The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. In the news tonight, President Reagan testified again on the Iran affair to a Presidential board. The White House again denied reports that the U. S. was working out a Lebanon prisoner swap with Israel. Philippines President Aquino said the truce with communist rebels was over, signalling renewed fighting. We'll have the details in our news summary in a moment. Jim? JIM LEHRER: After the news summary, we have a special report from Hodding Carter on press coverage of the Iran contra affair and a look at press credibility problems with former White House spokesman Larry Speakes, political scientist William Schneider and Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times. Then comes a report from Wisconsin about helping students with dyslexia, and we close with an essay about Platoon, the hot Vietnam War movie.News Summary LEHRER: President Reagan told his story to the Tower commission again today. He gave testimony on the Iran contra affair for more than an hour at the White House. He had had an earlier session nearly three weeks ago. The commission was appointed by Mr. Reagan to explore the malfunctions of the National Security Council staff that may have led to the Iranian deal. Former Senator John Tower is the chairman. The other two members are former Senator and Secretary of State Edmund Muskie and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. Commission members and White House spokesmen refused all comment on what was discussed at today's session. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater did defend Mr. Reagan's decision not to order his former aides John Poindexter and Oliver North to also testify before the Tower commission. Chairman Tower had made such a request. Fitzwater said such an order would have deprived Poindexter and North of their rights against self incrimination and would have been illegal. Robin? MacNEIL: The President of Iran, Ali Khamenei, said today that there were no moderates in his country for the United States to deal with. The Reagan administration has said that its arms deals with Iran were an effort to encourage moderate elements who might succeed the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khamenei said in a speech today, ''There are no moderates among officials of our country. '' The speaker of parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, said today that the United States had approached Iran again a few days ago. Rafsanjani claimed that ''The contact gave us a phone number and said, 'You can speak to Mr. Reagan. ' '' Today, the White House denied any contact. Both Iranians were speaking at celebrations of the eighth anniversary of the Islamic revolution. Leaders have called for a show of support for a continuation of Iran's war with Iraq. Another speaker at today's rally was the Ayatollah Khomeini, the aged leader who recently has been rumored to be gravely ill. A day earlier, Khomeini had delivered his first public speech in three months, calling the war against Iraq a divine crusade. LEHRER: There was more talk today about a big prisoners for hostages swap in the Middle East. Shi'ite leader Nabih Berri said his and other Lebanon groups were making lists of Arab prisoners being held by Israel. He said the Arabs would be exchanged for a captured Israeli pilot and three American and one Indian hostage. Other unconfirmed reports in Israel and elsewhere said secret negotiations are aimed at the release of 26 foreign hostages being held in Lebanon, including eight Americans. White House spokesmen in Washington continued to deny the United States had asked Israel or anyone else to negotiate such swaps. The other major story in Lebanon was about a Palestinian refugee camp where thousands of people are reported on the verge of starvation. We have a report from Debbie Thrower of the BBC.

DEBBIE THROWER [voice over]: The convoy of trucks was carrying three tons of rice and flour, but the emergency supplies were turned back when Amal militiamen disagreed over details of a peace plan to end the four months old camp's war. The convoy's journey has been postponed until tomorrow. The supplies are desperately needed at Burj al Brajneh, where 30,000 refugees are so starving, they've resorted to eating cats and dogs. A British surgeon trapped in the Palestinian camp has managed to relay news of conditions there, despite the poor quality of her radio link. Dr. PAULINE CUTTING [on radio]: This camp has now been under siege for more than 15 weeks. During that time, no food has been allowed into the camp. The situation has now become critical, because many have no food at all, and many families have had no food for two weeks. THROWER [voice over]: For some refugees, even a delay of 24 hours will have jeopardized their chances of survival. LEHRER: In Paris, French President Francois Mitterand ordered his government to speed food and other assistance to the camps as quickly as possible. MacNEIL: In the Philippines, President Corazon Aquino declared the truce was over with the communist rebels. But in a speech to the military, she stopped short of ordering a full offensive against the insurgents.

CORAZON AQUINO, president, Philippines: The truce is over. History will decide who is to blame for its end. I know that, for our part, you and I did our best to explore the path of negotiation to the utmost. The truce is over, but all hope of peace is not lost. We shall continue to explore the possibilities of regional and provincial negotiations with the insurgents. MacNEIL: Communist rebels allowed a cease fire to expire last Sunday. Since then, at least 30 persons, mostly civilians, have been killed in clashes between government and rebel troops. LEHRER: Back in this country, Secretary of State Shultz told a House committee today the United States had not met its commitments to the Philippines. He pleaded for more foreign aid money for the Aquino government, and he criticized Congress for recent cuts in foreign assistance.

GEORGE SHULTZ, Secretary of State: Let me be blunt. These Draconian budget reductions have been devastating. They are forcing us to play Russian roulette as we shortchange our various foreign policy interests. If these massive cuts are continued this year, they will directly threaten our ability to exercise effective leadership in the world. LEHRER: Shultz also told the hearing deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative should wait until the United States has a clear and confident idea of where it is going. Also on the nuclear front, the Energy Department said a nuclear weapons test was conducted in the Nevada desert today. A spokesman said it had an explosive force of 20,000 tons of TNT and was conducted deep underground without incident. MacNEIL: In Hollywood, the Oscar candidates were unveiled today. Nominated for Best Picture of 1986 were Platoon, Children of a Lesser God, Hannah and Her Sisters, Room with a View and The Mission. The winners will be announced March 30. And finally in the news, Mikhail Baryshnikov declined the invitation to dance again in the Soviet Union. The famed dancer said the Soviets' refusal to allow the American Ballet Theatre to perform in the Soviet Union was his reason. Baryshnikov is the artistic director of the theatre. He defected to the United States in 1974. The artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet issued the invitation to dance with the Bolshoi in Moscow. LEHRER: And that's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to a major look at the press and the Iran contra affair, to a report on dyslexia, and to and Anne Taylor Fleming essay about Platoon. Watergate Revisited? LEHRER: Today's edition of the Washington Post carried 230 column inches of stories and other material related to the Iran contra affair. The count was 115 inches in the New York Times, 65 in the Los Angeles Times. Some critics say such coverage in these and other newspapers and comparable time on this and other television programs has been excessive overkill and unfair and is adding to what was already a serious credibility problem for the press. It is those questions and that part of the Iran contra story we explore in our first and major focus section tonight. Item one is an extended report by special correspondent Hodding Carter, a journalist, a journalism critic and a former government spokesman.

PATRICK BUCHANAN, White House Communications Director: The unacknowledged truth in this capital city is that the left is enjoying every minute of this affair. We have it on the authority of the editor of the Washington Post, who exulted to a former correspondent for the New York Times that, ''We haven't had this much fun since Watergate. '' You will not bring this President down. HODDING CARTER: At first glance, the Iran contra scandal is Watergate all over again. Reagan loyalists like outgoing White House Communications Director Pat Buchanan claim to see a conspiracy on the liberal left to bring down yet another conservative President. Phrases like, ''What did the President know, and when did he know it?'' are being resurrected. A beleaguered President, an angry White House staff, a press corps and Congress in full bay. It's a tempting analogy. Mr. BUCHANAN: There's a tremendous preoccupation of the national press now with this issue, just as there was with Watergate when the so called scandal matured. There is the tallyho atmosphere. ''We've got the President on the run. Can we bring the President down?'' JACK NELSON, Los Angeles Times: Well, I mean, you know, you'd be lying if you said you didn't enjoy covering it. But it doesn't mean that you want to see the President brought down or anything else. CARTER [voice over]: Jack Nelson, Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. Mr. NELSON: It's not quite as exciting as Watergate to cover, but it's a big story. It's a historic story. And he's a President of the United States that for six years, you know, he's been almost untouchable. The Teflon President, they call him. And all of the sudden, you know, he's beginning to show that maybe his clothes are coming off. It's an important story to cover, and sure, it's exciting. COMMITTEE OFFICIAL: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth -- CARTER [voice over]: The story was so obviously important that Congress quickly launched Watergate style hearings. Republican Senator Bill Cohen, who served on the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate, believes the experience changed the Washington press corps. Sen. WILLIAM COHEN (R), Maine: I think since that time there has been sort of a sentiment that every story has to be investigated like the Washington Post conducted its investigation. So everybody's trying to break a story today. It's a much more aggressive press across the board today as a result. But that carries its own consequences. Now, because the public is aware that this press corps has been energized to look at every single incident as a potential scandal and trying to all, you know, breed their own honored reporters, I think the public has become more skeptical of the role of the press in our society. CARTER [voice over]: Many others agree that Watergate created an attack dog mind set in the media. To the degree that's true, it's largely because the press knows it took too long to recognize the significance of Watergate. Only two young Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, decided from the beginning that the break in at Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel was more than a mere burglary. BOB WOODWARD, Washington Post: Going back to Watergate, Carl Bernstein and I were the local reporters on the police beat. And you have to go back to 1972 to realize that for the White House press secretary to say, ''Gee, it's a second rate burglary,'' and for us to have gone through the evidence and found sophisticated electronic eavesdropping equipment, rubber gloves, hundred dollar bills, very sophisticated photographic equipment, the former chief of security at the Central Intelligence Agency leading the burglary team -- nothing second rate about it. CARTER [voice over]: For months, Woodward and Bernstein were almost alone on the story. Mr. NELSON: The Post early on saw it as the big story. The two guys, Woodward and Bernstein, who were out there knocking on doors. We weren't -- not to the extent that they were. And they learned it before we did that it was something to hide there. WALTER CRONKITE: At first, it was called the Watergate caper. Five men, apparently caught in the act of burglarizing and bugging Democratic headquarters in Washington. CARTER [voice over]: It was a full four months after the June 17 burglary before network television did a major story on Watergate. Mr. CRONKITE: -- escalating finally into charges of a high level campaign of political sabotage and espionage apparently unparalleled in American history.

CARTER [voice over]: Walter Cronkite's report on CBS helped turn Watergate into a national story. Leslie Stahl joined the CBS news bureau in Washington in 1972 and covered Watergate. on camera Has television reacted to this story the same way it reacted to Watergate? LESLIE STAHL, CBS News: No. We're reacting to this story because there was Watergate and out of a concern that reporters in general -- and I'm talking about all of them -- weren't as tough in the beginning with Watergate. A bunch of unknown, young people were the ones who cracked that story -- Woodward and Bernstein -- and really the other reporters at the other news organizations were also the young people. And there's a sense among the veterans, we can't let that happen again. CARTER [voice over]: But in a way, the veterans did let it happen again. This time, it wasn't two young reporters, but a Beirut news magazine that blew open the Iran arms deal. And the rest of the story was handed over to the press by Attorney General Edwin Meese. EDWIN MEESE, Attorney General: Certain monies which were received in the transaction between representatives of Israel and representative of Iran were taken and made available to the forces in Central America which are opposing the Sandinista government there. CARTER [voice over]: And so the Iran contra scandal emerged full blown as a gift to the press from outside sources, though the story was there to be uncovered much earlier. Mr. WOODWARD: I think in a sense the press -- myself very much included, because I'm reporting on the CIA and have been for a number of years -- missed the story. There were all kinds of very, very significant clues out there, and we missed them. At the same time, if you look back, much of it was reported about the secret support system to the contras. Ollie North's name was surfaced a couple of years ago as somebody carrying that out. Mr. NELSON: I don't know how they managed to keep this a secret. The fact is -- that long. The fact is, I was talking to somebody recently who was in the State Department in their anti terrorist section. And he said, ''I don't know. We never thought we could keep it a secret that long. '' They kept it a secret for, you know, over a year. But the fact was that some people were getting pieces of the story prior to the Beirut magazine breaking it. I don't know why it took that long to break it. CARTER: So how was it that a supposedly meaner, tougher, more aggressive White House press corps somehow failed to uncover the biggest story since Watergate before it was handed over to them on a platter? Newsweek Magazine in a recent edition suggested one possible explanation. Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, the key figure in all of this, may have received what could be called protective coverage from reporters who valued him as a source of inside information. Sen. COHEN: Frankly, I think you could look at the press and say, perhaps the press wasn't as aggressive as it should have been in dealing with this issue last year. Because there were press accounts that funding had been directed toward the contras. No one seemed to pay much attention or wanted to, including the Congress. Ms. STAHL: It's always possible for a news organization to break a story like this, and nobody did. And yes, Ollie North and the contras, there were all sorts of footprints not only for reporters, but for Congress and the intelligence committees. It was missed all the way around. CARTER: Why? Ms. STAHL: Well, people have been overlooking a lot with Reagan, generally speaking -- not just this situation, which finally turned into a scandal, but all sorts of things. I don't know why. Part of it has to do with public opinion and the fact that people like Reagan so much that they don't want to be disturbed. Now, why that affects the press is that it affects Congress. And Congress is often a source for these things, because they have such special investigative powers. And they haven't been a source for the press in the whole Reagan administration. They don't want to criticize this beloved man and his great administration. And it's funny how much a President's popularity can affect what the press reports and investigates and doesn't. CARTER [voice over]: Pat Buchanan, who has served both Nixon and Reagan, agrees with Stahl's point. Mr. BUCHANAN: What is missing now that was present then -- in those days, Hodding, it was a real, genuine animus, a real, genuine -- I don't want to use a word as strong as hatred -- but a real, genuine animus on the part of a number of the press toward the President personally that doesn't exist today. REPORTER: What is it about the television coverage of you and these past weeks and months that has so aroused your anger? Pres. RICHARD NIXON: Don't get the impression that you arouse my anger. REPORTER: I have that impression. Pres. NIXON: You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.

Mr. NELSON: Richard Nixon, you know, he always bared his fangs. I mean, you know, everything -- Reagan sort of has contempt for the press in a way, I think, but he always does it with a smile. And so basically speaking, I think the press has liked Ronald Reagan. I don't think that the press does like or did like Richard Nixon that much. CARTER [voice over]: The two stories, Watergate and the Iran contra arms affair, are very different. And that also affects the reporting. Mr. WOODWARD: Watergate was clearly illegal. It was a breaking and entering. It was a whole use of the apparatus of the federal government to screw Richard Nixon's enemies, if you want to summarize it in one line. In the case of Iran, what is the affair that the President is involved in? It is an affair of let's open up a new relationship, let's get the hostages out -- I think purposes, goals, that everyone agrees with. So where's the illegality? No one has precisely surfaced it yet. CARTER [voice over]: Whatever the differences in the story itself and attitudes toward the President, many agree with Jack Nelson's overall assessment of Watergate's effect on press behavior. Mr. NELSON: To some extent, I think it made the press corps cynical. And I think we had some abuses not too long after Watergate. I mean, you know, it's mostly now a very skeptical press. I think we're more aggressive now than we were then. I think that's good. I think the press ought to be aggressive. But I think we're probably more responsible now than we were then. Credible Coverage? MacNEIL: Watergate or no Watergate, how the press is handling the Iran contra affair is becoming an issue. In a recent Times Mirror Gallup poll, 44% of those surveyed said there'd been too much coverage of the story. Nine percent thought there'd been not enough coverage. Some of our own viewer mail here at the News Hour reflects that as well. ''You have spent too much time and energy on Iran gate. This affair is not even worthy of its own name. '' ''The TV news has overdone the digging, analyzing, questioning, interviewing, editorializing and just plain talk, talk, talk. '' ''Enough is enough. Please cease and desist giving us any more of the old hat about Iran which you call news. '' The Times Mirror poll indicated this has affected the credibility of the media. The poll showed that the percentage of Americans who believe what they hear on television has dropped from 83% in June of 1985 to 66% last month. Those who believe what they read in their daily newspapers has fallen from 80% to 63%. Our first reaction tonight comes from Larry Speakes, who's just resigned after six years as Deputy Press Secretary and chief White House spokesman. He's now a vice president of communications at Merrill Lynch. Mr. Speakes, you've been on the receiving end of this story. How do you think the press has covered it so far? LARRY SPEAKES, former White House spokesman: Well, I think the press is doing their job. It's a question of how well they're doing it. I think they have been diligent and perhaps over diligent. I think a lot of times in this news story -- when it broke, of course it deserved the coverage it got. But then during the months of December, early January, the story stretched a little thin, but the news coverage -- percentage of it -- never went down. We've seen networks devote nearly 50% of their time to it over roughly a two or three month period. The newspapers have led it week after week. This is a little bit overblown and somewhat facetious, but I have the impression sometimes that a newspaper said, ''Fellahs, that right hand column is white space. Fill it up with Iran every day. '' MacNEIL: What do you explain -- how do you understand what's going on? You've heard Hodding Carter's report comparing the Watergate situation. Do you think there's a Watergate hangover in the coverage here? Mr. SPEAKES: I think there is a Watergate hangover in a way. You can't compare the two, because the story was presented by an administration -- by a President and his Attorney General -- to the press, as Hodding pointed out. So it's quite different. But I do think there is a hangover. There seems to be in the press corps -- and I've dealt with it for six years -- on any story, any presentation by the government, there's an automatic suspicion that the government is lying. And you have to stand there and disprove it over a period of several minutes or hours or days before you get down to the meat of the story and the policy that's out there that's important to focus on. MacNEIL: The White House appeared to welcome the data in the Times Mirror poll. What was the feeling there when it came out? Mr. SPEAKES: Well, it didn't have a whole lot of impact on us. I think we agreed with it. I think there is a growing feeling in the White House, of course, among the public that there is too much on this. I think the public tuned out of it. The ironic thing about it, though, is, when the story broke, there was heavier coverage of it, obviously, and the public was tuned in. They got a negative impression of what was going on. And then when things began to happen that were a little more aggressive on the part of the administration as far as bringing out the facts, the public was out of it. And so the negative impression lingers. It makes for a very difficult public relations problem, to say the least. MacNEIL: One way you tackled the public relations thing after the -- not you personally, but the White House -- after the Times Mirror poll came out, I wonder what was the purpose of stressing that only 22% of the American public were following the story very closely? Why should that make a difference? Mr. SPEAKES: I think it's just important that the public is making judgements. And they're making judgements based on what they see in the press. But by and large, the majority of the public has tuned out. I think the public has made judgements on this, and the jury's in on the matter, as far as the public. It's going to take a lot of effort on the part of the President and the White House to turn public perceptions around. Look at this for a minute: for ten years, the American people were trained to hate Iran. The Ayatollah was Satan himself. And it was probably the greatest campaign of hate directed toward a country since World War II and the Japanese. And then overnight, they open their newspapers, and there's ''Ronald Reagan has sold arms to the Ayatollah himself. '' So it was too much for the public to absorb in a short period of time -- in fact, in a long period of time. So it's going to take a lot of effort on the part of the White House to turn it around. MacNEIL: Come back to the poll for a moment. You said the majority of the American people have tuned out. We talked to Michael Robinson at Georgetown University, who is the academic adviser to that poll. And he said the White House had misinterpreted the statistics. By concentrating only on the 22% who were watching very closely, you ignored, he said, that a great majority of the people were watching closely. Do you have a -- Mr. SPEAKES: I think what a great majority of the people are seeing is what in the advertising business they refer to as clutter. It's a lot of noise. They get a negative impression, but the details are not soaking in. And particularly those when the President began to take steps -- the Tower commission, the congressional committees, the declining to call executive privilege and sending the cabinet officers to the hill to testify openly before those committees. The public was out of it by then, and those details weren't soaking in. MacNEIL: Okay. We'll come back. Jim? LEHRER: Another perspective now from political scientist William Schneider, a polling analyst and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He joins us tonight from Los Angeles. Mr. Schneider, how would you explain the drop in press credibility since Iran contra? WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, American Enterprise Institute: Well, what you find if you look at that poll carefully is that, while the press has suffered a loss of credibility, so have all the other major institutions in American society -- for instance, Congress, the President, the military, the CIA. What's interesting about that Times Mirror poll is, yes, it shows a loss of press credibility, but at the same time, it shows that the public does not disapprove of the way the press has been covering the affair. By very solid margins -- majorities in almost all cases -- the public felt and said they felt in that poll that the press has been fair, reasonable, professional in its coverage of the story. In other words, my reading is that the press has suffered a loss of credibility, but it's not because of the way they've handled this particular story. I think it has not been unable to escape damage that all institutions have suffered, because the mood of the country is depressed. LEHRER: You don't think there's any relationship at all between the press coverage of Iran contra and that drop in credibility? Mr. SCHNEIDER: I think there's a relationship between the story and the loss of credibility. Basically, Americans once again feel that the leaders of the country, the leaders of our major institutions, aren't doing their job properly. There's a loss of faith, of public trust. And the press hasn't escaped that. There is one constituency that shows up in that poll and in other polls that is genuinely angry at the press and at press coverage. And I believe that's the constituency you're getting a lot of letters from. And those are strong Reagan supporters and people who call themselves very conservative. That's about 18% of the country. They're mad. The rest of the country is upset more by the story than by the press coverage of it. LEHRER: Have they tuned it out? Is that your reading of the polls as well? Mr. SCHNEIDER: No, I don't think they've really tuned it out. I think they're waiting for the next -- for other shoes to drop. Basically, the public was shocked at the specter of the President of the United States selling arms to the Ayatollah, and they made a decision. They docked the President 20 points for doing that. The President finally, in the State of the Union Address, admitted that he had made a mistake. That part of the episode appears to be over. Now we have a much more difficult stage of the investigation where the press and the Congress and the prosecutor are looking into the question whether any crime was committed. Is anyone going to be indictable or even impeachable? That may take months and months. And there, it's going to be a contest between the diligence of the investigation -- whether they can turn up anything -- and the patience of the public in reading these stories day after day and wondering if they really are just going on a fishing expedition or if there's really something to be found there. LEHRER: You think the time is running out for the press on that? Mr. SCHNEIDER: Well, I think it will run out somewhere in the next, I'd say, three or four months. If they haven't really found anything by, say, the end of May, I think that there may well be a reaction against the press, because it doesn't look like they're getting anywhere -- and against Congress as well. LEHRER: How should the press handle that? Should they back off the story? Mr. SCHNEIDER: Absolutely not. Basically, the relationship we have in this country is that the press is the principle check and balance against administration -- Presidential authority. Of course, the Constitution protects freedom of the press. But much more than Congress or the opposition party, the press is the institutional counterweight to Presidential power. When the President wants to float an idea or a program, he worries most not how it's going to appear in Congress and what the opposition is going to do, but what the press is going to do with it. That's why the White House has such an elaborate apparatus for dealing with the press, compared to, say, Congress or the opposition party. That's the press' function. The public likes and appreciates that function, and it basically approves of what the press is doing. LEHRER: But would you agree with what Senator Cohen told Hodding Carter a moment ago on the tape -- that the American public is more skeptical now of what it reads in the newspapers or sees on television, as a result of Watergate, as a result of some people getting carried away, as Jack Nelson said, after kind of a Watergate mentality hit the press. Mr. SCHNEIDER: Well, it wasn't just Watergate. There was also the Vietnam War. And a lot of people would argue that the press had a lot to do with at least bringing the United States finally to see that the Vietnam War was not working, that it was a tragic mistake. Vietnam and Watergate were both, in a way, victories of the press. And I do believe -- I think Leslie Stahl said this -- that they made the press more wary and more aggressive. But as for skepticism, yes, the public is skeptical of the press, the public is skeptical of the President, the public is skeptical of Congress. The public is more skeptical about all of its leaders than it used to be in the past, because we've gone through some very bad experiences in this country. LEHRER: Bill Schneider, thank you. Robin? MacNEIL: Now we go back to Hodding Carter, media critic, former newspaper editor and State Department spokesman, now a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, who made the report we saw earlier. Joining him is Jack Nelson, Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and who was interviewed in that report. Jack Nelson, is the press overplaying it? Is it, as Larry Speakes says, making links that aren't there or looking for areas that aren't really justified? Mr. NELSON: Well, it's not overplaying it. As a matter of fact, I think that Mr. Speakes is wrong when he says that the percentage of our news coverage has continued as the story has sort of ebbed. That's not so at all. If you look at the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, the Washington Post, it has changed, without question. We've given much less coverage to it. However, it's an extremely important story, and it's not about to be over. It's probably going to go on through the rest of this year, and I think you're going to have some very dramatic televised hearings in April. So it hasn't been over covered. MacNEIL: Is the press going overboard on this one? Mr. CARTER: Well, no. They can't go overboard. This story is now right in their laps, and all the pack's in full bay. But the point to this whole story to me is almost lost in my own piece. And that is not so much that the press is now over covering it. It is, as several of the people said, it was not covered at a time it would have taken some diligence and digging to take a string and follow it all the way through. And all the hints were there, as many people said. There are some good reporters who did do it. It just so happens that that famous Washington press corps, as usual, was busy taking its handouts and not following up the tough stories. MacNEIL: How do you respond to that, Jack? Mr. NELSON: Well, I don't think that's exactly right. The fact is that there were bits and pieces of this story that came out. It could be that some people had Colonel North, as Newsweek pointed out, as a source. And so therefore, they didn't drive as hard to look at what Colonel North was doing. On the other hand, the minute we knew we had any information at all concerning this, we went at it full boar. We had as many as 16 people in the Los Angeles Times at the Washington bureau working on this story at one time. We put out an eight page section -- 16,000 words -- last December. And that wasn't over covering it. That was giving the people the full story that we knew up to that point about what's happened. And if you look at what we know now, we know that the President of the United States still apparently doesn't have the full story. And he's called on Congress to give him the full story. Well, that's what we're still trying to do. We're trying to find out what the contradictions are, whether Mr. McFarlane -- Robert McFarlane, the former National Security Adviser -- was telling the truth when he testified under oath that the President did know and did approve the shipment of arms to Iran by Israel back in '85, contrary to what the President himself said, contrary to what Don Regan, the Chief of Staff, testified to. And there are other contradictions -- many of them -- in here, which we're trying to find out. We still don't know where $50 million in funds to the contras through the arms sales and through various other means of money that was solicited by this administration have gone. There are a lot of things that we don't know about it, and I think we'll stay on it full boar until we find out. MacNEIL: Do you agree with Bill Schneider that, in a sense, there's a kind of race against time for the press. They've got to come up with something real, in terms of culpability or something new in the story -- I'm talking to Hodding now, Jack; excuse me a moment -- you know, or really lose credibility. Mr. CARTER: I hope that whether that -- first, no. I don't agree with it. Second, I hope the people sitting in news bureaus and back in the home offices aren't saying to themselves, ''Oh, God. We're in a race for time. If we don't get a big story in the next three months, the American people will turn against us. '' I hope what they're saying is, ''We're going to follow this story as far as it goes, as long as it takes, whatever the reaction. '' One other point I want to say, it is a sad truth that Bill Schneider's wrong about something else, and Leslie's right. You have to have the press keep saying, ''Somebody to give us the story before we'll know it's a story. Congress has got to feed us. Somebody's got to feed us. We're the reflecting mirror of other people's pursuits. '' If that weren't true -- if that weren't true, these little pieces that were out there for everybody to see would have been pursued. It's only when it's announced, ''Ta da, a big story is here,'' by somebody else that suddenly every bureau chief in Washington is saying, ''Don't back off this one. It may be another Watergate. '' But out there when it was really another Watergate, where were the young reporters following it up? They weren't doing it. MacNEIL: Larry Speakes, Bill Schneider says the public feels the Iran story is over -- that the contra thing is only a detail. What do you think about that? Mr. SPEAKES: I think that's probably true. I don't think we have come across any proof that there was a contra connection -- allegations, yes, and suspicions. Money went to a bank account, but did any money get to the contras? I think that's one thing that the press needs to find out. But you know, I want to go back to one of Jack's points about the news and the coverage and the over coverage of it. I think along about December, early January, as I said, the news go awfully thin, but the coverage continued. I remember one day walking out into the briefing room, and I said, ''The Washington Post has a lead story today, and it says thus and so. I have a comment on that: so what?'' And there was not a murmur in the press room. They recognized it as a very thin story, and they didn't follow up on it. MacNEIL: Your comment was, ''So what?'' Mr. SPEAKES: Yeah. Mr. CARTER: It's something that Bob Woodward said that I couldn't use, but he said, ''You understand, we have had major stories that have been dead wrong. '' He said, ''For instance, I ran a story saying the President was totally unassociated, according to the early Senate report -- disassociated from the story. It turns out that wasn't true, but that was a major lead in the Washington Post. '' The fact is, that may be considered in retrospect over coverage. At the time, I think probably the White House, though, appreciated that story which seemed to suggest that the President was totally disassociated. MacNEIL: Do you think, Larry Speakes -- I mean, you came out of the press, and you've been dealing with the press all these years now -- do you think the press should back off this story, because there is some public reaction from some quarter of the public against the way it's covering; the press should listen to what the public's saying? Mr. SPEAKES: Notat all. I think the press should stay with this story. But the press should really work toward balance on this. They should really work toward a professional approach to this story. There is a rush to competition, a rush to meet the competition on this story like none other since Watergate. The Post won the Watergate race. Everybody else is in it, ''Don't let the Post do us in this time. '' MacNEIL: Is that right, Jack Nelson? Mr. NELSON: Well, let me say this: I think that the press is very sensitive to exactly the kind of allegation that Larry Speakes makes. As a matter of fact, let me read you from a memo that Dick Cooper and the Washington bureau, right after this Times Mirror poll came out. He said, ''We should continue our policy of trying hard to avoid overplaying marginal stories, recycling news just to keep a story alive and other well recognized sins. We should also keep working hard to make these stories clear and fair, to show readers why the stories matter, and to give them the extra dimensions that the Times should do. '' And I agree with that. It's true, I think, that some papers get into a competitive heat, and they sometimes will write stories that are a little bit thin, or they will recycle a story. However, I must say that I think there's been very little of it that's been done in this particular case. And I think we're very sensitive to that, because a lot of it was done after Watergate. MacNEIL: Bill Schneider, what do you think about that allegation in this case? Mr. SCHNEIDER: That the press has overplayed the story? MacNEIL: Well, that the press, for competitive reasons, is hunting down little details and just recycling the story every day, just to appear to be covering it. Mr. SCHNEIDER: Well, I think the competition of the press is what keeps it going. It's what makes the press work as well as it does. The fact is, all the broadcast media and newspapers want to get the story. There's widespread feeling in the press and in the public that we don't know nearly as much as we should. And you know, one of the questions that was asked by Los Angeles Times' poll asked the public, ''Do you think that we should try to put the whole story behind us and let the President get on with the business of governing, or should we get to the bottom of it?'' And by about five to three, the public said we should keep digging until we get to the bottom of it. And I think it's the competitive incentive that gets the press to keep digging, and the public likes it that way. MacNEIL: Is the Post Watergate competition among the newspapers and among the networks distorting the coverage of this story, in your view? Mr. CARTER: I don't think the story is being distorted. And I think you have to also understand there's other competition going on which is going to be reflected in the way the press handles this. There are two congressional committees, a clutch of special prosecutors -- I'm being facetious here. But I mean, there are a large number of investigatory agencies out there, all of whom, for their own reasons, are going to be serving up either big chunks or tidbits of what they're doing as they do it. That's inevitable. Which means there's going to be another item to it. I want to say one other thing about this worry about where the press stands. Because everybody keeps saying all institutions have fallen. That's correct. The other point to mention is that the press, in terms of the credibility it enjoys, is still above, at this point, the President and Congress. And that same poll, that famous statistic, doesn't show where -- MacNEIL: The press higher -- Mr. CARTER: Higher than the other two. So I think we ought to stop wringing our hands about that. MacNEIL: It is very much in the White House interest -- I know you don't work for the White House now, but you did through all the crucial months of this -- it is very much in the White House interest, is it not, to have the public get tired of the story and just have it go away into a -- Mr. SPEAKES: Well, I think the White House would certainly rather get to the bottom of it. I think there is a strong belief by the President and at the highest levels in the White House that there's nothing there. It was a mistake. Mistakes were made. But I think when you get down to the bottom of it, the White House strongly believes there's no wrongdoing. And once they get that fact out, then the show's over. MacNEIL: Jack Nelson, how do you respond to that? Mr. NELSON: Well, I respond to it by saying, if there's nothing wrong, why did Colonel North take the Fifth Amendment? Why did Admiral Poindexter take the Fifth Amendment? Why did General Secord take the Fifth Amendment and several other witnesses? And why is it that after over three months now, we still don't have a complete story from the White House on what happened? I think there's plenty there. And I think, you know, when we say the Iran arms contra scandal, I think it's a scandal. MacNEIL: Larry Speakes? Mr. SPEAKES: Well, I think the reason they took the Fifth Amendment was because they hired three good lawyers to tell them to take the Fifth Amendment. And they'll do that until the opportunity comes when they know they're protected from anything that might come up, in order to be able to testify. So I think the White House has definitely understood -- no President has pushed harder. You compare it to Watergate, and you will see quite a difference in the President pushing hard to get the facts out. And that's what they want to do in the White House. MacNEIL: In conclusion, let's pick up the point that Leslie Stahl raised in your interview with her. How does animosity towards or affection for President Reagan play into the way the press is now jumping onto this story? Mr. CARTER: Well, first, there's no question that, being human beings, reporters respond to visceral emotions. Despite professionalism, which says go at a story, you do just like any other human being. You're more inclined to think that a guy who treats you like a scum is scum. And a guy who treats you better, you're going to have a little less eagerness to go at him. But that finally isn't going to determine whether or not the story is pursued -- whether or not Ronald Reagan is or more liked than Richard Nixon. I think, however, that her larger point that there is a widespread feeling out there, ''You should not,'' as Pat Buchanan likes to say, ''bring down this President,'' that that widespread feeling has had its effect, if not on the reporters -- and I doubt that it's had a big effect on reporters -- I think it's had a widespread effect on home offices. And that gets heard. MacNEIL: What do you think finally about that, Bill Schneider? Mr. SCHNEIDER: Well, I think the interesting thing about the Pat Buchanan point of view is that when he called for the President's supporters to start shooting from the upper stories, nobody showed up. There was just no such reaction, because Republicans and Reagan supporters were just as shocked as everyone else. I think the most interesting figure in that whole Times Mirror poll was that they asked people whether they thought reporters were really following the Ben Bradley lead when he said they're really enjoying themselves; they haven't had that much fun since Watergate. Only 17% of the American public thought that the press was enjoying getting President Reagan. MacNEIL: We have to leave it there. Bill Schneider, thank you for joining us, Jack Nelson in Washington, Hodding Carter, Larry Speakes in New York. Alphabet Soup LEHRER: Next, a report on dyslexia, that disability of the brain that causes letters, words and numbers to shuffle around. Our story is about a program in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, that combines old fashioned phonics with some newer techniques to successfully help dyslexic students. The reporter is Carol Larson of public station WHA, Madison.

CAROL LARSON [voice over]: They're smart, but all through school, they couldn't learn to read, to do math or to speak fluently. These students at UW Oshkosh have dyslexia, a baffling visual learning disability that affects 10% to 15% of the general population. ROBERT NASH, teacher of dyslexics: Where is the first line of demarkation going to be? Draw the line of demarkation. LARSON [voice over]: Dyslexics see written language as alphabet soup, with scrambled letters, words and numbers. But this pioneer program at Oshkosh headed by Dr. Robert Nash is having enormous success in teaching severe dyslexics to read after years of failure in a regular school setting. Project Success now draws students nationwide. And Nash says that even though they may come in only marginally literate, most of them have above average intelligence. Mr. NASH: We have students in the program who have spent years in mentally retarded classrooms, because they were so handicapped. So it's really a criminal thing. The individual quite often has more than an average IQ, and they aren't functioning at that level. And so they become frustrated. LARSON [voice over]: Barbara Bliss has been a teacher and counselor for adult dyslexics at the Madison Area Technical College for the past ten years. BARBARA BLISS, teacher of adult dyslexics: Part of the trouble comes in what do you do with them after you've spotted them? And the difference is that these people learn in a different way. And they can not learn the usual sight approach. And as long as they're exposed to that, they fail. And it doesn't matter how many times they go to school or whether they go back to school later on. It's just they've got to be taught in a different way. LARSON [voice over]: Dyslexics can not be taught by the usual methods, because they don't see or write language the way most people do. The students' writing samples show reversed letters, backwards or mirror writing, and scrambled sentences. ELIZABETH MULLIN, dyslexic student [reading]: Our pieces of the heart are here today, gone tomorrow, so art -- heart. PETER GEIST, dyslexic student: Heart. Ms. MULLIN: Heart. Silent E. LARSON [voice over]: Elizabeth Mullin from New York City and Peter Geist from Milwaukee came to Oshkosh to learn to read from Nash and his staff of 25 tutors. Both had rough times getting through school, but were still passed from grade to grade. Though she has a high IQ, Liz was once diagnosed as mentally retarded. Over the years, the frustration and self doubt have taken their emotional toll. Ms. MULLIN: I'm 22 years old, and my reading level's second grade. I can not really read. They passed me through everything. I graduated. And one teacher said, ''Well, you're out of here. Now just get married. You can't read or write. Just get married. '' Mr. GEIST: E A R. Ms. MULLIN: E A R for heart. Mr. GEIST: Heart. I can do the things, but I might not get it like the rest of the class. It's tough to tell a teacher that I can't get it like the rest of the class. Diagnosis took almost 11 years. I was 17 when I finally knew that I could tell people that I was dyslexic or if I was learning disabled or what I could tell them. LARSON [voice over]: Nash uses a multi sensory see it, hear it, write it approach. He also is adamant about good old fashioned phonics -- the 48 individual sounds that combine to make the English language. Mr. NASH: Now, what is the letter we most commonly use to identify that sound? CLASS: I. Mr. NASH: So write that letter, and say its most common sound. CLASS: ''I. '' Mr. NASH: Is that the short sound, the long sound or the schwa sound? CLASS: Short. Mr. NASH: Make the mark, say the sound. CLASS: ''I. '' Mr. NASH: So they're looking at it, obviously, and they're hearing it as they say it, and they're using their finger and their arm and their forearm, their chest muscles. And that's what's done when you efficiently reteach somebody who's dyslexic. You train them -- you train their brain, really -- to take advantage of this sensory input. And so what's the ninth most common way to spell it? CLASS: E I. Mr. NASH: E I. That's right. Good for you. LARSON [voice over]: To increase their social skills and self esteem, Project Success had made social events and individual counseling an integral part of the program for all 80 students. Dr. Nash, a severe dyslexic himself, takes a personal interest in his students, praising and encouraging as they move through a rigorous and demanding course of study. Mr. NASH: I do put pressure on them. I say it's okay to cry, but you can't quit. And you know, I've lost a few. But the majority of them I can keep a hold of long enough to the point where it finally sinks in. Ms. MULLIN: A lot of kids in this group, I have felt that Dr. Nash has helped a lot. And he's the first person in 22 years who could say, ''She can learn how to read. '' And it really feels good. Mr. NASH: And what's the most common way to spell ''d?'' CLASS: D. Mr. NASH: Okay. Write the letter, say the sound. LARSON [voice over]: Project Success' multi sensory phonics approach has been highly successful in teaching even the most severe dyslexics to read and write, but its methods are very specialized. Both Nash and Barbara Bliss worry that trying to teach dyslexics using traditional visual methods won't work and will only produce more frustration and failure. Ms. BLISS: And I guess that's one thing that concerns me about the whole literacy push that we're dealing with now in this new media is the fact that it sounds as though all these illiterate people have to do is to get busy and find a tutor, and they'll learn. And I'm very much afraid that many of them will try and fail again, because the teaching will be the same. Mr. NASH: We must get away from this inefficient bandaid kind of approach. We must deal directly with the remediation. And the most direct remediation is to reteach the sound structure of the language to every living student in the United States of America. We would reduce the so called illiteracy or functional illiteracy rate in the United States down to less than one half of onepercent. It would happen in five years. Ms. BLISS: And it's a joy to watch the adult learn and suddenly realize, ''Oh, if I'd only had this ten years ago, what a difference it would have made. '' CLASS: A T E D. Mr. NASH: Thank you. Beautiful. You're wonderful. You did a good job. Hollywood DispatchesMacNEIL: Finally tonight, we have an essay. As we reported earlier, Oscar nominations were announced today. Platoon, the new movie about Vietnam, garnered eight nominations, including those for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay. Los Angeles writer Anne Taylor Fleming has her own reaction to the film.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Mylai. It is a place we can not forget, even though few of us have any sense of where it is or was on the map. All we knew was that it was some little village somewhere in a place called Vietnam. And we didn't even know that until it no longer existed, until after it had already been burned to the ground and its men, women and children massacred by our own American soldiers. Then it became no longer a place on a map, but a memory -- a memory of our own capacity for flagrant inhumanity. Now, finally, someone has tried to put Mylai back on the map in a movie. That man is Oliver Stone, writer and director of Platoon, which admiring critics are calling the first true film about Vietnam. Forget the Rambos with their revisionist sentimentality. Forget movies like Coming Home, which was certainly more critical of the war but no less sentimental. Forget them all. Now for the first time, critics say, we have the Vietnam War in all its blood and boredom, all its gut wrenching, self accusatory detail, including a very vivid Mylai like incident. And yet, it's big box office, this Platoon, well on its way to becoming the biggest Vietnam War movie ever. Why? Why, with Reagan at their helm and Rambo in their VCRs, are Americans finally eager to see Vietnam unvarnished and relive their own painful participation in it? The answer to that lies in the movie itself, which on viewing is not exactly what's being advertised and praised -- not by quite a long shot. Platoon is the story of the proverbial young innocent sent off to war. Could be any war, any kid wet behind the ears who's off to battle. He learns to handle a rifle and himself, learns to smoke dope and face his own demons as he slogs his way through the jungle of elusive enemies with the other grunts. People start to die, and he sees there's no method to it, no plan. Then, in a frenzy of frustration and rage, he witnesses and quasi participates in his own platoon's Mylai like orgy of murder and torture in a Vietnam village. This is as good as the movie gets. This is its shining moment of truth. But Oliver Stone, himself a Vietnam vet, can not leave it at that. With the guilt, perhaps, of the survivor artiste, he then gives us a comforting good guy bad guy subplot, so we at least have someone to root for in this whole bloody mess. Here's where he takes his turn away from Vietnam right back toward Hollywood, right back toward Rambo. We're given the bad sergeant, who viciously presides over the Mylai incident. And then we're given the good sergeant, who tries to stop him and vows to expose him. So as the war slogs on around them, we have an eerily pleasant distraction in their tension, which ends finally when the bad sergeant meets the good sergeant alone in the jungle and shoots him. All that's left now is for our not so wet behind the ears anymore young soldier to avenge this death, which he does. In his final flourish before going home, he shoots and kills the bad sergeant. Drum rolls all around, right? Just what are we supposed to think, finally, of our hero -- that he is a hero or a murderer, that he rid the world of a Lieutenant Calley or has become one himself? Does war by definition -- did that war -- turn even the sweetest, most well intentioned kid into a killer? That is a question which Oliver Stone refuses to answer. Platoon finally is a maddening hybrid of a movie, part old fashioned blood and guts war movie and part new fashioned morality tale -- Mylai and machismo all wrapped up together in one wildly equivocal package which is no less sentimental about the Vietnam War than any of its predecessors. It is also no less full of the old notion, war is the ultimate male romance. War is the place where men go to learn about themselves and each other. That is the enduring myth Oliver Stone is not ready to let go of. Nor, judging by the huge success of this film, are many of the rest of us. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday. President Reagan gave testimony to the Tower commission for more than an hour. Spokesmen declined to say what was discussed, other than it concerned aspects of the Iran contra affair. And there were more unofficial reports of a multinational deal in the works to free the American hostages in Lebanon. Good night, Robin. MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's the News Hour tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.