the turn of the century, the last century...

JIM LEHRER: Right. You have to be careful now.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: I know, I know. When we saw all of these mergers taking place, they created Standard Oil and the big railroad connections with Standard Oil and created the big meat packing industries, it was the journalist's heyday because they got very worried about what mattered to democracy and these big trusts, as they called them then, they thought would be a blight in a certain sense of citizen liberty. So they wrote all about it. These were the muckrakers, these were some of the greatest journalists of that century. I worry the journalists today are just sort of telling the story of how these mergers took place. Look at how many articles we saw detailing how they did it over drinks, they went into one room, like a soap opera, as some reporters said. Whereas, what should be studied is what we're talking about now. I wish they were out there as investigators figuring out evidence. Is this good? Will it do conflicts of interest? Will it restrict freedom of information? I bet it will to some degree. If we can figure out how it's done so, maybe we canprotect ourselves in the future when these hearings take place.

JIM LEHRER: Haynes, as an old-fashioned reporter, do you agree with Doris, that this is a story that needs to be reported by the reporters?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Of course it is. We're talking about power. That's the essence of what American life, world life is all about -- huge conglomerate blocks of power, not just the media entertainment, magazines, books, music, the whole range of... Television, newspapers, they're all coming together the same way that the Standard Trust of Rockefeller and the oil in the 1900's. All those concerns we had then, the more power you have, it's naive to suggest that maybe you won't have a self-interest if you own that power and keep it for your profit and not cover the kinds of things that should be covered. I think there are real concerns. We've got to examine the power, of course.

JIM LEHRER: Michel Kinsley, you've had some experience from this. You run a news organization that's run by Microsoft.. .or owned by Microsoft which has been the subject of tremendous amount of news. Have you had problems covering the boss?

MICHAEL KINSLEY: You're going to give me a chance to flatter the boss here, Jim. I've been editor of publications owned by a non-profit organization and by an individual, and now by a large corporation. And there is no doubt in my mind that this is the freest I've ever been. They haven't interfered in the slightest. I can't think of a single episode. And the reason is business. They know that if they're going to be in the media business, they have to develop a reputation for being hands off. And that same logic applies to all these mergers. AOL would be out of their minds to try and bias "Time" Magazine, because -- not because of any high-minded reason, but simply because it would lose its value as a brand. Brand is the great buzz word in sign space -- if it was perceived as biased.

JIM LEHRER: The key word there is perceived. Is there a perception problem here that everybody who is involved in any of these conglomerations and whatever must deal with forthrightly and maybe inside reporting as well as outside reporting must come even stronger into this?

MICHAEL KINSLEY: Well, you know, there's no lack of reporting on the press it seems to me. In fact, there's an explosion of coverage of the media, both by the media themselves and by all these think tanks that are sprouting up at major universities. I don't think there's a chance in the world that there won't be 15 different studies of the effect of the Time Warner-AOL merger on Time's media properties.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, Michael Beschloss, that we are finding out what we need to know, in other words the big we, the big public on all of these things?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: The lucky thing, Jim, is that there couldn't be anything more visible than this. If a Warner Brothers movie that shouldn't be on the cover of "Time" Magazine, is we're all going to see it.

JIM LEHRER: Bells are going to go off.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Absolutely. Everyone will be embarrassed. But the other thing I worry about is that this is probably going to hasten the end of newspapers on paper. We in Washington can buy a copy of the "Washington Post" for 25 cents. You don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on an expensive computer with broadband access to some media company or some part of the Internet. If we don't in the future have that way of cheaply getting the news, then people who can't afford that kind of computer are going to be left on the wrong side of the digital divide. And that raises some questions, too.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Doris, the power issue. Haynes mentioned that, and you did, too. In your worst nightmares, what do you see here that we all should be on guard for?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, I think what I worry about is that we don't have an aroused citizenry that's really worried about these problems in the same way, again, as we did in 1900. And in those days, the politicians took up the cry that individual liberty might be at risk with the trusts. You had people in government talking about it. You had the muckrakers. You had the clergy worrying about what happen when society is one where greed is king and young kids are only learning commercial values rather than artistic values. I think all those things are out there as large concerns. But as I said, by each had a very sedated time now where these big mergers are just complemented because it's part of Wall Street, the excitement of our age. Whatever problems are going to be there, unless citizens start thinking about them, unless, as I said, journalists keep writing about them and keep vigilant, then there will inevitably be conflicts of interest. It's inevitable that it happens. We can people on the straight and narrow if we keep thinking about it. Instead I worry that we're just, you know, exulting in our good economic fortune and not thinking these things through.

JIM LEHRER: Haynes, there's no question that conflicts of interest are inevitable, right?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Of course.

JIM LEHRER: How do you deal with it?

HAYNES JOHNSON: And they always have been. Michael Kinsley is correct. The history of journalism is that way -- conflicts of interest. But this is so large. As an example of what Doris was talking about, we have so many mergers taking place now that we don't even report on some of them. The largest drug manufacturing merger this week didn't make it into the "Washington Post." Steve Coll, if he's listening, it was on page one of the "New York Times." I love the "Washington Post." It's part of my life. But it wasn't there because there's so many of them. It was there today, by the way, a day later. But this is the kind of thing, these blocks. You are going to have... human nature. It's our job, this job, our job, to look at that and examine it. And one hopes that... We're always afraid of the news. I mean, there's no question about it. Journalists have always been afraid of the new. We're afraid of this now.

JIM LEHRER: We'll report it, but we're afraid of it.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Yes, right.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Doris, gentlemen, thank you very much.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Thank you.

MICHAEL KINSLEY: Thanks, Jim.

FINALLY - QUIZ FEVER

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, Elizabeth Farnsworth looks for answers to the quiz show craze.

SPOKESMAN: Now, join us, from New York, for night 35 of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." (Applause)

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And join they do, by the millions, tuning in for the rush that comes from watching someone try to win a million dollars.

SPOKESMAN: Thank you, thank you very much, everybody.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: ABC's "Who Wants to be a Millionaire", hosted by Regis Philbin, set off the current quiz show craze last summer, and the show has been a ratings phenomenon for the network. (Applause) Noting ABC's success, the other major networks quickly followed suit.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to "Greed."

ANNOUNCER: And now, the biggest game show to ever hit prime time, "Winning Lines."

LARRY KING: Let's get started and make television history with tonight's return of "21."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now nearly every night of the week viewers can turn into Fox, CBS, NBC or ABC to watch contestants go for big money. Not since early television have so many game shows aired on prime-time. Michael Davies is executive producer of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire."

MICHAEL DAVIES: You know, it's no surprise that people are interested in this program. You know, everybody said beforehand, "oh, a prime time quiz show? Are you crazy? What do you mean, a quiz show in prime time?" But people forget that in the 1950's, I mean, this is a foundation of American television.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Programs like "21" were standard fare in those days.

SPOKESMAN: And you win. (Applause)

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The show premiered in 1956 and was wildly popular until word got out that a winning contestant, Charles Van Doren, knew the questions ahead of time. The show went off the air in 1958. Critics said viewers' trust in game shows was shattered by the "21" fix. Maybe, but now, 42 years later, "21" is back, joining the lineup of "Millionaire" and the other quiz shows.

SPOKESMAN: And she has just won... $100,000.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: As in the 50's, they're still cheap to produce and bring big profits for their networks. Some of the new shows ask tough questions like the old ones did.

SPOKESMAN: Common to the Sumerians, Babylonians, an Assyrians, what form of temple was built as a pyramidal brick tower with receding tiers? Dave.

DAVE: Ziggurat.

SPOKESMAN: That's correct. Good. Wow.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But in general, the questions on the new shows are easier than in the past.

SPOKESMAN: Which of the following is a type of Mexican hat - soprano, sombrero, espresso ...

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In November, an I.R.S. employee, John Carpenter, won "millionaire's" jackpot answering the question, "which U.S. President appeared on the TV show 'Laugh In'?" Last night, though, Dan Blonsky, an attorney from Miami, going for a million dollars, answered a more old-fashioned kind of question, "what is the distance from the earth to the sun?

DAN BLONSKY: I'm pretty sure it's 93. So I'm going to make that my final answer.

QUESTIONER: Let me repeat this. Is this your final answer?

DAN BLONSKY: This is my final answer.

QUESTIONER: You just won $1 million!

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Nearly 34 million people were watching last night as Blonsky won his pot of gold.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And for more we turn to Ben Stein who is host of Comedy Central's Win Ben Stein's Money, whom we just saw. The show won five daytime Emmys last year. David Bianculli, a TV critic for the New York Daily News and National Public Radio -- he's the author of "Teleliteracy, Taking Television Seriously," and "Dictionary of Teleliteracy." And Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University and founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television there. Ben Stein, why are quiz shows back? What brought you? What inspired you to do one, for example?

BEN STEIN: Well, I was inspired to do it because it was a steady job and it looked like it might help me pay my mortgage.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: That's a good reason.

BEN STEIN: But actually, the reasons they're back are somewhat similar to that, because there's a certain steadiness to the idea that if you answer a question with the right answer, you win money. Precision in answering, knowledge, and money are big factors in human society. I think that's part of it. The second part of it is television today is so slobby, derivative and such a mess that for a show to come on that offers some exactitude-- the order of battle at Trafalgar for example-- that is something that people can sink their teeth into and say, this is real, just like a baseball game is real or a football game is real. And just like a baseball game or football game, boxing match, there's real drama in a game show. Someone wins and someone loses, and it's heartbreaking when people lose. They feel terrible. I can tell you from having dealt with them every day for a long time now. They feel terrible. The winner feels great. There's real exultation, real despair. The drama is real. And also, people like money. This is a basic constant of human life ever since there have been humans and money. People like money. The happiness people feel when they get money, the happiness people feel in the audience when they feel they have a chance to do the same if they're ever on TV, that's real. And I guess also it's the only interactive TV show that's on. The people in the audience feel they're playing along and they're interacting with the show in a way that the Internet has yet to catch up with.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: David Bianculli, do you think those are the considerations, and if so, why didn't it happen sooner if it seems so obvious?

DAVID BIANCULLI: Well, the genre was dead for like, you know, 30, 40 years, and network TV didn't want to touch it because of the old scandal. So they bring it back, and they brought it back with the right show that had already worked in other countries. And the genius to "Millionaire," I think, the added genius, is that in most quiz shows you're rooting for someone versus somebody else. There has to be a loser. In Millionaire, the winner and the loser are the same person. You actually develop a rooting interest because it's one contestant at a time once they get going. And that I think allows for a real sense of identification and connection.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Robert Thompson, do you I have anything to add to all these reasons for the success and the popularity of the shows?

ROBERT THOMPSON: Yeah. I think it was a miracle they didn't think of this sooner. They're cheap. They've worked twice before. They were huge in radio, huge again in the mid-1950's. And we've had a 40-year detox period in which if anybody was tired of them, they certainly had time to get over it. Secondly, there's something to do with the great American dream. You know, one reinvents oneself. One goes from pauper to aristocracy. The difference is here instead of the old notion that Ben Franklin talked about that you did it through a generation of hard work and following the virtues and so forth, here in the 50's you could do it over the course of a couple of weeks. In the case of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, we've bypassed the entire length it takes to achieve the American dream and compressed it into 20 minutes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Go ahead.

BEN STEIN: This is sort of replicating. What's happening on Millionaire and Greed and other shows where the prizes are huge, not like our tiny little prizes, is what's happening in Internet stocks, what's happening in the stock market. Americans don't want to wait years or a generation to get rich anymore. They see everybody else getting rich overnight. TV says, look, you may not get in on the Internet boom, but we're going to get you in on something that will make you rich overnight. And this sort of plays to not only the love of money, but the love of very quick money.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So Ben Stein, you think they do... I mean, these shows really do reflect America at this certain point in our history?

BEN STEIN: Oh, precisely they reflect America at this point in history, and I think the people at the networks are doing all they can to kill the quiz show boom, because some of the latest shows that have just gone on are so poor and move so slowly, but I think if we can get back to the simple basics, ask a question, get the answer, yes, no, money, yes, no, these things could last a very long time.

DAVID BIANCULLI: But the networks aren't doing anything differently with this than they did with the western and they did with the variety show. Once you get an early one that's successful and they realize that there's gold in them thar hills, they all run, they all do inferior versions that the audience finally rejects. There were so many westerns on TV 40 years ago that it almost strangled the form, but when the dust cleared, the old best ones, the Gun Smokes and the Bonanza survived. I think that will happen with this boom, too.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Robert Thompson, what do you think the shows reflect about American culture, especially looking at them in comparison with the quiz shows of the 50's?

ROBERT THOMPSON: Well, there's two major differences between the quiz shows of the 50's and the quiz shows today. Number one, is the pacing. These things are incredibly fast. It's as though the quiz show has been redesigned for the generation that learned to count with these surrealistic ladybugs on Sesame Street -- then with ER and MTV. And secondly is the degree of difficulty. Now, I'm talking here about the primetime shows. It used to be back in the 50's you had to answer complex questions, specific answers, sometimes 14 parts. Now you get it, if you kind of retain some of the arcane knowledge that society has flung up against you. In many ways, these are every little school kid's dream come true. The questions are incredibly simple, you get multiple choice, and on Who Wants to be a Millionaire at least, you're allowed the cheat three times by looking at someone else's paper, calling a friend or whatever. But all of that combines, I think, to another big thing, which is really the biggest story about these new primetime quiz shows, and that is just when we thought we were away from the network era, just when we thought that the kids were off in their room watching their own cable channels and the parents were watching something else, when the era where we all watched the same thing, Lucy having her baby, who shot J.R., whatever, this silly little quiz show and Regis Philbin drag us right back into the 20th century, indeed right back into the 1950's, we've got generations once again gathering around the electronic heart -- little kids, grandmothers, parents, watching the same thing at the same time.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: David Bianculli, the shows that... the network shows have gotten some criticism, haven't they, for being -- including mostly white men, white male host, white men contestants, overwhelmingly?

DAVID BIANCULLI: Yeah. Millionaire specifically, and it is trying to refine its process so that it can get more minorities and women. It's not being exclusionary; it's just sort of the lay of the land how that's worked out to date.

BEN STEIN: On Win Ben Stein's money, I have found generally speaking that we can get people of any ethnic background any age any sex if they're smart and alert, they can beat me. I am endlessly urging the producers to get more nonwhite, more women, more Hispanics. There's... This really has to happen. We have to include more people. As Bill Clinton says... Might say, we have to have game shows that look like America.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Ben Stein, how are you guarding against corruption of the process?

BEN STEIN: It's insane how careful they are in my show. They don't even let me out of my dressing room for most of the day. I'm not allowed to have a phone. I don't have any windows. I have a bodyguard who screens everyone who comes in and out. They're incredibly careful about it. I mean, I think they're excessively careful about it. I think they're doing the same on all the shows. The thing that would kill this goose which is laying the golden egg is if there were a corruption scandal about it. I think everybody's going do be very, very careful.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Robert Thompson, how long is this likely to last?

ROBERT THOMPSON: I think the expiration date on a carton of game show is probably not too far in the future. They're never going to completely go away, but I think there'll be a sense in which the networks will ride this wave until it crashes into the shore, and each time another one of these comes on, it dilutes our interest. Also, we have to remember that unlike a lot of other dramas, once you tire of any one of these programs, there's nothing you can do to fix it. They're so similar. They're so formulaic. And it's what makes them so fun and or so appealing in the beginning, but it's also what is their own downfall. That's where shows like Win Ben Stein's Money, I think, are something completely different. That show could conceivably go on forever. I should also point out that...

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Just briefly, I want to ask both Ben Stein and David Bianculli, Ben Stein first just quickly, how long do you think this phenomenon can last?

BEN STEIN: I think the network boom for Millionaire will last forever -- for Greed forever, and for the others I'm in the sure.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And David Bianculli?

DAVID BIANCULLI: I think with Ben's show, the fact that he's only offering $5,000 makes his show safe from any corruption scandal. So he's okay. I think Millionaire has a free pass for years, but I think the others are going to come and go pretty quickly.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: All right. Well, thank you all three very much.

DAVID BIANCULLI: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday: The State Department said it's keeping an open mind about an alliance between Russia's new leader and Communists; and, the U.S. Supreme Court took a new look at the issue of keeping abortion protesters away from people entering clinics. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.