The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. These are the day's main news headlines. Libyan jet fighters intercepted a U.S. reconnaissance plane but there were no threatening moves. A presidential commission criticized government efforts against organized crime. A report said many of the nation's poorest people are not getting food stamps. We'll have details of these stories in our news summary. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: After the news summary we have three major focus segments on the NewsHour tonight. First, a new report on hunger in America. We debate whether federal help is reaching the needy or not with the man behind the report and a Reagan administration official. Next, we profile a big-time college basketball coach who plays by the rules and wins. Then a discussion of whether college athletes should be paid. Finally, a look at how a right-to-die ruling is being carried out. News Summary

MacNEIL: Two Libyan jet fighters intercepted a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane yesterday but they made no threatening moves. Administration sources told the Associated Press the incident occurred over the Gulf of Sidra, which Libya claims as territorial waters. The U.S. plane was from the aircraft carrier Coral Sea. The source said the two MIG fighters showed up and nosed around but made no menacing gestures and then peeled off and went away. Judy?

WOODRUFF: The State Department today asserted the right of the U.S. to have its Navy warships protect American freighters against so-called forcible actions in the Persian Gulf, but refused to say whether future interceptions by Iran would be resisted. Spokesman Charles Redman cautioned Iran, however, that boarding ships to look for weapons was a potentially dangerous game. The 12 American passengers on the U.S. freighter which was stopped and boarded by Iranian sailors Sunday as it entered the Strait of Hormuz said today that they feared they would be kidnapped. But one American woman described the Iranians as polite and smiling, and said they did not object when she started taking pictures with her camera. The captain of the freighter, however, called the boarding an act of piracy. He said he was threatened with drastic action by the Iranian gunboat unless he stopped his vessel.

MacNEIL: Heavy fighting was reported today in the Marxist state of South Yemen as government forces struggled to put down a coup. In the capital, Aden, diplomatic sources reported air raids on the airport and an attack on the presidential palace. At least four merchant ships were reported ablaze in the harbor. Diplomats said the struggle appeared to be between the pro-Soviet government and Marxists farther to the left. Aden's official radio said four plotters of the coup had been executed after a summary trial. South Yemen has been largely dependent on Soviet aid since it won independence from Britain in 1967.

WOODRUFF: The small African nation of Lesotho, which is completely surrounced by South Africa, has accused the South Africans of imposing an economic blockade against it. The government-run radio in Lesotho said the kingdom is appealing to the U.S. and Britain to intervene. We have a report from Michael Buerk of the BBC.

MICHAEL BUERK, BBC [voice-over]: South Africa imposed the border controls 10 days ago, accusing Lesotho of harboring terrorists. Queues now back up nearly a mile from border posts where South African official proceed to search everything. The stranglehold has been swift and effective. Lesotho has been isolated. Only a handful of vehicles and people get through each day.

CITIZEN, at border: They've taken through maybe eight cars today, and it's almost four o'clock. So I hope to be through by tonight.

BUERK [voice-over]: While the border queues sweat it out, South Africa denies it's imposing a blockade, merely guarding its security interests.

ROELOF BOTHA, Prime Minister of South Africa: We have been maintaining more strict border control measures for the reasons I hope I've made clear. Terrorists are crossing the border. If they keep on crossing the border, then, in the absence of a joint government committee to deal with this matter, then we have no option.

BUERK [voice-over]: The Lesotho cabinet announced petrol rationing and grounded all but essential government transports. People filled any available containers before the measures took effect. The government here claims some drugs and essential medical supplies were running low. Many food items imported from South Africa were said to be sold out. Lesotho is entirely dependent on South Africa. Its only export is these men -- hundreds of thousands of them queue in the mountains for a chance to work in South Africa's mines. This country really has no choice if its powerful neighbor gets tough. There were already signs today that Lesotho was ready to agree to Pretoria's demands.

MacNEIL: Vinicio Cerezo became President of Guatemala today, ending 16 years of military rule there. Among foreign leaders present at his inauguration were Vice President George Bush and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. In restoring democratic government the young president faces a stagnant economy with high inflation and heavy foreign debts and a legacy of human rights abuses in which an estimated 38,000 people were killed in political violence.

In Washington President Reagan welcomed Ecuadorian President Leon Febres to the White House. Mr. Reagan praised Febres' efforts to invigorate his economy and the Ecuadorian applauded the plan by U.S. Treasury Secretary James Baker to help economies like his. The Baker plan calls for increased lending from private bankers and an effort to strengthen free-market economies.

In Buenos Aires the police said today that 81 people were arrested last night in the worst political rioting since the country returned to democratic government two years ago. About 2,000 leftists demonstrated against a visit by David Rockefeller, the American banker, who met Argentinian President Raul Alfonsin to discuss the country's debt problems. The leftists said Rockefeller had been friendly to the previous military dictators. The demonstrators burned an American flag, threw rocks and eggs and set a number of small fires. The police fought them with tear gas, rubber bullets and a water cannon. At least a dozen people were injured, but only one was seriously hurt. Rockefeller made no comment.

WOODRUFF: There was bad news today about organized crime in this country. A presidential blue-ribbon commission told Mr. Reagan that organized crime is entrenched in America's marketplace and that federal enforcement efforts are fragmented and inadequate to stem the tide. The executive director of the commission told reporters that particularly alarming is the link between crime and labor unions.

JAMES HARMON, President's Commission on Organized Crime: Organized crime operates today, first of all, through unions, which in effect are unions in name only. They're nothing more than illusions and shadows and a way to create a leverage for Organized crime. organized crime also operates openly through businesses which are owned by members of organized crime, some of which, as the report will point out, are actually publicly traded. The public today can buy stock in companies that are fully owned by organized crime.

WOODRUFF: The commission report appears to contradict what President Reagan wrote in an article for The New York Times over the weekend. In it the President said that for the first time in our history we finally have the mob on the run.

Another report released today paints an equally bleak picture of hunger in America. According to a Harvard physicians' hunger task force group, more than two-thirds of the residents of 150 of the nation's poorest counties who are eligible for food stamps never get them. Researchers blame much of the problem on what they said was the failure of federal assistance programs to reach the needy.

MacNEIL: The Federal Aviation Administration today announced a program of closer inspection of airlines hired to carry military personnel. The inspections, coming in the wake of the air charter crash that killed 248 U.S. soldiers in Newfoundland, are expected to continue for several months. Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole said they will focus on 24 airlines that do business with the Pentagon, to ensure they're operating at the highest standards of safety.

WOODRUFF: There was more disappointment today for the crew of the space shuttle Columbia. NASA officials said the mission, which had been delayed by seven aborted launch attempts, would end Thursday, a day early. Concern about weather at the landing site in Florida and the need to get the shuttle ready for its next mission in March were cited as the reasons for the early return. NASA's flight director said the ship would not miss any of its objectives despite trouble the crew has been having taking pictures of Halley's Comet. Robin?

MacNEIL: Actress Donna Reed, the star of her own television show and a prominent movie actress, died today of cancer. She was 64. She won an Academy Award for her role as a prostitute in the 1955 film From Here to Eternity. Beginning in 1958, Miss Reed appeared for eight seasons in "The Donna Reed Show" on ABC. She also appeared briefly as Miss Ellie in the show "Dallas", but that ended in a lawsuit when she was cut to make room for the return of Barbara Bel Geddes. Last August Miss Reed accepted a million-dollar settlement. Soon afterward she was hospitalized for ulcers and they found she also had cancer of the pancreas.

WOODRUFF: That wraps up our news summary. Just ahead on the NewsHour, a debate about how much hunger there is in America and who's to blame for it; a look at a successful college basketball coach and a discussion of whether college athletes should be paid; and a report on a man charged with deciding when a patient can exercise his right to die. Hunger in America

WOODRUFF: As we just mentioned, a new report out today says many Americans don't have enough to eat. That's the finding of a study prepared by the Harvard School of Public Health and a group called the Physicians' Task Force on Hunger in America. Among other things, the report notes a resurgence of hunger following declines in the 1970s. In all the study found 150 so-called hunger counties in 24 states. Thirteen of those states are in the Mississippi Valley and Great Plains states. Texas had the most hunger counties with 29, and Eureka County in Nevada was rated the worst, with less than 2 of its needy receiving food stamps, according to the study. To explain these conclusions further and to expand on how widespread the problem is, we turn now to the man who chaired the task force, Dr. Larry Brown of the Harvard School of Public Health.

First of all, Dr. Brown, I'm curious. How did you decide what is a hunger county and what isn't?

LARRY BROWN: A hunger county was really designated by two factors, counties in which there's high poverty, meaning more than 20 of the local population living in poverty, and where fewer than one-third of the needy recipients are actually getting the benefits of the federal food stamp program. So what we asked the computer to do was to tell us which are the worst 150 hunger counties in the United States according to these two criteria -- high need and low program coverage.

WOODRUFF: So this wasn't a case of going around visiting these counties yourselves; it was a case of putting some data, from where, into a computer.

Dr. BROWN: Yes, we used census data and we used data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, participation in the food stamp program. We have spent two years traveling around the country, our team of physicians, conducting field investigations, and we now intend to go out into these states to try to determine why the program is failing to reach such a large number of people.

WOODRUFF: All right, 150 counties out of how many counties altogether?

Dr. BROWN: There are about 3,000 counties in the United States, so these 150 counties represent the worst 5 in the United States at this point in time.

WOODRUFF: And what percentage of the population are we talking about?

Dr. BROWN: Well, we're talking probably about roughly two or three percent of the population. There are roughly 670-, 680,000 eligible food stamp recipients in those counties there.

WOODRUFF: How many?

Dr. BROWN: Six hundred and seventy thousand eligible food stamp recipients in those counties, fewer than one-third of them, substantially fewer than one-third of them are actually receiving the benefits of the program.

WOODRUFF: And whose fault is that? Do you say in your report?

Dr. BROWN: No, we don't say. We don't know whose fault it is. What we are doing is looking at the federal food stamp program, which historically, at least over the last 15 years, has been the major weapon in America's arsenal to fight hunger, and what we have noticed is that as poverty has gone up in America during recent years, the federal food stamp program is actually serving fewer people. So one has to say, why is this program, which was so successful in helping to eliminate hunger in America during the Nixon and the Johnson years, why is it going down, serving a smaller rate of eligible recipients than it was some years ago when we helped to eliminate hunger in this country?

WOODRUFF: Do you already have an idea what the answer to that is?

Dr. BROWN: Well, we have some hypotheses. As we've traveled around the country conducting field investigations in the last two years, food stamp administrators at the county and state levels have pointed to a number of changes in federal regulations which make it more difficult for them to reach needy recipients. In addition to that, we have heard from people at the county level saying that there is variability at the county level. Sometimes there are compassionate administrators or administrators who are good public administrators, who run a better program and are able to reach more people. I imagine what we're going to find is that it's a mixture of things that are going on at the federal policy level which prevent program administrators from doing a better job of reaching recipients, and that there are some unique things that we will find in geographic areas of the country. But the central thing is, how can we explain that it's gone down during -- the rate of participation has gone down during the last few years? There has to be something unique which will explain that. We're going to try to find out and report that in May to the Congress.

WOODRUFF: Some of the areas you identified seem to be relatively prosperous areas. The state of Texas, for example, most people think of as having wealth at least in some areas. How do you explain the high number of counties there?

Dr. BROWN: Well, we can't explain that yet. We just simply know that these are hunger counties. One thing that your listeners may want to keep in mind, we have not said that there is not hunger all over the nation. We were in Mississippi, for example. There are no hunger counties today in Mississippi. There is hunger in Mississippi, there is high poverty in Mississippi. Essentially what we are measuring through this identification of hunger counties is how well the federal food stamp program is being used. Mississippi, therefore, is using it better to reach its poor than the state of Texas, which has 29 hunger counties and is the worst state in the nation as far as the number of hunger counties.

WOODRUFF: Dr. Brown, stay with us. Robin?

MacNEIL: To answer Dr. Brown's case we have John Bode, the man in charge of administering the food stamp program for the Department of Agriculture. Mr. Secretary, how do you react to Dr. Brown's numbers?

JOHN BODE: Well, I'm afraid Dr. Brown's analysis is basically worthless. He has gone to the library and then entered some very old data, going back to data collected as far back as 1979 and run that through the computer. And that's why the people out in these counties are saying today that they don't think he knows what he's talking about, with all due respect. The sheriff in what Dr. Brown has identified as the hungriest county in the United States gave away food baskets at Christmas and said that he only found 15 people who wanted them. The unemployment rate in that county is down at 5 . The hungriest county in Texas, according to Dr. Brown, one third of the population are students at Texas A&M University, and a welfare official in Texas said today that Dr. Brown's statistics are as screwed up as they can be. I just believe that this analysis is faulty.

MacNEIL: Well, let me ask you one of the points he's making. Are you saying, and is the department saying there are not eligible people failing to get food stamps?

Sec. BODE: Dr. Brown is correct in that point. There are people who are eligible for the food stamp program and are not receiving food stamps. They are people, almost without exception, who have not applied for food stamps. That has always been the case, and the rate, the percentage of people who are not getting food stamps though they're eligible for them today is generally higher than it was in the late 1970s.

MacNEIL: I'm not sure I followed that.

Sec. BODE: So, more people of the percentage of people who are eligible for food stamps are getting them today than in the 1970s.

MacNEIL: Well, that's just the contrary of what he says. He says participation in the program has been going down and that that's a great mystery.

Sec. BODE: It is true that participation has been going down in recent months. As we watch food stamp program participation it generally tracks very closely unemployment. Unemployment's been going down, more people are employed today than ever before, and for those reasons the food stamp program participation is now down to about 20 million people. It was over 22 million people a month, reaching at times levels where one in every 10 Americans was getting food stamps.

MacNEIL: Well, let me ask you the question in a more basic way. Is the administration -- does the administration believe that hunger in this country is not a significant problem?

Sec. BODE: I believe that we have problems with hunger in this country. I believe that the basic federal food assistance program, the food stamp program, is working as a nationwide program that's addressing the problem. Everyone who is eligible for food stamps is not applying for them. Some people choose not to receive welfare of any form, and there are also some questions to be raised about the data. But we have a nationwide food assistance effort; the food stamp program is only one part of it. We also have school feeding programs that assure free meals for all low-income children, and other programs with a total of about $20 billion a year in federal effort. That's more than has ever been spent on federal food assistance.

MacNEIL: To come back to your charge that his numbers are wrong, what is the fundamental thing that you believe he did wrong with the numbers?

Sec. BODE: Basically it was a comparison of annual numbers collected in 1979 with monthly numbers collected in just one month in 1984. And that is an apples-and-oranges comparison that gives us some very skewed results. I'd like to say, though, that what's important is that we look at the problems. I agree with Dr. Brown that we have problems in administration of the food stamp program. He's appropriate -- it's appropriate that we are concerned about that point, but I don't think his analysis is doing anything to identify the problem counties. His hungriest county in the United States is also the county -- is a county in the state that has the very best record on under-issuance in the food stamp program. That's the measure of people who apply for food stamps, should get them, but for some reason don't. That, of course, is a factor that is not even considered in his analysis, and I think should be.

MacNEIL: Mr. Secretary, thank you. Judy?

WOODRUFF: Well, Dr. Brown, there's a lot to ask you about. He says that, first of all, your analysis is worthless, and he went on to cite a sheriff in Nevada who said -- which was, I think, the county you said was in the worst shape -- he said they handed out Christmas food baskets and only 15 people showed up. I mean, among other things, how do you respond to this?

Dr. BROWN: Well, I can't respond to the anecdote about the sheriff. I can pull out another sheriff from another county who will say something. I think the critical issue is whether or not the methodology was correct. Mr. Bode told me when we came in tonight that he'd just gotten the report -- I don't think he's had an opportunity to digest it --

WOODRUFF: But he says it's apples and oranges, that you took -- I don't want to spend a lot of time on this but --

Dr. BROWN: It's not. It's not, and I won't get into the methodology in detail. We did not take apples and oranges. We compared poverty with the census poverty update for July, 1974, with the food stamp participation rate for 1974 -- 1984, I'm sorry. So those two periods of time were the same. I think the real issue is that the food stamp participation rate in this country has gone down. Mr. Bode said he wasn't quite sure what it was. I can tell him what it was. Four years ago, 65 out of every 100 eligible food stamp recipients got the benefits of the program, or 65 . That has now gone down to 55 at a time that the administration says that it wishes the target of service was better.

Sec. BODE: Well, I have a number in the neighborhood of 60 . The point is --

WOODRUFF: Which is lower than the 65.

Sec. BODE: Which is lower than the 65 . What we need to keep in mind with these numbers is they tend to fluctuate somewhat over time. In the mid-1970s, 1978, for example, the numbers were below 50 , which certainly Dr. Brown will agree --

WOODRUFF: Well, what about his basic point --

Sec. BODE: -- 60 is well above the 50- and 45-percent levels that we saw in the late 1970s.

WOODRUFF: Well, what about his basic point that fewer people are getting assistance, a smaller percentage?

Sec. BODE: The numbers are declining. As unemployment goes down, more people are going to work. That's true.

WOODRUFF: What about the unemployment then?

Dr. BROWN: Unemployment's going down. What Mr. Bode is saying is irrelevant. Whatever the percentage of eligible people, we have to look at what proportion of them are getting assistance, and what the actual numbers are is irrelevant. The question is, what proportion of them are being covered by the program, and they are covering fewer and fewer of the eligible people.

Sec. BODE: Let me make one point. Rather than getting into a big numbers squabble, which I don't think really serves the process well, people should remember that everybody who is needy and is determined to be under the food stamp act, is eligible to get food stamp benefits, and if someone applies for food stamps they will be getting them if they're eligible.

WOODRUFF: He says -- you just heard Mr. Bode say a moment ago, Dr. Brown, that a lot of people just aren't applying.

Dr. BROWN: I think that he's right. I think when we get out there we will find some factors which limit people's desire or even willingness to come in to apply in the first place. But I think what we really have to ask ourselves is, what kind of standards are we going to hold our federal programs to? The federal food stamp program serves just a little over half of the eligible recipients. We would not accept an Internal Revenue Service system that returned tax refunds to only half of the people, or a Social Security system that served only half of the people.

WOODRUFF: What about that, Mr. Bode?

Sec. BODE: Well, we have always had a significant rate of non-participation in the food stamp program --

WOODRUFF: So you're saying it's no different now than it's ever been?

Sec. BODE: That's right, and the same is true of other welfare programs across the board -- AFDC, general assistance in different states. It's a matter of people deciding that they want to receive assistance from their fellow citizens and some people who especially are close to the eligibility line choosing not to.

WOODRUFF: Is it as simple as that?

Dr. BROWN: No, of course it's not that simple. There are two things in response that I'd suggest to Mr. Bode. One is that federal administrators of federal programs cannot passively sit by and say the program is there, if you want it, come and get it. What they did was to cut -- one of the factors we know is that they cut out all federal funding for outreach programs, so that the local offices no longer get federal funds to try to reach the isolated elderly people who don't know about the program.

WOODRUFF: What about that?

Sec. BODE: The food stamp program is no secret. It's very widely known that we have a food stamp program. Elderly people who are shut in, for example, don't even need to go down to the food stamp office in order to get on the rolls for food stamps. Another point is, there is absolutely no impact that's been shown in any way of cutting back on the door-to-door sort of activities that outreach got for us in trying to sign up more people for food stamps.

WOODRUFF: Quick response to that?

Dr. BROWN: I think the larger issue is that four years ago they changed food stamp eligibility, saying, we're going to cut out the working poor and we're going to target the truly needy. Today we are looking at the truly needy and a smaller proportion of the truly needy are being covered by the program, and something's wrong, and we're going to find it out when we conduct our field investigations.

Sec. BODE: That's a completely different issue than the one that's been addressed all the way through this conversation today. Before he's only talked about people who were eligible and didn't participate. The changes that were made in 1981 and '82 were good, sound changes that Congress made at our recommendation, and they were changes that the Urban Institute, an institution that I think has a good reputation for being objective, certainly no pawn of the Reagan administration, said that those changes did not alter the basic structure of the food stamp program or the way it worked.

WOODRUFF: I have a feeling, gentlemen, this is not an issue we're going to resolve tonight. We will try to get back to it in the future. Dr. Brown, Mr. Bode, thank you both for being with us.

Sec. BODE: Thank you.

Dr. BROWN: Thank you.

MacNEIL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, cleaning up college sports. We profile a big-time coach and debate the issue of paying college athletes. And a documentary on a new interpretation of the right to end the lives of the terminally ill. Life in the Balance

WOODRUFF: A state official in New Jersey is now grappling with the first case to be decided under that state's right-to-die law. A year ago the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that patients could refuse food under certain circumstances. Overseeing the law is an ombudsman who is a state official, not a doctor or a judge. His first case is now pending. June Massell filed this report.

EBERHARD JOHANNING, Hilda Peter's guardian: She was my pal. She was my best friend. She was my -- she meant everything to me. She still means everything to me.

JUNE MASSELL [voice-over]: Eberhard Johanning, now in his 70s, lived with Hilda Peter, now 65, for three years. They were not legally married, but they gave each other the power of attorney to handle medical matters in the event that one of them became disabled. In October of 1984, Hilda Peter suffered a massive heart attack and entered a coma. A feeding tube has been keeping her alive ever since.

[on camera] Hilda Peter has been here in this New Jersey nursing home for the last year. She lies in what doctors call a persistent vegetative state.

[voice-over] Johanning, who loves her, says he wants Hilda Peter to die with dignity. Hilda had seen her own mother die in a semi-coma state and had told him repeatedly thatif anything like that ever happened to her she would not want to be kept alive artificially.

Mr. JOHANNING: The subject many, many times was, "God, if that happens to me, don't allow them to keep me as a vegetable."

MASSELL [voice-over]: Johanning repeated Hilda's wishes for a New Jersey court, and the judge appointed him her official guardian. That enabled Johanning to petition to have Hilda Peter's feeding tube removed.

Mr. JOHANNING: I cannot stay in that nursing home for any length of time. I've got to get out of there because I know that if she could get out of that bed, I better be able to run because she would have -- she felt that way about it. She felt very strongly about it.

MASSELL: What would she have wanted?

Mr. JOHANNING: She'd come back to haunt us.

MASSELL: If she could get out of that bed right now --

Mr. JOHANNING: She'd come over and she'd jump all over me for allowing them to have done this to her.

MASSELL: For allowing them to keep her alive?

Mr. JOHANNING: That's right. Keep her breathing.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Johanning makes a distinction between just breathing and being alive.

Mr. JOHANNING: She's not alive. She's comatose. She's totally unaware of anything that's going on. She sees not, she hears not. She cannot talk, she cannot do anything. She is totally out.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Erica and Werner Boettcher are Hilda Peter's cousins. it was a very close family, and Werner grew up in the same house with Hilda.

[interviewing] You're in agreement with Mr. Johanning's position on this?

WERNER BOETTCHER, Hilda Peter's cousin: All the way. We are agreed. We talked it over many times, and we agree 100 that she would never like to be like the way she is today.

MASSELL: Do you ever have doubts about your right to take a life?

Mr. BOETTCHER: I don't think I take a life. She is not alive anymore. She is -- I don't know if she is living or whatever you explain that, but she is not alive.

JACK D'AMBROSIO, New Jersey ombudsman: People are very sensitive about the issue. It's very personal. And decisions that are being made here are not decisions that, once they're made, can in some cases be changed. They're final decisions.

MASSELL [voice-over]: The man who will make the decision whether to withdraw Hilda Peter's feeding tube is Jack D'Ambrosio, the ombudsman for the institutionalized elderly for the state of New Jersey. His office is responsible for protecting the rights of patients in nursing homes. Ten years ago the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a landmark decision when it ruled that Karen Ann Quinlan, a comatose patient, could be removed from a respirator. Last year the same court extended the Quinlan decision in a ruling that said a patient could be removed from a feeding tube as well. According to this case, now known as the Conroy decision, the patient must be at least 65 years old, living in a nursing home, mentally incompetent and likely to die within a year. The law also requires that the ombudsman be sure that the patient would not have wanted to be sustained by a feeding tube. The Hilda Peter case is the first case to come before the ombudsman's office since the Conroy decision, and Jack D'Ambrosio is the first official in the country to decide such a momentous case.

Mr. D'AMBROSIO: When the first application in the Hilda Peter came before us, I became very concerned and I am very concerned about making the right decision. The right decision being the one that I think, from the testimony we can gather, from what our investigation can show, the right decision being what Hilda Peter would have wanted, because that's really what we're all after, respecting the wishes of the patient.

MASSELL [voice-over]: D'Ambrosio is not entirely at ease with being given such life-and-death power.

Mr. D'AMBROSIO: It's not a comfortable decision to make because no matter what decision you make, there's always that chance that you could have made a better decision, and as long as I know that there's a chance I could have made a better decision, it's the kind of decision that I'm going to always wonder about from now on.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Many elderly worry about what might happen to them, and D'Ambrosio goes to several nursing homes a week to explain what the Conroy decision means and what patients' rights are.

Mr. D'AMBROSIO: Hello, Mrs. Kramer. How are you?

[speaking] Today, technology and drug treatment have altered the boundaries of what we used to think was death, and these tools in their life-sustaining potential set up situations we have not faced before. The issue is not a theoretical one. The issue in this opinion that I call not the right to die, but the right to choose, and that is very, very important. We're not dealing with a right-to-die decision here. We're dealing with a right-to-choose decision.

MASSELL: The Peter case evokes an ethical debate. On the one side there are those who believe that incurable suffering should not be prolonged by expensive medical technology, and that that money could be better used to treat those who can be cured. On the other side, there are those who argue that it is the obligation of medicine to do everything it can for all patients, regardless of cost, or their condition.

RICHARD MAGGI, Citizens Concerned for Life: I think sometimes we've got to let modern technology serve mankind, other times maybe it's inappropriate, but not on this level. I think nutrients is too basic to remove.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Richard Maggi is with a pro-life group called Citizens Concerned for Life.

Mr. MAGGI: To me to deprive somebody of food and to starve them to death or to cause them to dehydrate is immoral. I don't consider a feeding tube which provides nutrients in the same line as a respirator or some other life-sustaining equipment. I think that's where the court's decision was basically in error.

MASSELL [voice-over]: But the Society for the Right to Die disagrees. Fenella Rouse is a staff attorney.

FENELLA ROUSE, Society for the Right to Die: It seems to me quite illogical to say that an artificial feeding tube could be any different from a respirator tube, and that therefore as a matter of law, I mean as we're concerned with a kind of literal area of privacy, we must be able to reject both.

MASSELL [voice-over]: As D'Ambrosio gets closer to making a decision about Hilda Peter, both sides are lobbying his office. D'Ambrosio gets frequent calls from both the right-to-die and right-to-life organizations.

Mr. D'AMBROSIO, on phone call: Wait a minute. I'm not talking about when they're sick. I'm talking about when they're well and they're thinking about this, and as competent adults they say, "If I ever get to this point in time I don't want this kind of treatment keeping me alive." You know, you understand that. That's the common law which says that a competent adult has the right to refuse treatment. That would be okay? So, in other words, okay. See, I'm just trying -- because I like to understand all my callers' viewpoints.

Mr. JOHANNING: That's not your usual place to sit. That's Hilda's place to sit.

MASSELL [voice-over]: But Hilda Peter's guardian and cousins don't need to hear all viewpoints. They are convinced they are following Hilda Peter's wishes and doing the right thing.

Mr. JOHANNING: I'll be glad when this whole thing is finally over. I think Erica will be a little glad, too, right? This whole thing? I mean, even going there to the nursing home to see her. I mean, and every time you get together with somebody Hilda is the topic -- "that poor girl deserves her rest." This is so ridiculous.

MASSELL [voice-over]: It is estimated that there are about 10,000 patients like Hilda Peter in persistent vegetative states around the country.

Mr. JOHANNING: Well, I think death is something inevitable. I'm not afraid to die. But I'll tell you what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid that if I get sick that they won't let me die. This is what we've got to fear with the way medicine is working today.

WOODRUFF: That report was filed by June Massell. Coach Who Cares

MacNEIL: It's the time of year when big college sports is in the news, much of it bad news these days, with reports of point-shaving and drug connections. The National College Athletic Association, NCAA, is meeting in New Orleans this week to try to clean up the sports it controls. We have a debate on one proposal, but first we profile a big-time coach who plays by the book and gets good results. He is Rollie Massimino, basketball coach at Villanova, outside Philadelphia. Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN [voice-over]: One of the first things people notice about Rollie Massimino is his energetic coaching style.

ROLLIE MASSIMINO, Villanova coach: It's mind-boggling. It's mind-boggling. This middle is wide open. They just throw it here. Don't make any plans about a week from for Sunday. Don't make any plans, because you're liable to be here seven hours a day. Because we are going to be a basketball team.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Sports Illustrated chose Massimino as one of five coaches you wouldn't want to sit next to at a basketball game.

Coach MASSIMINO: I think Ralph Waldo Emerson said nothing good happens unless it's done with enthusiasm, and I try to live by that.

Drew, you over here, gave the ball over there to R.C., shot, hit. Talk! you say one word. And I hope I'm not interfering with your privacy!

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Just about every player on the Villanova team has been a victim of Coach Massimino's enthusiasm at one time or another, including his own son, R.C. Massimino, who has played for his father for the last four years.

R.C. MASSIMINO, Villanova player: He pushes me just like he pushes everybody else. You know, I take the good with the bad. He yells and screams, and I always know when he's mad at me because he calls me Massimino; he doesn't call me R.C. anymore.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Harold Pressley also has been on the receiving end of the coach's wrath.

[interviewing] Let me get this straight now. So when he's yelling and screaming he doesn't really mean any harm. Is that right?

HAROLD PRESSLEY, Villanova player: Oh, no. He means a lot of harm.

Coach MASSIMINO: Here we go. Get out of it. Get out of it.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Although Rollie Massimino sometimes acts like Captain Bligh, his players have yet to mutiny.

Coach MASSIMINO: I can do anything to our players -- holler, bite, kick, anything I'd like to do -- and they sit and they take it and they're good, because they know there's a love, there's a faternity in our identity as a family.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: When a player signs up for the Villanova team hefinds himself spending as much time with his basketball family off the court as he does on it. There are team singalongs, pre-game masses to attend, team meals to eat, and even after a player graduates Coach Massimino manages to stay in close touch, talking by phone to many of his ex-players several times a year.

Coach MASSIMINO: We all believe in each other, and that's the father-son relationship that's developed, because the people I love the most, I'm with the least, and that's my wife and five children. So therefore they better be like my children.

Let me ask you. Now, the exams will be done tomorrow. I want to know generally speaking what you think your cums are going to be, okay?

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Massimino deliberately applies that fatherly role to his players' academic performance as well.

Coach MASSIMINO: Two-six. That's pretty good. Now, we have the bright guys, yet, huh?

HOLMAN: It's not at all unusual for a college basketball player to spend four years in school and never graduate. At some schools less than 20 of athletes ever get their degrees. That's not the case here at Villanova. Every player who has ever played for Coach Massimino has gone on to graduate. Freshman players are even required to spend five nights a week in supervised study hall, learning early that basketball and biology must go together.

Mr. PRESSLEY: You know, he's going to make sure that if you're not doing your work you're not going to play. I have right now four professors and he's talked to them all this week. Within the last three, four days he talked to them all. He asked them how I was doing and he was just checking up on each individual player.

Coach MASSIMINO: How many of you are done with exams?

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Although he's a strong supporter of education, Massimino opposes the NCAA's new rule that requires incoming freshman who want to play sports to have at least a 2.0 grade-point average and a combined score of 700 on their college entrance exams. The rule goes against Massimino's conviction that a student athlete's attitude is more important than his aptitude.

Coach MASSIMINO: Now, tonight you've got the tutor, right?

I feel that if a young man has the requirements of becoming a winner in terms of having some pride in what he does, have a great work ethic and, of course, has a little bit of ego in wanting to do the best he can do, he's going to make it. There are an awful lot of people, whether our society believes it or not, that have gone thorugh colleges, and probably some Ivy League schools, with under 700 on college boards.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: While Coach Massimino is equally committed to the athletic and academic success of his players, he realizes that not every coach shares his beliefs. He also knows that some coaches don't abide by the rules, that they doctor players' grades or make illegal payments to attract young recruits.

Coach MASSIMINO: This is the only place that someone can get something illegally and not go to jail, you know? I mean, someone can receive money, can receive a car, he can receive any number of things and not be put in jail unless the IRS comes after him. And there has to be a way for us to curtail this. Some way. But it has to start from us, as coaches, and live by what we believe in as people.

HOLMAN: Are you saying it's possible for other coaches out there to do what Rollie Massimino does at Villanova?

Coach MASSIMINO: Oh, sure. You know, again, there are an awful lot of coaches that do what Rollie Massimino does. There is an awful lot.

There is a very, very important [unintelligible]. All right, their break spots, their offense, okay?

HOLMAN: But what sets Massimino apart is that he not only plays by the rules, he also manages to win. In Massimino's 12 years as Villanova coach, his teams have gone to seven NCAA tournaments, reaching the quarter-finals four times. But it was last year's remarkable upset of Georgetown for the NCAA championship that secured for Massimino and his Wildcats a place in college basketball history.

[voice-over] Georgetown, ranked number one in the nation at the time, was heavily favored. The Villanova Wildcats had already lost to Georgetown twice during the season, and prior to going to the NCAA tournament the Wildcats had lost six of 11 games.

SPORTSCASTER: That's it! Villanova has done it!

HOLMAN [voice-over]: The victory brought the 50-year-old Massimino a great deal of publicity as well as a job offer last summer to coach the New Jersey Nets of the National Basketball Association. After much soul-searching he turned down that million-dollar offer.

Coach MASSIMINO [June 19, 1985]: In the best interests of my family, Villanova University, my players, Jake Nevin, I've decided to stay at Villanova University.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Today Coach Massimino says he feels he made the right choice, even though this season has not been an easy one. In December his close friend and the team's long-time trainer, Jake Nevin, died of Lou Gehrig's disease, and all season long his team has struggled, winning barely half its games.

Coach MASSIMINO: Heads up! Heads up! No, Mark, don't foul, Mark! Get your heads up!

HOLMAN [voice-over]: But Coach Massimino is philosophical about his first mediocre season in a decade.

Coach MASSIMINO: I don't really care that much about winning or losing, and that might seem funny. I really don't. Not that I've mellowed because I may have been in the business longer. All I want to do is compete. It's the striving, you know? It's not the destination, it's the journey.

Don't play him on the top side. You can't play him on the god-blessed top side! Play for Pay

MacNEIL: As Coach Massimino said, there are a lot of payoffs for NCAA players. Several well-known schools are currently under investigation after allegations of widespread illegal payoffs. One suggestion for cleaning things up is to legalize such payments. Supporters argued that to make them above-the-table instead of under it would be more honest and fairer to the athletes whose scholarships cover only room and board. One person pushing this idea is former college player and coach Dick DiVenzio, who is at the NCAA convention this week trying to drum up support. The vast majority of college officials don't like the idea, and that includes the athletic director at Notre Dame University, Gene Corrigan. Both are with us in New Orleans.

Mr. DiVenzio, why pay the players?

DICK DiVENZIO: Well, there's a very simple reason. There is a small group of athletes, football and basketball players, that are bringing in millions of dollars for their universities and for the NCAA. These kids are Americans and in America we believe that the generators of income should be rewarded or should benefit from that income. So I don't think that the big-time athletes should be any different from any other people in America.

MacNEIL: What kind of money would you pay them?

Mr. DiVENZIO: Well, I think there is a lot of possibilities. Certainly I think two things are important, that they get a guaranteed lifetime education, because in a sense the universities are making adeal with them -- your sports ability for an education. But they're not giving so many of them, as you reported earlier, many of the athletes are not getting an education. Also I think that the kids should all live comfortably apart from their parents' support because a lot of their parents cannot support them.

MacNEIL: And how would this clean things up? How would this stop the kind of under-the-table payments from sport college booster clubs and so on?

Mr. DiVENZIO: Well, there's a tremendous impetus to cheat right now because many of the rules let's say counsel against human dignity. You can have a football or basketball player right now who has no spending money, no way to get any money. When he wants to go home for Christmas he cannot, within the rules, be flown home for Christmas. He cannot receive -- in case there's an emergency and his mother is sick or something of that nature, he cannot be flown home, he cannot borrow a car. These kids have legitimate needs that are not being met and the NCAA's own studies verify this. And these kids' needs have to be met. As long as they are not cheating it's going to be necessary just from a human standpoint.

MacNEIL: Mr. Corrigan, what's wrong with the idea?

GENE CORRIGAN: Well, I think Dick made a couple of good points. One is that the schools need to commit to educate these young people when they bring them in, and there are some schools that haven't done that very well. And for them, you know, I have almost two standards in my own mind. I've spent -- I'm a Duke graduate, as Dick is, and I've spent most of my time at the University of Virginia and Notre Dame where we've taken great pride in the fact that we give a remarkable opportunity to any youngster to come there and get an education, to drink from the cup that's there. And I'm not sure that putting dollars on top of that is really necessary. You know, a year or so ago, two years ago, I guess it was, the NCAA began to allow those students that had critical need to receive money from the Pell grants so that a youngster now who has total need would be able to get room, board, tuition, books, plus $900 a year in --

MacNEIL: The Pell grant is one of the federal government programs, student aid programs.

Mr. CORRIGAN: It is a federal entitlement program, and this was a very nice -- I thought it was a critical issue in trying to do right, as Dick said, by the young people in a school.

MacNEIL: Well, what about his point that the colleges and some coaches are making a lot of money out of these star athletes? Why shouldn't the young people themselves have some of the money that they're earning?

Mr. CORRIGAN: I'm not sure how many people are making money now. If you're talking about being able to support a program, a program at Notre Dame that would have 21 sports that would involve some 600 athletes, football and basketball pay for that, as they always have. They've done since Rockne was there. And it's the same way almost at every other school. As far as the coaches are concerned, I think all these coaches that Dick would be talking about all came through the same system that exists right now, where they weren't paid when they went to school. They earned their way, and they've earned their -- they've gotten to the point where some of them do have some prosperity and -- but, you know, coaching, there are no promises in coaching. It's not a tenured job.

MacNEIL: Mr. DiVenzio, how do you answer that? He says that the money that football and basketball make really just goes to support big athletic programs across a whole range.

Mr.DiVENZIO: It does, and I don't see any reason why basketball players and football players should be expected to foot the bill for the rest of the sports world, especially when basketball and football players are probably -- they probably have the poorest graduation rate among all the athletes on campus. I think it's a tragedy that so much money is being squandered on sports when it should go into the educations of the athletes who are criticized for being dumb jocks. The money does not go into their educations, which it should be, but it's squandered on needless sports trips, trips to California for a team from South Bend which could easily play Purdue or play Indiana, and they don't need to fly on basketball players' or football players' money. They don't need to fly to California to play a lacrosse match.

MacNEIL: Mr. Corrigan?

Mr. CORRIGAN: That's ridiculous. Our teams don't fly to California to play. Only our basketball team flies to California to play. You know, again, I'm not sure how I can convince Dick or I can convince somebody else --

MacNEIL: Well, tell him what harm his proposal would do, what you think it would do to college sports.

Mr. CORRIGAN: Well, I think, first, the worst thing would be, it would set the athlete apart from the rest of the student body. That's always been a problem. You knew it at Duke. One of the great things about Duke and Notre Dame and schools like this, they try not to set the athletes apart. You want to be part of it. You have one good point. If schools are not spending every opportunity, every dollar, every resource that they have to educate and graduate athletes, then they're wrong. And I think this is something that the NCAA has really addressed itself to in the last two years is to try to get people to understand that that's critical. First of all, don't bring somebody in that has no chance and, secondly, once they get there, make a commitment. Not just a four-year commitment, but a commitment that says, as long as you make the effort, we're going to make the effort to get you out of here and to give you the kind of education that you need. That has a value that I think -- I don't think you could put dollars on it.

MacNEIL: Mr. DiVenzio, you not only want to pay the players, you want to unionize them. Why do you want to do that?

Mr. DiVENZIO: Because I don't believe that the NCAA as it's presently constituted is going to do anything in behalf of the players. Let me give you an example. I wrote to just about all the NCAA presidents and committee members and the council members asking just for them to subsidize a players association or convention so that the players could forcefully represent their ideas, because right now the players have no representation whatever within the NCAA. And they won't even provide some money to find out what the players' problems are. I've had a person, for instance, one of the foremost authorities on sports law in America, John Weistart, who is a professor of law at Duke University, and he said as he watched the proceedings yesterday he was struck by how different the conversations would have been had half those delegates represented the athletes' interests instead of strictly institutional interests.

MacNEIL: What would a union do, Mr. Corrigan?

Mr. CORRIGAN: Oh, boy! It certainly would change the face of it. Again, you know, what you're talking about an environment, an academic environment. You're talking about bringing a union of athletes into a college environment. I just can't see -- I think it would turn the student body against the athlete. That's the one thing that we don't want to do.

MacNEIL: Mr. DiVenzio, what you're really doing is making amateur college athletes professionals while they're in college. Isn't that what you're doing?

Mr. DiVENZIO: There is nothing mutually exclusive about money and sports. The criterion that we should establish for athletes is that they are indeed students at a university. It's not really important. At Duke University, for example, we have many, many sons of millionaires and daughters of millionaires, and nobody squawks about the ability of a millionaire to study in a science class. The fact that an athlete gets paid or not paid is not the important thing. What we want is students that are truly Duke students playing on the teams, and then how much money they have is unimportant.

MacNEIL: Okay. Well, Mr. DiVenzio and Mr. Corrigan, thank you both for joining us in New Orleans.

Mr. DiVENZIO: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: In his cartoon tonight, Lurie looks at the budget battles that are about to begin again.

[Lurie cartoon -- President Reagan commands the huge dog "Budget" to sit and it does, right on top of him.]

Once again the main stories of the day. Libyan jet fighters intercepted a U.S. reconnaissance plane but there were no threatening moves. A presidential commission found fault with government efforts against organized crime. A report said many of the nation's poorest people are not getting food stamps, but on this program the official in charge of the food stamp program called the report worthless. Good night, Robin.

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