The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Good evening. I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After the News Summary this Thursday, we join the debate started by Vice President Quayle about single parenting and family values. Correspondent Jeffrey Kaye reports on how Los Angeles media handled the riots in their city. Finally, L.A. essayist Anne Taylor Fleming has some thoughts about her city now. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: The political war over family values continued today. President Bush, Vice President Quayle and leading Democratic Presidential contender Bill Clinton all fired salvos. The battle began Tuesday after Mr. Quayle criticized the Murphy Brown television program in which the lead character had a baby out of wedlock. President Bush offered his latest comments at a political fund-raiser in Cleveland, where he called for strengthening the American family.

PRES. BUSH: I know that there are those who are deprived, who are born into almost hopeless situations, but there are all kinds of ways that we can help. You can lift up the kid that starts off with a tremendous advantage through what we call "points of light activities." You can look at every single piece of legislation to see that it doesn't encourage husband and wife to live apart. You can do what you can in the whole field of education, but all of us as Americans must address ourselves to the idea that we must find ways to strengthen the American families, because Barbara Bush is right. What happens in your house is much more important than what happens in the White House.

MR. MacNeil: Bill Clinton said the Bush administration was saying the right things about family values, but they had failed to do anything to improve the situation. He also spoke in Cleveland.

BILL CLINTON: The question is not are family values important. Of course, they are. It's not are they under fire; you bet they are. It's not is TV destructive of family values; all too often it is. The question is: What are we going to do about it? It isn't enough for America's leaders to blame past social programs or current TV programs. It isn't enough for Americans to change channels. We need to change course.

MR. MacNeil: The man who started it all, Vice President Quayle, was asked by reporters in Washington today whether he had any regrets. He responded by saying he would not change a word of his Tuesday speech.

VICE PRESIDENT QUAYLE: I'm sure that the media elite and Hollywood didn't like the speech that I gave, but the American people support what I'm talking about. And I'm talking about values. I'm talking about family. I'm talking about integrity. I'm talking about opportunity. I'm talking about personal responsibility. And Hollywood and the media elite may not understand that, but America does.

MR. MacNeil: We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Charlayne.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Four men told a Los Angeles judge today that they were not guilty of beating and severely injuring a truck driver at the beginning of the riots last April 29th. The four defendants are black. The truck driver is white. The incident took place just hours after a jury found four white policemen innocent in the beating of black motorist Rodney King. The judge today set bail for the four defendants. He said he could find no reason why they would pose a threat to others if they were released pending trial. The Los Angeles District Attorney today released the report saying gang activity in Los Angeles County is out of control. The study estimated that nearly half of all young black men in the county belong to a street gang. Authorities said there were at least 936 gangs in Los Angeles County, with about 150,000 members of all races and ages.

MR. MacNeil: The Senate today debated an emergency aid bill for the nation's cities. Along the way it has grown from an $822 million package to rebuild riot-damaged Los Angeles and flood- damaged Chicago into more than $2 billion for all cities. The extra money would provide funds for summer jobs, schools, and other programs. On the Senate floor, West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd and California Republican John Seymour argued for and against the larger package.

SEN. ROBERT BYRD, [D] West Virginia: Why can't we find emergency funds for our own people? Why can we find, always find emergency funds for every other country, Bangladesh, you name it, every other country but our own, our own?

SEN. JOHN SEYMOUR, [R] California: The immediate need is for emergency disaster assistance. That, in essence, was passed, Mr. President, by the House. What has happened here in this bill is a Christmas tree, in fact, has been built, a Christmas tree that I have suggested is so heavy in its weight that it could sink the entire measure and, in fact, sinking the entire measure I have suggested that that can only lead to a very, very long hot summer in the city of Los Angeles.

MR. MacNeil: President Bush said he supports the smaller version of the bill, but yesterday called the extra money "not acceptable." The House must vote on the measure before it's sent to the President. New claims for unemployment benefits dropped in the first week of May. The Labor Department reported 20,000 fewer first-time claims. That followed two weeks of increases.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Roger Keith Coleman died in Virginia's electric chair last night for the 1981 murder and rape of his sister-in-law. The execution went ahead after the Supreme Court rejected a last minute appeal from Coleman's lawyers in a seven to twelve vote. The 33-year-old Coleman claimed he was innocent and pleaded his case in numerous interviews on television and in newspapers and magazines. Another 2,600 inmates are on Death Row, including a 45- year-old Texas man, scheduled to die by lethal injection tomorrow.

MR. MacNeil: China today detonated one of the most powerful nuclear devices ever used in an underground test. The blast in Northwest China was about 70 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II. It was about six times the size of tests conducted by the U.S., Russia, and other nuclear powers. In Washington, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said the U.S. regretted the test and urged China to exercise restraint. In Bangkok, Thailand, today, protesters jailed in this week's anti-government demonstrations were released. Relative calm returned to the capital, following a truce between the government and pro-democracy groups. At least 40 people were killed in four days of protests against the unelected Prime Minister.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: A top State Department official today denied accusations the Bush administration was covering up its pre-Gulf War dealings with Iraq. House Democrats have charged the administration used aid programs to help Iraq become a power in the Mideast before its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. House Banking Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez, a Texas Democrat, has placed government documents which he says support that view in the Congressional Record. Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said those disclosures had distorted the record and led to spurious conspiracy theories. He said the administration would provide no more classified materials unless the committee promises not to disclose them. Gonzalez said he would seek subpoenas if he didn't get the information he wants.

MR. MacNeil: That's our summary of the news. Now it's on to the debate over family values, the L.A. media, and Anne Taylor Fleming. FOCUS - HOME SWEET HOME?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: First tonight, we join the ongoing family values debate that took the political centerstage this week. It is an issue the Bush administration has often sought to raise, but never with as much success as this week. In a moment, we'll hear five views, but first some background. It all started last Sunday when President Bush raised the family values issue at the Notre Dame commencement.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Let me first say I'm not here in the mode of politics; I'm here to tell you the values that I strongly believe in. [applause] And those values can be summarized by the three major legacies that I certainly want to leave behind for my grandchildren, hopefully for yours; jobs, both for today's workers who are actively seeking work, and for graduates entering the work force; strong families to sustain us as individuals, to nurture and encourage our children, and to preserve our nation's character and culture.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: On Tuesday, Vice President Quayle picked up the theme. Speaking in San Francisco, Quayle linked the riots in Los Angeles to the crumbling of traditional family and personal morality.

VICE PRES. QUAYLE: When family fails, society fails. The anarchy and lack of structure in our inner cities are a testament to how quickly civilization falls apart when the family foundation cracks. Children need love and discipline. They need mothers and fathers. The welfare check is not a husband. The state is not a father. It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Yesterday, Quayle's attack on the popular television situation comedy took centerstage at the White House. At his regular morning briefing for reporters, Presidential Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater first echoed Quayle. He said, "The glorification of the life of an unwed mother does not do good service to most unwed mothers who are not highly paid, glamorous anchor women." By mid morning, Fitzwater had softened his attack and said, "The Murphy Brown show exhibits pro-life values which we think are good." In the afternoon, President Bush, appearing with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada, was repeatedly asked about the Vice President's comments.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Everybody give me a Murphy Brown question. I've got one answer right here for you. What's your Murphy Brown question? What's the question? You're getting four different questions. All right. Are you ready for the answer? All right. This is the last Murphy Brown question.

REPORTER: Maybe.

PRESIDENT BUSH: It's the last Murphy Brown answer, put it that way. No, I believe that children should have the benefit of being born into families with a mother and a father who will give them love and care and attention all their lives.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Today, speaking in Cleveland, Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Clinton said Vice President Quayle's speech was a cynical election year ploy. He charged the Bush administration was trying to evade its responsibility for the nation's problems.

BILL CLINTON: Family values can't simply be Washington code for beltway Republicans who really mean you're on your own, or for beltway Democrats who want to spend more of your tax money on programs that don't embody those values. If family values are going to mean something, we must offer a nation a third way, a nation that guarantees opportunity for every family but a society that demands responsibility from every individual. Of course there's a values crisis in America, but there's an action gap as well. Addressing one without the other isn't a plan of action; it's posturing to distract from inaction.

MR. MacNeil: Now we hear from five people with strong opinions about poverty and family values. Barbara Becnel is the author of two books on parenting. She is also a public policy consultant and has helped Los Angeles County develop programs for inner city youth. Tonight she's in New York. Gary Bauer is president of the Family Research Council, a conservative think tank and lobbying group in Washington. He was domestic policy adviser to President Reagan. Theresa Funiciello is director of Social Agenda, a non- profit advocacy group for the poor based in New York. Ms. Funiciello was herself a welfare recipient in the 1970s. She's currently writing a book on welfare policy. Jim Sleeper, an editorial writer for New York Newsday, is the author of a book "The Closest of Strangers, Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York;" and Rev. Keith Butler is a Republican City Counselor and pastor of a church in Detroit, where he joins us tonight. Ms. Funiciello, start with you, is Quayle opening a constructive debate on a useful subject, or, as Mr. Clinton suggested, posturing to attract attention?

MS. FUNICIELLO: No, I mean, I think what he's doing is hypocritical for the middle aged man born with a silver spoon in his mouth to go lecturing to poor people about their scholastic needs and whatnot when this man was known more in his youth for partying than studying seems to me to be a bit outrageous. Secondly, I think the mothers bashing has really come to a peak that these people have outdone themselves. A couple of weeks ago, they were saying, we have to get all these welfare mothers out and into the wage labor force. Today they're saying -- seem to be saying, well, mothers aren't spending enough time with their children. We may be able to dance backwards and in high heels, but we haven't figured out how to be in two places at the same time.

MR. MacNeil: Gary Bauer, do you think Mr. Quayle has opened a constructive and useful debate?

MR. BAUER: Absolutely. This debate is way overdue. The fact of the matter is that for the last 30 years, this country has been on a sort of unbridled individualism trip. If you go back to the '60s, you had different strokes for different folks, if it feels good, do it. We've been doing this for 30 years now and we've left the playing field filled with victims, most of them women and children. The breakdown of the family is a disaster. The Vice President really provided a great public service to get this debate going. Of course, there are going to be charges of politics, et cetera. It's an election year. But the American people are going to have to address the ramifications of the breakdown of the family unit and what it means for our children. And I think the ramifications are a national disaster.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Becnel, has the Vice President performed a great public service?

MS. BECNEL: Well, we had -- there's the potential there to make it a great public service. I don't believe the intention was for it to be a great public service. What I see -- I agree with Ms. Funiciello, except that I see something even more sinister in the Vice President's message and in the President's message. What I hear now is a new code phrase. Before it was quotas and affirmative action. Now, it's family values, because family values -- I mean, we're not making the correct distinctions here. If we want to have a discussion about family values, that's one thing. But to connect in some bizarre way the discussion of family values with single parents, which really means minority female-headed families --

MR. MacNeil: And with the riots in Los Angeles.

MS. BECNEL: And with the riots -- is just an outrageous thing. So I see it as a new code phrase and I really see this as another Bush-Quayle, and whatI'm now calling the Wilhamina Horton issue of the 1992 campaign.

MR. MacNeil: Rev. Butler, do you see it as a new code phrase, as Ms. Becnel does?

REV. BUTLER: I don't think it's a new code phrase. The whole issue of family values is one that affects inner city and suburban areas. It's true that the rise of teen pregnancy, unwed pregnancy, and other family value issues has been something that's been affecting our country across-the-board for many years. And I think that the effects of it have been disastrous. The only regret I have is that there was some connection between Los Angeles and this issue, because I think this issue goes far beyond just the inner city. I think it's a national problem.

MR. MacNeil: Well, do you think it was improper of the Vice President to make the connection he did between riots and lawless youths who join gangs as the result of families with no fathers in them?

REV. BUTLER: I think it was a stretch to do that, because there were many reasons why I think that situation exploded the way it did. And I thought it was somewhat unfortunate to define it in such a narrow way. I think family values and the whole issue of pregnancy and single parenting and poverty requires a lot more than that.

MR. MacNeil: How do you feel about it, Mr. Sleeper?

MR. SLEEPER: Well, I think in some sense, Robin, if we're asking what becomes of the boys who grow up in single parent families, as I suppose Quayle would want to do, and I think that's a legitimate question, what are they being raised for, if most of the families in a community are single parent families, that's a legitimate question. But in order to answer it effectively, there have got to be some level of employment, there have got to be some job opportunities for boys in those communities to seize onto. I think that most of the women in low income communities who are either having children out of wedlock or who are not staying in single parent families don't feel that they're necessarily doing it out of choice. They're in a web of constraints, and one of those is, as William Julius Wilson has said, is that the boys are not growing up to become men who feel they can be earners. I think that's something that Quayle has no intention of addressing seriously when he invokes the values question.

MS. BECNEL: One of the issues though is that we're all here making assumptions or maybe most of us are making assumptions. And the assumption is that by definition a female-headed family is by definition a terrible thing and doomed to failure. And I think we need to put on the table that there are many, many, many single family -- female-headed families who the mothers do a good job and the sons of these -- of families end up okay. I happen to be one. My son is in college right now. So we shouldn't just make the assumption that by definition that's terrible.

MR. MacNeil: Would you agree with that, Mr. Bauer?

MR. BAUER: Well, look, I think that there are many single parents who do absolutely heroic jobs, but when you're making public policy, you've got to look at the research. And the research says that overwhelmingly children do better if they have a mother and a father. I disagree that the Vice President's not going to address the question of the role of men in all this. These women didn't wake up and find themselves miraculously pregnant and abandoned. They're pregnant because men fathered those children and yet, ran away from their responsibilities. And until we get young men and young women of both races, it has nothing to do with blacks or whites, it's both races, Hispanics have the same problem, unless we can get people to start taking more responsible decisions with their lives, it doesn't make any difference what we do with poverty programs, how many enterprise zones we put in the inner city. You can't have a social system where the majority of young boys and girls are growing up in homes with no father in that house.

MR. MacNeil: Well, let's just stick to that point of whether women can bring up adequately and successfully bring up children alone.

MS. FUNICIELLO: Millions do, but I wanted to also get back to the question of whether it's a race issue or this issue or that issue. Even middle class white men abandon their children and they don't pay child support for them, so this is not something that is restricted to poor people. It seems to be also an implication of this. This is something that men just happen to be doing all over the country in fairly large numbers. Until men as a group start to deal with what their jobs are in society as parents, themselves, instead of moving public policy toward whether women per se of any race are the problem, then we're not going to have any solutions.

MR. BAUER: But can't we reach a consensus here? Is this really an issue of debate that on balance children do better if they have two parents?

MS. BECNEL: But, again, let's make distinctions. Yes, of course - -

MR. BAUER: There are the exceptions. But on balance, do children do better with two parents?

MS. BECNEL: Yes, but there's still -- but let's make the appropriate distinction -- there still is a difference between saying children do better and saying children -- everything falls apart and you are going to end up with a bunch of delinquents and criminals.

MR. MacNeil: Let me quote from the Vice President's text again, part of the context before he got to the Murphy Brown thing. The Vice President said, "Marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program of all. Among families headed by American couples today, there's a poverty rate of 5.7 percent, but 33.4 percent of families headed by a single mother are in poverty today." What is your -- what is your comment on that, Mr. Bauer?

MR. BAUER: Well, he's absolutely right. One of the biggest predictors of whether a child is born into poverty or not is whether that child is being born to a single mother. In Washington, D.C., this year, 65 percent of all the children born will be born out of wedlock. You can visit prison in the country and you'll find in those prisons the results of dysfunctional families, of broken families.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Rev. Butler, does that suggest then that poverty is the result of illegitimate births, or the consequence of -- that illegitimate births are the consequence of poverty?

REV. BUTLER: Obviously, all poverty is not the result of that, but clearly, a significant portion of the new poor, particularly in the last fifteen to twenty years, statistics show, as Mr. Bauer has indicated and as you read from the Vice President's text, and as we have seen some of these statistics in my state, that the fastest growing poverty segment is a household headed by a woman with children. That's not to say that every household winds up in poverty. That's not to say that there are not some women who do a good job.

MR. MacNeil: Are these women --

REV. BUTLER: But it's clear, it's one of the problems.

MR. MacNeil: Are these women having so many illegitimate babies young because they're poor, or are they causing poverty by having so many illegitimate babies young?

MS. BECNEL: Okay. Wait a minute. That's another --

REV. BUTLER: If I may have the opportunity to -- if I may have the opportunity to respond, one of the things that needs to be said, that this is a problem that goes beyond just the poor. It goes beyond just the blacks and whites in even cities and suburbs. One of the stats that you will find is that women who are single households with children earn significantly less by and large than any other group in the country, and it is the fastest growing segment where we do have poverty. I don't think that you can ignore those statistics and it's clear that a family, husband and wife raising children, is a better experience than one male or female raising children and in my community as an African American, I must say, as the minister at a large church, that we need to have families, whole families together. We need that more than anything else.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. Ms. Funiciello.

MS. FUNICIELLO: There are countries in the world with higher rates of unwed child bearing than ours without the kind of poverty that we have. We have the poverty that we have for two reasons. One is discrimination in the wage labor force for women who choose that option; two, because we don't accord women who do work at home as mothers, nurturers, philosophers, judges, the whole gamut of things that mothers have to do, as legitimate laborers and, therefore, we assign no value to what they do. As for the growing population of teen-agers as people seem to be claiming, unwed and on welfare, the truth is teen-agers do not have any more babies today than they did 30 years ago. In fact, they have fewer. And black teen-agers have reduced their rate even more than white teen-agers. What is different is that they don't get married and they don't get married for a very good reason, because everyone knows that shotgun marriages do not work. They have never worked. The people on welfare at that level are the same people that would have been on welfare twenty or thirty years ago, because they would have gotten married first, and then the boy would have run away.

MR. MacNeil: Let me --

REV. BUTLER: I don't agree with that. I think that absolutely we are missing the point here. In that Murphy Brown sitcom, one, what the church teaches is that people should not be involved in premarital sex. If they choose to do so, then they should protect themselves and not have irresponsible sex and bring into the world a child in that situation. That's part of the problem that we have in America. That's personal responsibility. I think that's what the Vice President was talking about and I think we're missing the point with some of this discussion.

MS. BECNEL: Okay. Another issue, and that is we are again making assumptions here and the assumption we're making is that virtually every female-headed family had a child out of wedlock. With a divorce rate of over 50 percent, I mean, give me a break. I mean, every female-headed family is not a parent who's had an out of wedlock child. One other thing -- the other issue is when we talk about the poverty issue, we could develop some tougher measures to make sure and ensure that these mothers get the child support payments that they need from the fathers. That would also help.

MR. MacNeil: Let me ask Gary Bauer another question. Taking another quotation from the Vice President before the one I just gave, and that is the inter-generational poverty that troubles so much -- us so much today is predominantly a poverty of values.

MR. BAUER: Well, I think the statement stands on its own.

MR. MacNeil: What do you think that means and is it true?

MR. BAUER: Absolutely. Look, there are very clear values that we know again from the research.

MR. MacNeil: You mean people are poor because of their values?

MR. BAUER: Let me finish.

MR. MacNeil: Okay.

MR. BAUER: The research says that there are very clear values that get you out of poverty. The ability to apply yourself to a job -- marriage is an extremely important thing in getting out of poverty. Maintaining a commitment to your spouse in that household is a very important thing. Teaching your children to apply themselves, to show up for work on time, extremely important; values are key not just to poverty, escaping poverty, they're key to everything that we hope for our children. Now, that's not to suggest that there aren't people in our country that don't have as many opportunities. And we need to address that with enterprise zones, tax cuts, tenant ownership of public housing, educational choice. But those things will not be enough as long as we're sending a message to our children and to many young people that unbridled individualism, do whatever you want, if it feels good, do it, as long as those messages are being sent, these poverty programs will not work.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Sleeper.

MR. SLEEPER: Unbridled individualism was clearly the message of the Reagan-Bush years, the whole "greed is good" decade. And the assumption that enterprise zones or handing over housing projects to people who can no way pay the carrying cost is somehow going to support them in their search for values is just wrong. I just want to say I think there is a point that Mr. Bauer makes that's correct, and the Rev. Butler is right. There is something irreducible about values. All the programs in the world don't get there if people aren't strong and can't make choices. That's true. And I don't know why we have to choose between the two things. The problem is that having said that -- and I think liberals and Democrats should say that a lot more -- we need more than enterprise zones to give people a matrix in which their choices yield something.

MR. MacNeil: What do you think of the phrase, of the sentence -- The poverty that troubles us, the intergenerational poverty -- I guess that's one poor generation after another -- that troubles us so much today is predominantly a poverty of values?

MS. BECNEL: Well, all right --

MR. MacNeil: Let's apply it to the inner city of Los Angeles that you know very well and which is what started the Vice President talking.

MS. BECNEL: The problem is that there is hopelessness in the inner city. Now, I have been a consultant for the county of L.A. I'm going to give a very precise example of what we need to look at here. And as a consultant, I have developed job training programs for the most disenfranchised youth, for gang members. Now, you go into Watts and put together a job training program and you know what? You cannot get anyone to employ these young people. We ran into overt racism, where the employer would say, oh, okay, this person just came through this job training program, and then when the young black male showed up, all of a sudden, 20 minutes ago the job was there, 20 minutes later, the job was -- had been filled. And 20 minutes later, the job was there again when they only heard a disembodied voice. So, you know, if you set up an environment where there is hopelessness, even when you -- when the money's there and the job training opportunities are there if they can't get the jobs, then you have a problem. And that leads to eventually giving up. And that also leads to rage.

REV.BUTLER: If I may --

MR. MacNeil: Yes.

REV. BUTLER: Again I think we're also missing an important point here. During the Great Depression, one of the worst economic times in American history, millions of people were out of work, millions of people were poor. You did not have the crime; you did not have the lawlessness; you did not have the teen pregnancies; you did not have the pregnancies of people who were not teens; you did not have the break up of the family that we have today. It is not just the issue of money.

MR. MacNeil: Because people lived by the values you're going to go on to say that the Vice President thinks they should live by now, is that --

REV. BUTLER: That's really the basic Judeo Christian values that this country was founded upon, was challenged or particularly in the 1960s and '70s --

MR. MacNeil: Okay.

REV. BUTLER: The rules of the game had changed.

MR. MacNeil: Well, let's discuss that then realistically. Starting with you, Mr. Sleeper, your newspaper said in an editorial today in a reply to Quayle, "You can't bring back Ozzie and Harriet, and you can't cancel Murphy Brown." Is there any reason to expect, given all the social dynamics of today and where this society has gone, that you can by a real concerted campaign of all the positive of things the President and Vice President talked about and Clinton talked about, can you expect the two parent nuclear family of several decades ago to be restored to this country, or have we moved beyond that stage irreparably?

MR. SLEEPER: I hope we haven't moved beyond the stage where people can make that choice in which people who want to sustain a two-parent family don't feel torn apart by pressures of unemployment and other things, value problems.

MR. MacNeil: Can we go back to the two-parent family in a significant -- to a significant extent, particularly as concerns the poor people and particularly the urban poor and minority population?

MR. SLEEPER: We won't be able to go backward by preaching alone. I do think and it is important to note that like Rev. Butler's congregation, there are many parishes or churches in poor, minority neighborhoods that are working hard with their men folk, that are doing things that are helping people take more charge of their lives and that are reinstituting some of these norms. I don't think we want to pull the rug out from under people who are making those efforts. I don't think we should say this is all a one way street and we're all headed toward a new definition. I think there should be support and encouragement on the value level for people to reinstate these things, but we can't do it with gimmickry on the economic side.

MR. MacNeil: Let's hear from Ms. Funiciello, then I'll come back to you, Mr. Bauer. Do you think that it is realistic to think that this country could go back to a large -- significantly larger proportion of families with two parents?

MS. FUNICIELLO: It's not inconceivable, but I think the more important point is: Do poor people, do black people, which for some reason in this country is synonymous for some people -- it doesn't happen to be true -- have really significantly different values than any other people? And I would argue that they don't have significantly different values. But I think there are some things that you need to take into consideration. There was a time when women would stay with a man who beat them over and over again. And if you think that's a good value, then, you know, go back to it. In Gloria Steinem's recent book, she quotes a very interesting set of statistics. In Knoxville, Tennessee, Valentine's Day, 1991, there were 30 applications for marriage; there were 60 applications for divorce; and 90 applications for -- to get men -- orders of protection to keep the spouses who were beating the wives from being able to get near them. What does that tell you? It says something about family violence and we don't tolerate it anymore the same way that we once did.

MR. MacNeil: I'd like to hear Gary Bauer's idea. Do you think it is realistic of Clinton, Bush, Quayle, to suggest not just to their own political constituency, people who will vote for them, but to the country as a whole, and especially people in despair are having a really hard time, that you can move back to two-parent families?

MR. BAUER: Look, if they're wrong about this, then we'd better all get ready for real tough days ahead. No society can long survive this kind of family break-up. Mr. Sleeper's right. It's not enough just to talk about it, but it is important to begin this battle by speaking the truth.

MR. MacNeil: Now, you're saying no society can long survive, but we checked today with a couple of countries, Ms. Funiciello mentioned it earlier. In France, in 1990, just over 30 percent of all births were out of wedlock and in Britain, 28 percent, and both those societies are stable societies.

MR. BAUER: But you're talking about in this country in urban areas the figure being 65 percent, for example, in Washington, D.C. Those countries don't have the kind of diverse population we have. When you have the kind of family break-up we're experiencing in our big cities, it's impossible to break the cycle of poverty. One other point -- we insult poor people when we suggest that poverty is an excuse for bad behavior. Most poor people live decent, good lives, obey the law, work hard, raise their children well. We should expect that of all Americans, no matter what their race, their religion, or their economic background.

REV. BUTLER: That's absolutely true. That's absolutely true.

MR. MacNeil: Let me go here first, Rev. Butler, and then I'll be back to you.

MS. BECNEL: Okay, first of all, Mr. Bauer just made my point for me a few moments ago, when you made the case that other countries were experiencing this and he said, but other countries don't, in essence, have our inner cities. So, again, that's where I began my comment that these -- this is a code phrase. We aren't really talking about the problems of American family values. I wish we were. But what we are really talking about is, that the code phrase we are talking about the problems of or the values or the disintegration of inner city, which again means minorities. Now that's one part of it.

MR. MacNeil: That's what you meant, Gary Bauer, right?

MR. BAUER: Look, absolutely not. The majority of illegitimate children are born to white mothers. I talk about family values all the time. And I know when I'm talking, I'm not talking in code words. I'm not aiming this at black parents. I'm aiming it at the overall family disintegration that we're experiencing across-the- board from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., to the inner city.

MR. MacNeil: I'm going to -- I'm very sorry to do this, but I haven't been listening to my time cues here and we are out of time. I hate to interrupt it, but we are. I thank you all.

MS. BECNEL: Drat.

MR. MacNeil: And, Charlayne.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Still ahead, Los Angeles, how the news media played the riots, and how essayist Anne Taylor Fleming views her hometown now. FOCUS - COVERING THE COVERAGE

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: We turn now to another story about media influence. This one focuses on how well the local news media, television in particular, covered the violence in Los Angeles. Correspondent Jeffrey Kaye of public station KCET has our report. It begins with today's court appearance of four men charged in the beating of truck driver Reginald Denny.

MR. KAYE: It was a media feeding frenzy this morning at a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. Reporters and camera crews jostled for position as family members of those charged in the Reginald Denny beating case walked a gauntlet. Inside the courtroom, four men whom prosecutors described as gang members heard a judge impose bail ranging from fifty thousand to a hundred and ninety-five thousand dollars. The prosecutor wanted no bail.

PROSECUTOR: I do not believe the court can ignore the riotous situation as played on television live.

MR. KAYE: The defendants denied gang affiliations. Three pleaded innocent to attempted murder and other charges. A fourth pleaded innocent to robbing Denny as he lay on the ground. The incident, broadcast live, has polarized Los Angeles and turned the atmosphere outside the court into a circus. The case has become highly politicized. Campaigns have even started to use the sensational Denny beating footage in TV commercials.

COMMERCIAL SPOKESMAN: It's not white people's fault there were riots in LA; it's not black people's fault there were riots in LA.

MR. KAYE: As in the Rodney King beating, dramatic pictures of the assault of Reginald Denny are likely to be a centerpiece of the prosecution. Police agencies have subpoenaed home video like this as well as TV news footage to press cases against others involved in the riots. Not only will these images be used in the criminal justice system, they will also leave powerful impressions on audiences. But many feel the barrage of pictures did not tell the full story.

SPOKESMAN: We, the jury, in the above entitled action find the defendant, Lawrence M. Powell, not guilty --

MR. KAYE: From the moment on April 29th, when the jury's decision in the King beating case was broadcast live, television was relentless in its coverage of the aftermath.

CORRESPONDENT: This got so bad that we thought we should bring it to you.

MR. KAYE: As violence flared shortly after the verdict, the seven commercial stations in Los Angeles provided live coverage of the unfolding events.

CORRESPONDENT: We do this reluctantly. Our policy here was to - - certainly not to try in any way to incite anything like this and when it first started, it was small, that was our position, but this has gotten to the point now where it could be injurious to the people living around the area, most of the peaceful folks that live in that area, and that is why we're bringing it to you.

REV. CECIL MURRAY, First African Methodist Episcopal Church: The images accurately reflected what was going on. The images accurately reflected what was going on in context -- that's a question.

MR. KAYE: The Rev. Cecil Murray, pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, said too often reporters showed sensational pictures without providing any background.

REV. MURRAY: I would have looked to the depths of it, not to the surface of it. It's a judgment call, but cameras are supposed to have judgment behind them. Cameras have no judgment, given their mechanical nature. But the people who have the news are also unfortunately part of the news.

MR. KAYE: On the evening of the verdict, Murray convened a church service attended by black community leaders and residents.

REV. MURRAY: Would you do us this kindness, shift gears, settle now.

MR. KAYE: There were calls for peace and there was anger covered by live television, but pictures of peaceful protests were overshadowed by more powerful images of destruction and violence.

JOHN MACK: This is a rough night. It's a rough night, folks.

MR. KAYE: This station chose to show fires, while running live speeches of protest.

JOHN MACK: So we don't have anything to be happy about. We are angry! Today those 12 jurors who live in the nice cozy little Simi Valley could not open up their minds and get past the Valley and to the facts! They saw, they said today to those four police officers, it's still all right to beat the hell out of a black man and walk away! [cheering and applause]

NEWSMAN: It's fair to say that none of them are aware of what's going on on the screen while they're speaking. It's obvious, but I thought it needed to be pointed out.

CORRESPONDENT: Good point. The juxtaposition is our doing; this is not, this is not a prearranged plan on anybody's part.

MR. KAYE: As the riot broke out, most of the reporting was done from the safety of helicopters. Distant shots of fires and looting conveyed an eery feeling of disconnectedness according to journalist Ruben Martinez. He covered the riots from the ground for an alternative paper, the L.A. Weekly.

RUBEN MARTINEZ, Reporter, L.A. Weekly: I can understand the need for helicopters to go around the city for mobility to get places quickly and then see what's going on in the various parts of town, but symbolically what that plays out as is almost like the scene from "Blade Runner," where you have off worlds, you know, these people living in the off worlds above the inner city, and everybody down below scattered in poverty and forgotten. It really seemed like the suburbs were watching from above, from a helicopter, taking shots of people, black and brown people, down below on the streets as small as ants, utterly unhuman. And of course, you had TV commentary on top of that basically to go along with the black and brown faces, adjectives like "hooligans, thugs, illegals." So taken together, the distancing with the helicopter shot and the denigrating language I think did a tremendous disservice to the story, the magnitude of the story.

MR. KAYE: Murray Fromson agrees. Fromson, a former CBS TV correspondent, now a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, feels viewers could have benefited from more analysis of who was involved and why.

MURRAY FROMSON, Journalism Professor, USC: Have somebody who knows something about the community, somebody who's a resident of the community, talk about what's going on, where are they, who are the people, are they the targets, and what do they have to say about all of this? We got it in bits and drebs as the rioting progressed. I don't think it was up front when people were absolutely riveted to the television screen in the first eight hours of what was going on.

MR. KAYE: During much of the rioting, reporters often let the pictures tell the story and simply described what they saw. Sometimes generic narration substituted for information.

REPORTER: We really do not have a clue as to where this fire is. We can tell you it's just like all the others we have had around the Los Angeles area tonight. It's big; it's hot, tough to put out, and the firefighters simply can play catch up, hook up their heavy duty large hoses, and pour tons of water in there.

PROF. FROMSON: What you have is instant babble, what I call the "Persian Gulf syndrome."

MR. KAYE: What do you mean?

PROF. FROMSON: Well, do you remember seeing the television correspondents on the rooftops in Tel Aviv and Dharan all screaming and yelling about incoming Scud missiles? What did they know? They were just terrified and they were just talking.

MR. KAYE: Vamping.

PROF. FROMSON: Vamping.

MR. KAYE: News director Warren Cereghino of Los Angeles KTLA makes no apologies for TV's often breathless performance during the riots. He says viewers expected instant reporting.

WARREN CEREGHINO, News Director, KTLA-TV: This is a live medium and, therefore, they expected to deliver accordingly and if you do not have immediacy, they're going to be reaching for that knob and changing channels and going to another station. They can criticize us later for what they feel were our imperfections, but at the moment, don't you dare stop this.

MR. KAYE: One of the more serious imperfections, according to critics, was a failure by television to explain the cultural and ethnic complexity of Los Angeles and of the riots.

MR. MARTINEZ: South Los Angeles is 50 percent Latino and 50 percent African American, yet, the TV coverage did not see the 50 percent that was Latino. And there was no coverage also of the Pico-Union neighborhood, which is just North of the South part of Los Angeles, the Salvadoran neighborhood was not covered at all as well. So we are a city that is extremely complicated. What we were seeing on TV was very simplistic, was a black and white or a black and Korean story. It was not that at all. On TV, you got that image, but reality, it was every ethnic group in the city and tensions and conflict amongst all.

MR. KAYE: Korean-owned businesses were targets of many rioters, but Koreans felt they too were not given sufficient opportunity to tel their story. Brenda Paik Sundo is news editor at the Korean Times, an English language weekly.

BRENDA PAIK SUNDO, News Editor, Korean Times: The story that is not being told, even if you were to look in those communities, is the circumstances, why did the merchants go into those areas, I mean, they're immigrants, they don't have much money when they come, they don't know the English language. They have to go into places to survive and places where they can set up shop cheaply, and it's in those areas where they are able to do that. So there's an image that Koreans are going deliberately to exploit, take the money, and run. But that's not the case.

MR. KAYE: Sundo was particularly upset about dramatic pictures of Korean merchants firing weapons during the riots. The pictures didn't show that they were coming under attack.

BRENDA PAIK SUNDO: That they were firing back at people that were shooting at them. The reason Koreans had to defend themselves is that, you know, for two days there was just absolute lawlessness and their stores and lives were in jeopardy so they had no choice but to defend themselves. And that's basically what happened. But the image was very skewed to just show that shooting, not being shot at.

LINDA MOUR, Eyewitness News 7: This is Linda Mour live. I think that you've started to take this picture just about two minutes ago. Some of the Korean shop owners here -- hold on a second guys -- just a few moments ago several of the Korean shop owners pulled out of their stores and they started pulling out weapons. These are all loaded guns. It seems like someone's been shot. Where? Where?

MAN: Right behind the tan car.

LINDA MOUR: Someone's been shot in the car?

MAN: No. They're shooting back. We're in the middle of a gun fight.

LINDA MOUR: I draw the line. I never wanted to cover a war. And yet here I am in my own backyard -- I feel like I'm covering a war right here and the gentleman said, yeah, but at least in a war you know who your enemy is.

MURRAY FROMSON: And I think the problem for me was that most of the reporters that I saw were young and inexperienced and seemed to be on alien territory when they were in the inner city and in fact, that's probably true, because that's the way local television has always covered the inner cities.

MR. KAYE: News director Warren Cereghino agrees that TV news could have done better during the riots.

WARREN CEREGHINO: The criticism about a lack of context in general I think is a fair criticism. I think that perhaps we could have been better prepared, all of us could have been better prepared. Too many of the people who work in television news today do not have as good a grounding in real journalism as they should have and this unfortunately shows every once in a while.

MR. KAYE: Journalists will once again be out in force tomorrow when Officer Lawrence Powell is scheduled to be back in court for a hearing. Powell is facing a retrial on the charge of assaulting Rodney King. The parallel trials of Powell and those charged in the Denny beating are heightening community tension and in some areas, the way the news media chooses to report these highly charged events will also be on trial. ESSAY - PRIDE & PREJUDICE

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight and still in Los Angeles, writer Anne Taylor Fleming has some thoughts about her battered hometown.

MS. FLEMING: I got commiserative calls from friends all over the country. They'd seen the pictures of Los Angeles, a city on the brink of self-emulation, flames leaping into the night, TV helicopters fighting for air space with police choppers, getting multi-ethnic kids carting merchandise away. This, to them, was the ultimate Hollywood Film Noire come to technicolor life, the faces of Marilyn and Manson and Amy Semple McPherson, and every other damaged or demented soul to lurk in the canyons or stroll the star- studded sidewalks, booming up out of those flames. Sodom and Gomora, choking on greed and smog, life with out of control cops and out of control mobs, was finally burning to the ground. What could I say to them? For, surely, it looked that way this time. I have lived in Los Angeles all my life. It contains almost all my memories. I have watched it over 40 years bursting from its seams, leveling mountains and surging into the desert and down towards San Diego with arrogant disrespect for the beauty in its way. I have watched it put up music centers and museums and endless restaurants and wrench itself into some sort of cultural sophistication. I have watched it draw itself up into gated and paranoid communities, while turning its back on the others, cordoning them off in police- patrolled ghettos. I have watched it tiptoe up to the brink of urban Armageddon and go over it, once before in Watts in 1965, and now again. And I have clung, watching all this, to my sweet memories of a sun struck and blessed childhood here. But as I cruised the riot torn ghetto, I was obsessed with how we got here to this estranged and volatile point -- before Reagan -- before Watts -- before -- way back. In my angst, I turned to a provocative and highly touted history of Los Angeles, city of quartz, by an impassioned native son, Mike Davis. "We are not," he says, "big hearted dreamers washed up on the Pacific Shore, as we like to imagine ourselves, but, rather, defendants of a hard core land grabbing whiteelite." Chief among them was the Los Angeles Times dynasty, which was started before the turn of the century by Col. Harrison Gray Otis. Once the railroads came in the 1880s, Otis and Powell set about packaging the California dream in land tracts and selling it to an unprecedented migration of affluent Midwestern babbotry, Davis says. In the first quarter of the century hundreds of towns were laid out, a great port built in San Pedro, the unions busted, Hollywood established, cars introduced, a blitz crigue Davis calls the most ambitious city building plan in American history, made possible often by cheap Mexican labor. But from the outset, there was little race or class intermingling and the ever burgeoning sprawl was always vast enough to allow it. The patterns were set early, segregated patterns that would from the '20s on be reinforced by zoning laws and wily home owners' associations and post war white flight to those outlying manicured places like Simi Valley, where the Rodney King case was tried and lost, and plain old job discrimination and the increasing militarization of the police, with their big eyes in the sky peering at the demonized immigrant hordes who then demonized each other as we saw with the African Americans and Koreans in the recent conflagration. We are wrestling with those pictures now and with our past. It is the city's moment of truth, America's moment of truth, and we all know it. In recent days, I've heard people talk about leaving this place and I've argued with them, not now, wait. But what I'm simply saying is, I'm staying, I have nowhere to go. This is it. This is home, tarnished, anguished, greedy, polarized, caricatured and still beloved. This is it. It is not the time to leave. It is the time to stay. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. RECAP

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Again the main stories of this Thursday, the Senate tonight passed a bill that would provide $2 billion in emergency aid to the nation's cities. Four black men pleaded innocent to the near fatal beating of a white truck driver during the Los Angeles riots. China detonated one of the largest nuclear devices ever used in an underground test. The blast was estimated at 70 times the size of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Charlayne. That's the NewsHour tonight and we'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.