The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. In the headlines this Tuesday, four survivors have now been found in the Japanese airliner tragedy. Union Carbide stopped production of the gas that caused the injuries in West Virginia, and four more died as the violence continued in South Africa. Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL: After the news summary on tonight's NewsHour, we focus on two stories. First, an official of Japan Air Lines tells us the latest on the search for survivors and for the cause of history's worst single airliner disaster. Then, a major focus section on the new battle over pornography. We hear from the Reverend Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority, Bob Guccione of Penthouse magazine, Dorchen Leidholdt of Women Against Pornography, and Carol Vance of Feminists Against Censorship.News Summary

MacNEIL: Only four survivors have been found from yesterday's crash of a Japan Air Lines 747 on a heavily wooded mountaintop. The plane carried 524 people, including six Americans. The search for any other possible survivors has been hampered by dense forests and by the widely scattered wreckage. One survivor, a 12-year-old girl, was reportedly found in a tree; another, a woman, inside the crushed wreckage. A piece of wreckage that was a part of the airliner's tail plane was pulled from the sea along its original route. The section of tail fin was brought ashore Tuesday evening, Tokyo time. It was identified as part of the plane that crashed by its size, shape and markings. One aviation specialist theorized that it was torn off the plane by a broken door, which the pilot reported. That could have caused the pilot to loose control of the plane and veer off course and into a steep side of mountains where it crashed. At the scene of the crash, rescue workers were combing carefully through the wreckage, looking for survivors. Only four were found. All of them had been seated in the rear of the plane, and the rescuers said they were sheltered by pieces of the wreckage. They were all seated in the same row, and they were found seriously injured and unable to move by themselves. The scene of the crash is remote and heavily wooded, and it can be reached only by a long walk through rugged terrain. It would have taken hours to get the injured to a hospital that way, so they were airlifted out by helicopters supplied by the Japanese self-defense force after some first aid treatment they received at the scene. By nightfall, about 50 bodies had been found, but most of them have not yet been identified. Twenty-one foreigners were named on the passenger list, including six Americans. In our first focus section after this news summary an official of Japan Air Lines tells us the latest on the search for survivors and what's known about the possible cause of the worst air disaster in history involving a single plane. Jim?

LEHRER: Union Carbide quit making aldacarboxene today. That is the poisonous gas which leaked from the company's plant at Institute, West Virginia, Sunday, injuring 135 people. A Union Carbide spokesman said manufacture of the gas will be suspended at the Institute plant until an investigation is completed. Federal officials, including Environmental Protection Agency [sic] head Lee Thomas visited the plant today. Our report is from Nell McCormack of public station WPBY in Huntington, West Virginia.

NELL McCORMACK, WPBY [voice-over]: After touring Union Carbide's Institute plant today, representatives from the EPA, OSHA and the Centers for Disease Control were cautious in assessing the situation and the company's handling of the leak. But EPA administrator Lee Thomas noted some shortcomings.

LEE THOMAS, Environmental Protection Administration: There needs to be more attention given to the emergency preparedness, the evacuation plans, the actual training of the people who will undertake them, not only plant personnel but off-site personnel. Additionally, there needed to be more of a focus on the specific chemical substances that we should be concerned about as far as acute toxicity is concerned.

Dr. VERNON HOLK, Center for Environmental Health: There are no long-term health effects to any of the chemicals identified that may have been released that were in that tank.

McCORMACK [voice-over]: Residents whose gardens were exposed to the toxic cloud have been advised not to eat vegetables from the gardens until further notice from the Center for Disease Control. Responding to residents' complaints about late notification of the leak, Representative Bob Wise and Senator Robert Byrd said that they would support Superfund legislation which calls for immediate notification of appropriate agencies whenever there is a leak. But area residents still aren't satisfied.

Dr. EDWIN HOFFMANN, West Virginia Citizens Group: I think they've been lying to us and lying to us and lying to us. You know, we were told after Bhopal, "It can't happen here." Well, it's happening here.

LEHRER: That report by Nell McCormack of public station WPBY in Huntington, West Virginia.

The retail sales figures for July were released today by the Commerce Department. They showed what experts labeled a modest 0.4 increase, and followed two consecutive months of decreases. Commerce Secretary Baldrige said it shows the economy is rebounding strongly. Other economists said the increase wasn't enough to indicate that.

MacNEIL: In South Africa the government said today it will continue its basic policy of racial segregation, but will also reform white dominance of the political system. South African President P.W. Botha is expected to call for changes in the system in his speech to Parliament on Thursday. Today, Gerrit Viljoen, the minister who deals with black affairs, says apartheid will endure, but whites will become partners with other races in a new political system. He gave no other details. Violence continued in the black townships in several parts of the country, and the home of Winnie Mandela, wife of the jailed leader of the African National Congress, was damaged by firebombs. Here's a report from James Robbins of the BBC.

JAMES ROBBINS, BBC [voice-over]: The damage to Mrs. Mandela's home is not as extensive as first feared. A bedroom was largely destroyed and a workshop partly burned. The police confirmed that the house was attacked with petrol bombs during the night. Nelson Mandela's wife, Winnie, was not there at the time, staying in Soweto instead, apparently fearing the possibility of such an attack. Although it's not known who attacked the house, increasingly it has been seen by the government and their supporters as a focus for opposition. The most serious violence of the past 24 hours occurred in Duncan, a black township of East London, comparatively quiet until recently. Four people are reported dead here, with dozens of cars strewn across roads in an attempt to set up barricades. A consumer boycott of white shops in East London was first mounted nine days ago, and confrontation, destruction and killing have now overtaken this area, too.

MacNEIL: Also in South Africa, 21 coal miners were killed by an underground explosion. Mine officials blamed it on methane gas.

LEHRER: General Dynamics got back on the good side of its favorite customer today. The Defense Department said the company could again bid on and receive contracts from the U.S. Navy. General Dynamics, the nation's third largest defense contractor, was stripped of that right in May. It was charged with padding expense accounts and other bad business practices by the Pentagon. Today, Assistant Navy Secretary Everett Hyatt said things have changed since then at General Dynamics, and he sees a message for the rest of the defense industry as well.

EVERETT HYATT, Assistant Secretary of the Navy: I hope that the lessons here are far broader than what General Dynamics may have learned. I hope the whole defense industry has learned that we take these bills seriously, we look at them and we don't mind going back in history and reopening, if we're not satisfied that we've had a fair approach to the way bills were submitted.

MacNEIL: West German police are investigating whether terrorists who bombed an American air base last week may have entered by using the ID card of a U.S. soldier they had murdered. The ID card was sent to Reuters news agency in Frankfurt today, with a letter claiming responsibility for the attack last Thursday. A car bomb exploded at a base building in the tightly guarded Rhein-Main U.S. base, killing two people and injuring 20. Two terrorist groups, French Direct Action and the West German Red Army Faction, claimed responsibility. The ID card belonged to Specialist 4th Class Edward Pimental, who was found shot in the head in woods near Wiesbaden. Pimental was a native of Fall River, Massachusetts, and was a missile repairman. He was last seen alive the night before the bombing, in company with a woman and a man at a Wiesbaden disco.

In Lebanon, Israel released another 101 Arab prisoners, the fourth group of mostly Shiite Lebanese returned since the hijacking of the TWA airliner in June. The prisoners arrived at the Lebanese frontier in buses provided by the Red Cross. They wore the blue-and-white warmup suits the Israelis have provided on all these occasions, and they had smiles and waves for the crowd of Shiites who welcomed them. About 230 Shiites remain in an Israeli prison. JAL Flight 123: Looking for a Cause

MacNEIL: First tonight we focus on the Japan Air Lines crash. With only four survivors found, officials fear that 520 died. This is what's known about JAL Flight 123. The 747 left Tokyo for Osaka, an hour's flight away. Fifteen minutes after takeoff, the pilot radioed an emergency distress signal, adding that he was unable to control the aircraft. A few minutes later he radioed that the right rear door was broken. The aircraft then veered sharply north in an effort to return to Tokyo for an emergency landing. Instead, it crashed in the forest near Mount Ogura, 70 miles northwest of Tokyo. Today, a piece of wreckage that was a part of the plane's tail fin was recovered from the sea along the airliner's route. For more on today's developments regarding the crash, we have Morris Simoncelli, manager of public relations in New York for Japan Air Lines.

Mr. Simoncelli, do the searchers have any hope of more survivors being found?

MORRIS SIMONCELLI: Daybreak has come in Japan now, and while they had stopped searching during the dark hours, they, I am sure, have started again in daylight, and they will search until they're absolutely positive that there could be no more survivors.

MacNEIL: Was the fusilage itself, or just pieces of wings and things scattered over the wide area? We've heard some of the pieces are very far from the main crash site.

Mr. SIMONCELLI: It appears that the wreckage, the pieces, are scattered quite far.

MacNEIL: Are there pieces of fusilage large enough to contain passengers in any of those distant sites?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: I think maybe because the hillside, the mountainside is so steep there that it's possible that survivors still could have been thrown further away from the aircraft, and the additional search will decide that.

MacNEIL: There was a report that a 12-year-old girl survivor was found in a tree. Is that right?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: I have not seen actually where they were --

MacNEIL: I see.

Mr. SIMONCELLI: -- removed from.

MacNEIL: Is it also true that those who survived were found for the most part in the tail section of the plane?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: Yes, that is true, in rows 54, 56 and 60, 60 being the last row of the plane.

MacNEIL: I see. Now, on the cause, first of all, can you confirm that the piece of tail plane that was found in the sea was from this airliner? Have they established that it was?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: We are very sure that that piece that was found was from the aircraft.

MacNEIL: I see. You have a photograph of the aircraft here. Can you show us which part of the tail fin was actually found?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: It's called the upper rudder, which is right here, a piece that goes right down -- well, I guess I've drawn it in. That is sort of where it is believed to have come from.

MacNEIL: I see. And if you lose that on an aircraft like this, do you lose control of --

Mr. SIMONCELLI: Certainly. Certainly.

MacNEIL: And if it was lost so early in the flight, it would suggest that the pilot would have found the plane very difficult to control immediately.

Mr. SIMONCELLI: He apparently did have problems very soon after the time when the tailpiece was broken off.

MacNEIL: Now, there was a report which we quoted at the beginning of our news summary of an aviation expert speculating that the broken door that the pilot referred to might have caused the piece of tailplane to break off. Is that possible?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: Speculation is something that we just cannot do at this stage. There will be an extensive investigation made by the accident investigating people, the authorities in Japan, by the Japanese government, no doubt aided by other investigating authorities, including from this country. And they will sift through all of the evidence that they have and, through a full study they will ultimately, we hope, come up with a cause.

MacNEIL: Most of the doors on those big airliners open inwards, do they not?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: That is correct.

MacNEIL: So it would be very difficult for such a door to be broken off to interfere with the tailplane?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: Well, we really don't know at this stage because it's so early on and there have been so many reports, and they all have to be traced down and put in their proper perspective.

MacNEIL: What else can you tell us about what is known about what the pilot said beyond the bits that I've quoted?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: You quoted that he said -- and these are translations, of course -- that the aircraft was broken, which is sort of a pilot's term that there is a problem without really being specific about it. He did request his position. He requested permission to land, all of which he was given. He was, of course, requesting whether he could descend at the outset, which he was given that permission. And apparently he was fighting very hard with the aircraft, and there wasn't too much conversation between him and the various control towers.

MacNEIL: With that piece of the rudder missing, which obviously steers the way -- the direction of the plane --

Mr. SIMONCELLI: That's right.

MacNEIL: Is it possible for a pilot to maintain altitude like that, with --

Mr. SIMONCELLI: There are so many factors involved here. The piece has been found, but until the investigators have gone through the rest of the aircraft and checked various components, they really cann't tell just what other factors might have been involved.

MacNEIL: On the search for survivors, are they looking at remote places from where the fusilage landed? I mean, have you had reports on what they're actually doing?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: Well, the entire area is quite remote. There are a lot of mountains there. It's very jagged. And I'm sure they are looking in every possible place that they think survivors might be.

MacNEIL: Has Japan Air Lines had any other problems with this particular make or this particular version of the 747?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: This is the 747-SR, which means short range. We use it for high-density routes in Japan, domestic routes in Japan. We have 10 of them -- we had 10; we now have nine. We have not had problems with it. It's been a very good airplane for us. We have the largest 747 fleet in the world, of any airline, which we own and operate. We have more on order. We've had very good success with the 747, which is why we keep buying it.

MacNEIL: Have you grounded the other 747 short-range planes to look at them since this?

Mr. SIMONCELLI: We are certainly taking a look at them. For a very short time we're bringing them down and keeping them down and looking at them just to make sure that everything is okay. Of course, we're looking at all different aspects of the operation of the airline.

MacNEIL: Well, Mr. Simoncelli, thank you very much for joining us.

Mr. SIMONCELLI: Thank you for having me.

MacNEIL: Jim?

LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour, the never-ending battle over pornography, with the Reverend Jerry Falwell, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and others. Conflicting Rights

LEHRER: One of the first things Edwin Meese did when becoming attorney general was to launch a new study of pornography, a study to determine if there was a demonstrable cause and effect between dirty books, movies, etc., and dirty crimes. The action gave new life to an argument that never ends and never will. It's the one over what exactly is pornography, what, if anything, should be done about it, and what, if anything, can be done about it without violating the constitutional rights of free speech. We engage that subject in a major way tonight with the Reverend Jerry Falwell, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, Dorchen Leidholdt of women Against Pornography, and Carol Vance of Feminists Against Censorship. First, a set-up report from San Francisco by Cathy McAnaly of public station KQED.

KATHY McANALLY, KQED [voice-over]: There is plenty of money to be made in America on sexually explicit materials. Pornography is an $8-billion-a-year industry. Last year, 40 of all videotape recorder owners bought or rented an X-rated movie. These trends don't please some members of the feminist community, who charge that pornography, which shows women in postures of sexual subjugation, can lead its consumers to commit violent acts against unwilling women and children. Feminist attorney Catharine MacKinnon has testified at many hearings like these across the country, urging local governments to pass ordinances which would allow a woman who claims she's been damaged by pornography to sue the person responsible for the material.

CATHARINE MacKINNON, UCLA Law School: What has happened with the ordinance and its being proposed is that, for the first time, women see in public an articulation of an injury that they were not even able to conceive. The pornography says authoritatively, "This is what you want, this is what you like, this is what a woman is for. And this is protected by theFirst Amendment."

McANALLY [voice-over]: The movement for antipornography laws has been embraced by conservative women as well, who finally found a feminist issue that they can support.

JEAN LAST, conservative: Yes, don't you think it's interesting that the feminists and the traditional types have gotten together on something? We do agree on that. We agree that women are being exploited, children are being exploited, and that we definitely need to have a law that will allow us to do something about that.

McANALLY [voice-over]: The most recent effort to do something about violent pornography on the local level occurred earlier this year in Los Angeles. After nine months of study, that county's Commission on the Status of Women asked the board of supervisors to approve an antipornography ordinance co-authored by Catharine MacKinnon.

Ms. MacKINNON: Well, the ordinance defines pornography as the sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words that also includes a list of elements. Those elements include women presented as taking sexual pleasure in pain, humiliation or rape, being dismembered or tortured, being penetrated by objects or animals, and a number of other concrete elements.

McANALLY [voice-over]: The board rejected most of the proposed antipornography law during a lengthy court battle over the constitutionality. Susan McGrevy is the women's rights attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

SUSAN McGREVY, ACLU: What I would see is an absolute reimposition of essentially right-wing patriarchal values that says that sex is bad, that there is no such thing as sex-positive literature, all right, that sex is not something that we want to encourage in the culture, and a closing down and a reimposition of kind of what I would call the virgin mentality, that women are best when they are virgins. And I'm not sure that that's something that everybody in the culture wants at this point.

McANALLY [voice-over]: What continues to inspire debate over pornography is the question of whether it leads to sexual violence against women. In the past few years new studies have shown a possible link between violent pornography and abusive behavior. Dr. Mimi Silbert conducted a study of violence against street prostitutes in San Francisco. Many of them were victims of rape.

Dr. MIMI SILBERT, Delancey Street Foundation: Of the 193 incidents of rape, 25 of them involved the issue of pornography on the part of the rapist, and what happened is that the rapist, during the course of the rape, brought the subject up either of a specific pornographic movie or of things that he had seen, essentially verbally saying, "I know you like it. I've seen this happen in such-and-such a movie," and escalated in the violence.

McANALLY [voice-over]: At the University of California at Los Angeles, Dr. Neil Malamuth studies sexually violent media and those who watch it.

Dr. NEIL MALAMUTH, UCLA: The aggression against women often suggests that somehow the victim desires to be assaulted and derives some pleasure from it, which is very seldom, if any, at all the case with aggression against men. And we have found that in general people become more accepting, more tolerant of violence against women, and that is not violence that is specifically limited to the kind of violence they saw in the movie, but more general, including wife-battering and aggression dating situations as well as rape.

McANALLY [voice-over]: But for many the crucial question remains, should there be any restraint onthe flow of ideas, even those that most people find offensive?

Ms. McGREVY: People had better wake up, had better realize that there is a serious attack going on on the First Amendment right now, and that if they aren't careful they're going to wake up and find a hole in the middle of their morning newspaper.

LEHRER: That report by Kathy McAnally of KQED-San Francisco. We hear now from the Reverend Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority, who is behind a boycott effort aimed at stores that sell pornographic materials. He joins us tonight from public station WGTV in Atlanta.

Reverend Falwell, what is it that concerns you the most about pornography?

Rev. JERRY FALWELL: Well, Jim, contrary to what someone said a moment ago, as a Christian and, I think, speaking for most Americans, I do not think sex is bad. I'm a husband and a father of three children, and I do believe that sex within marriage is correct and proper and good and healthy. Further, I'm not against art, the display of nude persons in art and all those kinds of things. When I speak of pornography, when I speak of the industry, whether it be Hustler or Penthouse or Playboy or the hardcore, I'm speaking of that literature that does not in any way advance moral values or have any inherent value in it for the betterment of humanity, and that encourages and even incenses activities such as we've heard about a few moments ago. In 1971, for example, then-President Nixon commissioned a panel to investigate the possible effects of pornography upon persons who've committed sex crimes. They went to the prisons and at that time learned that a few more than half of those who were in prison for having committed violent sex crimes, whether it be rape or whatever, did so immediately after an experience with pornography. Now, the First Amendment, as far as I'm concerned, is a ludicrous argument because none of us want to in any way impeach the First Amendment. We're very much in support of the First Amendment. I'm a public speaker, writer and author and so on. I do not think the Framers of the First Amendment had Bob Guccione or Larry Flynt or any of these people, Hugh Hefner, in mind, and for the same reason that we do not make legal -- we make, rather, illegal -- the sale of drugs like heroin, etc., because of the promotion of the general welfare, a constitutional requirement of government, I think that pornography should likewise be eliminated from the American scene to promote the general welfare.

LEHRER: By law you think it should be eliminated?

Rev. FALWELL: I do indeed.

LEHRER: Who would decide what's pornography and what isn't, Reverend Falwell?

Rev. FALWELL: Well, I think again that thinking persons, you know, one of the justices said, "I know what pornography is, although I can't define it. I know it when I see it." Well, I think that without a great deal of effort persons in high places -- and I'm thinking of jurists and I'm thinking about -- I'm talking about democracy and pluralistic leadership. I think that if we were sincere about this problem, if we really wanted to stop the demeaning of the women of this country, the exploiting of human bodies and that kind of thing and stop the incensing of base lust of young people that cause these kinds of sex crimes we could, with great ease, come up with the necessary definitions that would not in any way endanger the First Amendment.

LEHRER: What about your boycott effort? Tell me about that. Who is it aimed at, and what do you want folks to do?

Rev. FALWELL: Well, in the past year, because of the National Federation for Decency and other such organizations -- the PTA, organizations across the country whose political views differ; feminists and Moral Majoritarians, etc., etc.; thousands of churches -- some 6,000 retail stores, like Eckerds Drugs -- Jack Eckerds, the chairman, Albertsons Drugs and Gulf Convenience, or some 6,000 retail stores -- Kroger, Super X -- have removed all of these pornographic magazines from their shelves. The number-one purveyor of pornography in America right now remains to be the Southland Corporation, 7-11, and on Labor Day, Monday, September 2, we'll have thousands of persons in Dallas meeting at Coal Park at 10 a.m. Most of the religious spokesmen of America will be there or have representatives there and will be speaking to the issue, and then we'll march down to Southland Corporation, a quarter of a mile away, and voice our complaint. We've talked with the executives there. They have virtually told us where to go. And all we're simply asking is that 7,500 7-11 stores shoulder their responsibility to their prime customer, the American woman and her children, and stop selling the garbage.

LEHRER: And the kind of magazine as you define as garbage, you're talking about -- what magazines are you talking about?

Rev. FALWELL: Well, there are of course hundreds of them. The leaders -- Mr. Guccione on this program has now the dubious distinction of being probably the king of porn. He's passed up Hugh Hefner, and of course Larry Flynt never caught him. But, you know, most of these gentlemen would say, "Well, we're journalists and we have a lot of news, a lot of information, a lot of literary value." But going to a pornographic magazine to get news and get literary value is like shopping for your groceries at the city dump. It just isn't the place to do it, and I think they do that just to gain respectability. They're starving for it.

LEHRER: We're about to find out what one of them says. Thank you, Reverend Falwell. Robin?

MacNEIL: Yes, next we hear from a man on the front lines in the battle over pornography, but on the other side. He took out this full page ad in newspapers last week, saying in part, "Censorship is the province of Hitlers and Castros and Khomeinis, not Americans." He is Bob Guccione, chairman of Penthouse International, publisher of Penthouse magazine.

First of all, how do you feel about being called the king of porn?

BOB GUCCIONE: Well, I think from the mouth of Jerry Falwell it's perhaps a compliment. I don't hold with the word pornography. I'm not quite sure what they mean by it. I certainly don't classify Penthouse as pornography. It is erotica rather than pornography. There are enough magazines on the American bookstands that actually contain hardcore pornography, the sort that we consider vulgar and would not wish under any circumstances to be identified with. That sort of thing is never published in Penthouse. Penthouse has perhaps the largest single readership of any magazine in the country, barring the TV Guide. And I don't think a magazine as heavily supported by the American public as Penthouse is, and I mean by a broad cross-section of the public. Demographically the people who read Penthouse fall into precisely the same category as those people who read The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. I don't think these people ought to be told that Penthouse is a bad magazine, that it's not equal to their intellect and that it supports something which we all consider subversive in the male-female relationship in our social America.

MacNEIL: What do you think of his planned boycott, which would include your magazine?

Mr. GUCCIONE: I think it's evil because it is a form of censorship which masquerades under another guise. Here is Jerry Falwell on one hand saying that he doesn't believe in censorship, and yet he is promoting censorship by every word and every deed that he does, says and performs. By asking thousands of people to meet and march on a single corporation, and now we're talking about Southland with, I think, something like 9,000 shops across the United States, and asking them, or rather, telling them that if they continue to sell magazines like Penthouse and Playboy that their members, the members of the Moral Majority -- which we all know is a very small minority, but n minority, and therefore appears to be a more important group than it actually is -- that these people will not purchase goods from the 7-11 stores. This kind of boycott, this threat of boycott, is really an act of censorship. However else you paint it, it's an act of censorship. And any man -- excuse me, if I may say so. Any man who starts his discussion by saying that the First Amendment to the Constitution is ludicrous really is not the kind of guy that one can engage in serious argument.

MacNEIL: Do you believe that all forms of sexually titillating material, erotica or going on to sadomasochism and violence and child pornography, should share the protection of the First Amendment?

Mr. GUCCIONE: I think that there is a way to deal with censorship which does not interfere with our fundamental rights. When you're talking about child pornography you're talking about something totally different. When you're talking about literature that promotes violence against women, you're talking about a totally different kind of literature. There is a way of handling that. One could license shops the same way that we license bars around the United States, which may be selling -- and I'm not saying that the sale of liquor is necessarily detrimental; I don't know that. I'm not competent to make that statement. But certainly bars have been licensed because the possibility exists that alcohol could be dangerous. Since this material that we're talking about, this so-called hardcore pornography, could be dangerous, then it should be sold in licensed premises, and the person who holds the license should be made responsible, just as a bartender is, for the material that he sells.

MacNEIL: What do you think, finally --

Mr. GUCCIONE: You cannot stop this from going to the public because if you do you have the same kind of problem that you had with prohibition.

MacNEIL: What do you think of Mr. Falwell's proposal that pornography as defined by him should be eliminated from the American scene by law?

Mr. GUCCIONE: Once again, it's an act of censorship, and I don't think that you can get a woman a little bit pregnant any more than I think that you can be a little bit censorious. Once you have created censorship or the premise for censorship, you have started the ugliest and most malignant ball possible rolling in our society. The effects could be devastating.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Reverend Falwell, he says your boycott is evil.

Rev. FALWELL: Well, I would expect him to say that. He is making millions of dollars selling the garbage he sells, and he would like for his magazine to be a respectable one, and says that it is. But if I were to hold up a copy of Penthouse magazine before this camera right here now and turn to at least one-third of the pages, you would censor me out. You would not allow it to go over PBS because it is vulgar and obscene. Nudity and every kind of vulgar shot that you in the television industry cannot allow to be on your screen. So, I mean, the evidence is in black and white, and of course he feels that what we're doing is evil, because 7-11 sells about 20 of all the pornography sold in this country.

LEHRER: Mr. Guccione?

Mr. GUCCIONE: Yes.

LEHRER: First of all, he's right. We wouldn't allow pictures of your magazine shown on public television. Does that matter at all?

Mr. GUCCIONE: No.

LEHRER: In terms of defining what pornography --

Mr. GUCCIONE: That doesn't matter because it's really not an act of censorship. What you're saying is, if you want to read the content -- you want to look at the content of a magazine like Penthouse, go to where it's sold. You're not advocating that simply because you don't want to show it that no one else in the United States should be entitled to sell it.

LEHRER: He also suggests that your main motivation is that you would lose some money if his boycott is successful. Would you?

Mr. GUCCIONE: Well, I think that's a stupid argument because we're all in business to make money, including Mr. Falwell. I would like to make as much money as Mr. Falwell does. He sells God, fire and brimstone, I sell sex, I sell natural human relationships. I sell the stuff that God gave us, the physical and mental and intellectual stuff that God gave us. I'm not selling his word.

LEHRER: Are you all in the same business, Reverend Falwell?

Rev. FALWELL: Well, I think that we're as far apart as two human beings could be. I happen to -- politically I have a lot of agreement with Bob Guccione. He and I probably vote for the same politicians. We just happen to walk to the crossroads on this matter of morality and pornography and go in opposite directions. I think that pornography and those persons who profit from it are doing more harm to the young people, the children of this country, than any other segment of society, other than perhaps the drug industry, the illegal drug traffic.

LEHRER: Well, tell Bob Guccione so we all can hear exactly what he is doing with Penthouse magazine to do just what you just said.

Rev. FALWELL: Well, the very content of the magazine. I was born and raised not a Christian at all. I was in my second year of college before I heard the gospel and received Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I think I have read most of the magazines, and I'm sure Penthouse existed then, but I have read many of the dirty and vulgar magazines that were out. At that time we had to obtain them almost illegally. When I became a Christian -- and, very frankly, I was 18 years old at the time; I'm grateful to God that I was very young when I became a Christian -- I put that kind of thing away, and in the last 33 years as a preacher of the gospel, it has been my experience in working with young people -- we have 6,000 students at Liberty University and 21,000 members of the church that I pastor and some 25 million Americans on our mailing list who correspond with us, and my experience in trafficking in mass individuals, their sadness, their sorrow, their heartache, the heartbreak, the broken lives because of pornography, I cannot find one redeeming value in it.

LEHRER: Mr. Guccione, that's a serious indictment.

Mr. GUCCIONE: You know, in the early days of Penthouse, when Penthouse was first founded by me in the United Kingdom, and published there for some four years before we came to the United States, on one occasion we published an article by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who is, we all know, is the equivalent of the Pope in the Anglican church. When he was criticized by the British press for writing for Penthouse, his response was, "If I am going to speak forever to the converted I'm not going to get anywhere. I want to speak to people that I feel need to know what I have to say. And if I want to reach an enormous audience, I'm not going to publish in an English newspaper or an English magazine. I'm going to publish in this magazine which reaches so many hundreds of thousands more people than I can get in any other forum." The same thing was said by Bertrand Russell, when Bertrand Russell, who in the early days wrote for Penthouse, was equally accused of writing for a magazine in which he should not in any way be seen to be associated, remarked in precisely the same way. "If I want to reach a really big audience, if I want to get what I have to say across to them, then the best medium to do so is a magazine like Penthouse." And another thing which Mr. Falwell said a little while ago. He talked about the Nixon committee or the Nixon commission on pornography. Now, we all know that we cannot trust any commission or committee created by Nixon. We do know, however, that a similar committee was created by Johnson, who didn't have any brief particularly one way or the other. He wasn't an archconservative in these terms. He simply wanted to find out the truth. This presidential committee was formed, it made its investigation, and its findings were that not only was it not possible to show any correlation between sexual aberration, child abuse, wife-battering, etc., etc., this whole litany of details that we hear from people like Mr. Falwell, as a result of being exposed to pornography. But on the contrary, we find that most of these people who would otherwise have committed antisocial acts in the sexual sense had a release or found a way of releasing themselves through magazines like Penthouse.

LEHRER: Reverend Falwell?

Rev. FALWELL: There was an article in The New York Times two days ago in which a 10-year-old boy raped a 12-year-old girl, and he said "I learned to do it by reading a pornographic magazine." And obviously he had to learn and see the pictures and learn how somewhere. But, by the way, I heard that you voted for Mr. Nixon, so I'm surprised you're condemning him here. But at the same time --

Mr. GUCCIONE: I supported Nixon in the beginning because I supported his policy of law and order, which I believe in, Jerry.

Rev. FALWELL: Okay. That's all right. I know you do, and I want to say this, that, regardless of all the panels and all the commissions, 33 years of experience out here walking with people, praying with people, visiting homes, going into the jails -- I recently led a man to Christ who was on death row. My experience very clearly has been that not one person that I ever met who was helped by exposure to pornography. I have met literally thousands who were injured and damaged.

LEHRER: Gentlemen, thank you. Don't go away. Robin?

MacNEIL: As we saw earlier, pornography and efforts to control it have drawn different responses from politically active women. We hear two of those views now from Dorchen Leidholdt, founding member of the Women Against Pornography, and Carol Vance, of the Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force.

Ms. Leidholdt, in your argument for local ordinances which your organization is supporting, you say women are directly hurt by pornographic material. How are they hurt? Give us some examples of how they're hurt.

DORCHEN LEIDHOLDT: Well, we're hearing from these examples more and more. I think what's happening now with the abuse of women through pornography, we're very much in the same place that we were perhaps 10 years ago with rape, maybe seven years ago with wife-battery. Within the last three years since the introduction of the civil rights antipornography ordinance, scores upon scores of women have spoken out about their abuse through pornography, and it ranges from women who were introduced into prostitution by pimps using pornography. He used the pornography to show them what to do, to force them to pose for pornography. One such woman testified recently before the U.S. Attorney General's commission on pornography. Another woman who was forced into child pornography testified; later she ended up posing for pornography as an adult. A woman whose husband used pornography compulsively, addictively; he began to bring it into the house constantly. She couldn't get it out of the house. He ended up forcing her to do the things that he was seeing in the magazines. Later on he forced their two daughters to do the same things. This woman and both of the two girls testified as well. So what we're finding is, first of all, pornography is a practice of sexual abuse, that real women are being abused in the sex industry to make these materials, that these materials are then used against a second line of victims, on women and children throughout the country, and as it stands now there's nothing that we can do legally to get any kind of justice when we are hurt in these ways. And the civil rights antipornography ordinance is a way of empowering victims, primarily women and children, to do something who were injured as a result of pornography.

MacNEIL: Ms. Vance, do you believe that women are not hurt by pornography?

CAROL VANCE: I think women are hurt by sexism in all media, and I think feminists are right to critique that no matter where it occurs. But I think the zeroing in on pornography as if it is the central cause of women's oppression is very misguided. I think many of the abuses, you know, Dorchen has mentioned, it is already illegal to coerce people, it is already a felony to abuse them; marital rape is illegal in many states, as it should be; it should be in all. I think as feminists we object to male abuse of power and male dominance, but to locate this in sexually explicit material I think is very mistaken.

MacNEIL: How do you respond to that?

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: Well, what we're looking at is we're looking at an $8-billion-a-year industry that makes more than the film and record industries combined, that basically functions as sex education for the men and boys of this country. It has a tremendous impact on their attitudes towards women, on the way men and boys treat women. It's a practice of sex discrimination, and --

MacNEIL: Could I stop you there and ask you, how do you define pornography? What would you have ordinances against or ordinances that would permit women whom you see as victims to challenge under the -- in the way you describe?

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: Well, I'll offer a legal definition, the same definition that the civil rights antipornography ordinance offers -- the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words that also includes a number of elements, ranging from dehumanizing women as sex objects to raping, mutilating, battering women. That accurately describes pornography. That's the material we're referring to.

MacNEIL: Does some of that stretch as far as Mr. Guccione's magazine?

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: Oh, absolutely.I think that Mr. Guccione's decidedly a pornographer and his material is very characteristic of pornography. It ranges from dehumanizing women as pets in his centerfolds and the pictures that accompany that. If you think about what it means to think about a woman as a pet, as simply a sexual plaything, as not an equal human being at all. Two pictures in Mr. Guccione's magazine of women being strung up from trees, bound with ropes like sides of beef, pictures of adult women dressed up as little girls with child's -- surrounded by child's toys, a cartoon of a man holding a gun to a woman's head as he penetrates her; the caption reads, "You don't have to worry about getting pregnant. I've taken every precaution." Mr. Guccione's magazine is filled with violent, sadomasochistic material. It dehumanizes women. That's what we're talking about.

MacNEIL: We'll give you an opportunity to respond in a moment; just to keep this on the feminist argument. Do you agree with this definition of pornography? Or do you agee that the materials she's describing are pornographic?

Ms. VANCE: All right, number one, I think we use this word pornography at our own peril. We each use it believing we mean ( he samof schools. It includes gay and lesbian literature. It would include a great deal of recent feminist art and literature as well. That is not what you mean when you say pornography. And I think you probably mean yet another thing. So I think it is critical that we instead use a term that is sexually explicit pictures or literature and then try to describe what we're really looking at. The chief point is the perception of sexually explicit literature is very subjective. When we look at it we draw on a personal experience, our history --

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: I'd like to respond to that very quickly. I mean, the root of the word pornography means writings about female sexual slaves. That's what pornography is. But right now women have absolutely no legal recourse. When we're coerced into performing for pornography there's nothing that we can do to get at that material. Women can be filmed or photographed in the course of a rape. Once that rape gets out there it goes onto the marketplace and it's protected speech. There's nothing we can do about that now.

MacNEIL: What would be the effect, in the view of your organization, of instituting these local ordinances around the country?

Ms. VANCE: Well, I think it's important to understand how these ordinances would work. Individuals could bring complaints to affirmative action boards or civil court judges, depending on the way the locality worked. Under the law there are four causes at action. One is that pornography was involved in the commission of a rape, and that would have to be directly, causally proved, which is next to impossible to do. Secondly, coercing someone into pornographic performance. I think, number one, coercion is already criminal and, two, I think we're ignoring for the moment that some women choose to engage in pornographic modeling and pictures, and that's a choice, the way women make other choices. Thirdly, forcing pornography on someone, perhaps in sexual harassment at a workplace, that is already covered under existing sexual harassment law. So to me the main clause of the law, the main cause of action, is the fourth, the trafficking provision in which an individual could sue for damages and the removal of the material in question by injunction from public view.

MacNEIL: You don't approve of that?

Ms. VANCE: No, I don't. I think it's called censorship whether it's done prior to publication or after publication. I think also that the possibility of individuals filing an endless series of civil suits against not just the producers of the sexually explicit material but the actors in it, the distributors, the drugstores who sell it, the bookstores who sell it, the art galleries who hang it, creates a very chilling effect on the production of a great deal of culture.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: Well, what we're finding is women call us, women write us, they tell us about abuse in which pornography was centrally involved, and the causal link is sometimes totally undeniable. For example, last year two little boys, ages nine and 11, raped a baby girl, first with a coathanger, then with pencils, and they murdered her. When the investigators asked the children where they got those ideas, they led them to their parents' pornography magazines. The causality is so clear. Very often rapists use pornography as handbooks or refer to the pornography in the course of the rape --

MacNEIL: Which is your chief concern? The idea that pornography leads directly to violence against women in one form or another, or that it keeps women second-class citizens, to quote one of the other members of your group?

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: I think the two are inseparable. What pornography does is it makes every woman the actual or potential victim of sexual violence. That is a kind of discrimination -- that has a huge impact on how we function in this society. It functions as a kind of terrorism. It keeps us silent. It effectively censors us. It keeps us out of participation in all kinds of public life. So I think that the two, discrimination and violence against women, cannot be separated.

MacNEIL: Mr. Guccione, does pornography as defined by Ms. Leidholdt hurt women?

Mr. GUCCIONE: I don't understand her definition. So far we have not had a cogent definition of what pornography is.

MacNEIL: She said, among other things, at one end of the spectrum --

Mr. GUCCIONE: That which demeans women is a totally subjective affair, and what demeans women in her opinion may not demean women in my opinion or yours or someone else's. Let me just answer by quoting two sentences from a former head of the National Organization of Women. She was the national president for, I think, three years. Her name was Karen DeCrowe. She was hired by the Knight-Riddley group of newspapers to do a hatchet job on the Vanessa Williams issue of Penthouse. She read the magazine; she went on to say, "I couldn't do what I was asked to do," and these are her reasons. And, as I say, they're only two sentences. She said, "On the September issue I could find no put down of women, no suggestion that women were asked to be exploited, hurt, oppressed, or even asked to cook dinner. There is no suggestion that women be forced to have sex against their will. There is no hint that children are the sole responsibility of women. It contains one article urging that fathers take equal care of their children during marriage or after divorce. There is no suggestion that men are intellectually superior." She says, "Penthouse, sex yes. Sexist, no."

MacNEIL: Ms. Leidholdt?

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: Well, I think what Penthouse did to Vanessa Williams is a classic example of subordination, and the subordination of women is the key phrase in our definition of pornography. What Penthouse --

MacNEIL: In case anybody's forgotten, Ms. Williams was the former Miss America who resigned her throne or her crown after the pictures appeared in Penthouse.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: Yes, against Vanessa Williams' will, without her consent --

Mr. GUCCIONE: That's not true.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: -- over her objection --

Mr. GUCCIONE: Absolutely untrue.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: -- over her objections Penthouse published a whole spate of photographs --

Mr. GUCCIONE: Excuse me. She did not object.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: -- of her. What Penthouse did --

Mr. GUCCIONE: She signed a model release --

MacNEIL: Let her speak and then you can speak.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: What Penthouse did was, of course, it destroyed her career, for one. It also was an incredible insult to the tens of thousands of black women around the country for whom Vanessa Williams represented some kind of achievement --

Mr. GUCCIONE: Baloney.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: -- taking women --

MacNEIL: Mr. Guccione?

Mr. GUCCIONE: Baloney! The black press in the United States was the most moderate in dealing with this subject. It was the white press that tried to make a racial issue out of it.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: I'd like to respond.

Mr. GUCCIONE: There was certainly no racial issue whatsoever. And let me say something else, too. When Vanessa Williams did these photographs, she signed a model release. Not only did she sign a model release, but she signed a model application form when she joined the photographic studio for whom she worked --

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: Penthouse --

Mr. GUCCIONE: Please let me finish. In which she said, "I want these magazines" -- in her own writing -- "I want these magazine to be published." Where did she want -- I mean, "I want these photographs to be published." You remember the photographs. Where did she want them published? In the Ladies Home Journal? In Popular Mechanics? Or a magazine like Penthouse.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: Vanessa Williams --

Mr. GUCCIONE: And when she signed the release --

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: I'd like to --

Mr. GUCCIONE: -- she gave the right to the photographer to publish those photographs. It was anticipated they should be published.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: Vanessa --

MacNEIL: A brief one, and then we'd like to move on.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: Yes. Vanessa --

MacNEIL: Give her a chance to talk now.

Mr. GUCCIONE: Let me just finish and then you can talk.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: No.

Mr. GUCCIONE: While she was Miss America she was contacted constantly by the photographer. She didn't have either the good sense or the gentlewomanliness to telephone him back, to get in touch with him, to find out what he wanted --

MacNEIL: Let Ms. Leibholdt say her peace.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: Vanessa Williams called the publication of those photographs a rape. It was a rape, and right now, under existing law there's nothing that women like Vanessa Williams can do --

Mr. GUCCIONE: But why did she do it?

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: With our civil rights ordinance, she could sue you --

Mr. GUCCIONE: But why did she do it in the first place?

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: -- and she could get an injunction --

Mr. GUCCIONE: She cannot sue me.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: -- against that material.

Mr. GUCCIONE: She is suing me for $400 million, and I guarantee you she will win nothing.

MacNEIL: Mr. Falwell in Atlanta, what is your view on the charge that pornography demeans and actually leads to physical violence against women?

Rev. FALWELL: I don't think there's any question about that, and I would agree totally with Dorchen that Vanessa, even if she did sign a model release, it's like saying that if a youngster, a teenager signs an agreement that "you may kill me", that I then have the right to kill you. In reality Penthouse magazine destroyed Vanessa. Well, you --

Mr. GUCCIONE: Jerry, that's not -- Jerry, you can't say that. Youcan't say that.

Rev. FALWELL: I am saying it, and I'm saying it clearly.

Mr. GUCCIONE: Vanessa Williams is the only Miss America that the world recalls, with the possible single exception of Bess Myerson. She's had more work since she was thrown out of the pageant than she ever would have had. She would have passed into oblivion like every other single Miss America before.

Rev. FALWELL: Well, I can name more than two Miss Americas, and --

Mr. GUCCIONE: Go ahead.

Rev. FALWELL: -- from Phyllis George right on through. But --

Mr. GUCCIONE: Right on through what? That's it. Phyllis George and Bess Myerson.

Rev. FALWELL: May I say to you that you nor no one else had the right to take that young girl --

Mr. GUCCIONE: Jerry, I have the legal right --

MacNEIL: Mr. Guccione, just let him finish his sentence.

Rev. FALWELL: -- and let the world, and there are very few people in the world that would have done that. And I -- only a pornographic magazine would, and Dorchen is exactly right. It was verbal and pictorial rape, and she may have plenty of work down the road, but her character and reputation have been --

Mr. GUCCIONE: No other magazine would have done it? People magazine ran two cover stories on her after we broke the news.

MacNEIL: Let's let Ms. Vance into this. What do you think of this?

Ms. VANCE: Well, first of all, I'm a social scientist so I'd like to comment on the so-called causal proof between sexually explicit material and violence against women. First of all, there have been some limited studies done in a laboratory setting. As a social scientist, even the authors of it, Dinerstein and Malamuth, have limited and cautioned against the interpretation. I think it's quite absurd to base social policy, let alone law, on the basis of studies that are preliminary, need to be repeated and replicated, and that are merely now suggestive.

MacNEIL: You're saying there's no proof of a direct correlation between the consumption of pornography and violent acts against women?

Ms. VANCE: Using accepted standards in social science, the evidence is now quite weak and preliminary.

MacNEIL: Ms. Leibholdt?

Ms. VANCE: And I would like to comment on this so-called victim testimony. I think if we look back historically in the World War II-'50s period we see a vast number of people willing to testify that, you know, homosexuality caused communism, that eating white bread caused mental illness. I don't mean to demean the testimony of women. It's sincere. But there are many women who could testify on all sorts of things -- that going out to work leads to juvenile delinquency, that having a job leads to divorce. Surely we can't base social policy on these individual testimonies.

MacNEIL: Ms. Leidholdt?

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: And when a woman who has been raped testifies that her rapist used pornography like a textbook, I think the causal link is pretty clear, but the truth of the matter is, since 1976 every major experimental study has shown the same thing. It's shown that small amounts of violent pornography or large amounts of demeaning, degrading, anti-woman pornography, large amounts of pornography lead men to develop attitudes and, in laboratory situations, behaviors of violence against women.

MacNEIL: Ms. Vance?

Ms. VANCE: Well, certainly when we use the term pornography, again, we allude to this huge, vast array of material. The films used in these laboratory studies are very particular: rape scenes in which women appear to initially resist and then agree. Most pornography does not depict that scenario, so to generalize from these studies to all pornography is totally unwarranted.

Ms. LEIDHOLDT: That's wrong. That's totally wrong. One, Adolph Zilman has shown large groups of students standard, not explicitly violent pornography, and he found that in large doses the men developed the same anti-woman attitudes and behaviors that they developed from the explicitly violent pornography.

Rev. FALWELL: Jim?

Ms. VANCE: Fortunately in social science --

MacNEIL: Mr. Falwell?

Rev. FALWELL: Yes. One hundred and two associate pastors that are affiliated with our Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg and one of our major ministries is counseling. And it is not unusual for us to have several thousands of hours of man-hour counseling during a year in which our men and women literally sit down with young people -- boys and girls, married couples, etc. -- on this very issue. And the evidence for persons who are out there really where the rubber touches the road, really talking face to face with hurting people who have been through the kinds of things that Dorchen is talking about supports everything that Dorchen is saying --

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Falwell. I'm sorry to have to cut you off, but that is the end of our time. Thank you for joining us from Atlanta; Mr. Guccione, Ms. Vance and Ms. Leidholdt, thank you.

LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this day. Four survivors have been found from the Japan Air Lines 747 crash that killed 520 persons. A portion of what is believed to be the plane's tail fin has also been found, but authorities still do not know what caused the plane to crash. And Union Carbide suspended the manufacture of the poisonous gas that leaked from its West Virginia plant Sunday, injuring 135 persons. Good night, Robin.

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