The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. The Beirut hostage situation again dominated the news of the day. There were unofficial reports Syria is involved in a new agreement for the release of the Americans. Three of the hostages interviewed by CBS said all are doing well. And, in Chicago, President Reagan said any arrangement must also include freedom for the seven Americans kidnapped before the TWA hijacking. Robert MacNeil is away; Charlayne Hunter-Gault is in New York, Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: On the NewsHour tonight, after the news of the day, we devote most of our time to different aspects of the hostage crisis. Our first focus is a look at the intense diplomatic maneuverings to free the hostages with Washington Post correspondent Don Oberdorfer. We then talk with a former hostage and a psychologist about the peculiar relationship between hostages and their captors. After that, we'll debate whether the media are reporting or exploiting the hostage crisis. Finally, in the wake of an explosion at a fireworks factory in Oklahoma we share the grief of those who mourn the dead.News Summary

LEHRER: There were fresh signs today the release of the American hostages in Beirut is near, but it has not happened yet and the signs were mostly unofficial. The most striking of them was an Associated Press report from Beirut which said Syria had agreed to take custody of the 39 TWA hostages and then release them 48 hours after a deal is struck wit_D Israel f/n the release of 735 Lebanese. The AP attributed the report to an authoritative official of the Lebanese government. It said the arrangements were being worked out by a special envoy of U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. But later in New York a U.N. spokesman said reports of an agreement were premature and should be taken with extreme caution. There was more talk with the hostages themselves today with CBS anchorman Dan Rather, who interviewed Allyn Conwell of Houston, the Reverend James McLoughlin of Geneva, Illinois, and Simon Grossmayer of Algonquin, Illinois. Grossmayer has only one lung, and there had been reports he would be released. Health was among the things discussed with Rather.

SIMON GROSSMAYER, Algonquin, Illinois: I have seen the other hostages and they are well. I'm sure that at times one of the things you have to guard against of course is depression, but we do share things with each other. When somebody is a little lonely we share with each other and we talk to each other and we get together, and we're holding up.

ALLYN CONWELL, Houston, Texas: Well, there are indeed some of us that are depressed; some of us are worried, some of us are perhaps more fragile than others. That's certainly true. Some of us have some abilities to withstand this thing better than others. But the thing that is very fortunate for all of us is that whatever our weaknesses and strengths, we share these.

LEHRER: Then the three hostages filed out of Amal leader Nabih Berri's house where the interview was held. They said nothing to reporters as they walked to a waiting car, a black Mercedes Benz; then it was Allyn Conwell who got into the driver's seat and it was he who drove the car as the three hostages went back under guard to their place of captivity. We will have a larger section of that interview later in the program. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: President Reagan ended his silence about the hostage situation today and declared that terrorists must be held to account for what they do. He spoke to a crowd outside a high school on suburban Chicago Heights, Illinois. Here is a report by correspondent Elizabeth Brackett.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT [voice-over]: The anticipation was high in this Chicago suburb as the President's helicopters first came into view. But the crowd outside had awhile to wait for the promised speech on tax reform. The President first held a half-an-hour private meeting with family members of the 11 Illinois residents held hostage in Beirut. Most encouraged after that meeting was the family of Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, one of the seven men kidnapped over the last year and a half in Beirut.

MAE MIHELICH, Father Jenco's sister: Now that we know that President Reagan has said that he will have all 46 hostages from Lebanon, and ours would be included.

BRACKETT: So you're definitely included?

Ms. MIHELICH: Oh, we feel much better, yes.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: The Jencos reported that the President had little new information for the 11 families, but most all were reassured by the chance to meet with him and gave him a standing ovation when he left. The President did have harsh words for the hostages' captors when he finally appeared before the crowd.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: If we permit terrorism to succeed anywhere, it will spread like a cancer, eating away at civilized societies and sowing fear and chaos everywhere. This barbarism is abhorrent, and all of those who support it, encourage it and profit from it are abhorrent. They are barbarians.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: While the press focused heavily on the latest information from the President and the White House on the hostages, many in the crowd had come to hear about tax reform.

CITIZEN: I'm not worried about the hostages, you know. It's basically tax reform I want to hear about. I'm a small businessman and, you know, I think it's duly needed.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: The crowd was not disappointed.

Pres. REAGAN: This is a tax plan for a growing, dynamic America. Lower, flatter tax rates will give Americans more confidence in the future. It'll mean if you work overtime or get a raise or a promotion, or if you have a small business and are able to turn a profit, more of that extra income will end up where it belongs, in your wallets, not in Uncle Sam's pockets.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: The President vowed to continue the campaign for tax reform throughout the summer and into the fall, and called for a vote on the tax plan in 1985.

LEHRER: There were two major economic numbers out today. The index of leading economic indicators showed a strong 0.7% increase last month. According to the Commerce Department it was the first increase in three months for the index, which is used to forecast economic performance six to nine months from now. The other number was not so good. It was the report of a $12.7-billion U.S. trade deficit in May, the second largest monthly deficit in history.

There was also big news today for American farmers. Agriculture Secretary John Block announced administration support for taking 20 million acres of highly erodable land out of crop production as part of a long-range land conservation program. Block went to theIndiana farm of Senator Richard Lugar to make the announcement. Here's a report by Brian Baxter of public station WFYI-Indianapolis.

BRIAN BAXTER, WFYI [voice-over]: Ag Secretary John Block came to Republican Senator Richard Lugar's Indiana farm early this morning to ask Congress to make a national soil conservation reserve program a part of the new farm bill.

JOHN BLOCK, Secretary of Agriculture: This reserve would be a 10-year, $11-billion project which would take up to 20 million acres of highly erodable cropland out of production. In addition, a successful program would have desirable environmental benefits. It would improve water quality, create a better habitat for fish and wildlife, and reduce sedimentation in our streams.

BAXTER [voice-over]: Under the program the government would pay farmers roughly $40 an acre to plant and keep their erodable ground in grassland or forest, and Senator Lugar says the time is right for passing this measure.

Sen. RICHARD LUGAR, (R) Indiana: As a nation we do not need full production from our most erodable acreage in order to meet food needs. We have tremendous surpluses of virtually all major crops. As a result, farm prices today often do not reflect the cost of producing the crop.

LEHRER: And Budget Director David Stockman developed a problem today with the New York Times. The Times ran a story this morning quoting a June 5th off-the-record Stockman speech to the New York Stock Exchange. The Times said he said the Reagan administration and House Democratic leaders have both resorted to half-truths and downright dishonesty in the debate over budget deficits, and that sizeable tax increases may be the only deficit solution that is consistent with fiscal sanity. White House and other administration spokesmen accused the Times of bad reporting and said Stockman was making a joke.

HUNTER-GAULT: An Irish government spokesman today said the bulk of the Air India jet that crashed off Ireland with 329 people aboard has been located. The wreckage was discovered by HMS Challenger, a seabed survey vessel, in waters 120 miles southwest of Ireland. An unidentified spokesman said he did not know whether the wreckage contained the black box flight recorders considered crucial to determining if a bomb explosion caused the crash.

LEHRER: And, finally in the news of this day, a federal appeals court ruled against former Kansas City television anchorwoman Chris Craft. The court threw out a jury's $325,000 damages award to Craft, who claimed she was demoted because of her looks. Her lawyers said today they would ask for a rehearing before the appeals court and would take it on to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. TWA Flight 847: Where It Stands

LEHRER: The American hostages in Beirut hold our attention for the next several minutes in a focus segment of many parts: tape of the CBS interviews conducted today with three hostages, the psychological problems facing them and the other hostages, and the role being played in all of this by the press, particularly television. The hard news on the situation itself was slim on this, the 14th day since it all began. Don Oberdorfer, diplomatic correspondent of the Washington Post, is here first to update what is known as of tonight. First, Don, can you confirm or deny this AP report about the hostages going to Syria?

DON OBERDORFER: Well, I can't confirm it, but I think the general expectation is that something like that may happen. There isn't, as far as I know, any hard confirmation of the story, but what is happening now, as far as we can tell, is that some very important discussions are taking place in Damascus about the future of the hostages. Mr. Assad seems to be taking a personal hand in it.

LEHRER: He's the president Sgtf Syria.Y:Mr. OBERDORFER: President of Syria. And out of those discussions is the hope really at this moment -- practically the only hope, as well as the most outstanding one -- for an early release.

LEHRER: And if I understand it, if the AP story is correct, then the hostages -- the 39 hostages will be taken to Damascus and then Israel would release the 735, or they would agree to release them and then the Americans would be released and then the Lebanese would be released?

Mr. OBERDORFER: Well, you have just stated all the imponderables. At' you know, the United States government and, to a degree, the Israeli government, have resisted any linking of one release with another. But clearly those are the irreducible demands, it seems, of the Shiite leaders of Amal and Mr. Berri. And so what is going on now is discussion of how to phase a release of the Americans with the release of the Lebanese Shiites who are being held by Israel. And how to arrange this so that nobody comes out the bad guy, as having bowed to demands, but everybody gets released.

LEHRER: Is there any feeling, Don, about a timetable for this, as how quickly this may happen?

Mr. OBERDORFER: Well, you get various readings of that, and the wisest information that I can get is that this is the most difficult part of all to predict. It could happen, you know, within the next few hours. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen over the weekend. It could happen early next week. It's the timetable on such things as this, where you have a real delicate question and you have a number of players involved, is the most difficult thing to predict.

LEHRER: The question, now, Don, of the seven non-TWA hostages still being held. President Reagan said they must be part of the hostage deal. Hostage Allyn Conwell in his interview with Dan Rather said today he was trying to find out where they were.

Mr. CONWELL: In the process of me trying to find that information I have become more aware of the so-called demands of the people who did kidnap them. But I don't know who kidnapped them, I don't know where they're held, and I unfortunately cannot reassure their families that they're in good health at present. I pray that we can.

DAN RATHER, CBS News anchor: And, Mr. Conwell, you may be aware that Secretary of State Shultz and others now are including those seven, saying that in any arrangement that the United States wants those seven to be returned as well as your group. You are aware of that?

Mr. CONWELL: No, sir, I was not aware of that. That distresses me because they're certainly requesting an entity, the Amal movement, to make concessions that they have absolutely either no control over or would appear to not even have adequate channels of communications to that other group. That would be like trying to negotiate the release of a hostage from a bankrobber in New York with a totally unique situation that's happening down in Mexico City. I think that's either not wise or certainly not prudent in this situation.

Mr. RATHER: I'm not sure I understood, Mr. Conwell, that you didn't know that before?

Mr. CONWELL: No, sir, I did not know that.

Mr. RATHER: Well, I want to say directly and gently to you that I didn't want to say anything -- I didn't want to report anything to you that would distress you or the other hostages in any way. This is a fact that Secretary Shultz and the U.S. government said yesterday they were taking this position. But beyond that I simply want you to know that I don't have much information about it either, other than they have -- they are making an effort to include those original seven with your group.

Mr. CONWELL: Well, I have to say that I admire that. I certainly would pray that there would be something to work out there. It's a grand thing to say to increase any freedoms that can be -- or any number of people that we can free. So I pray and hope that it can be done, but I certainly would be very surprised that even that channel could be opened.

LEHRER: Don Oberdorfer, can you shed any light on this thing? This part of it?

Mr. OBERDORFER: Well, the other seven are not believed to be under the control of Amal, as was just said by Mr. Conwell. And it seems unlikely to the people I talk to that they are going to be released. I think when it comes down to it, the U.S. government will take what it can get, and if it can get one hostage back it will take that, and if it can get 40, it will take that, and if it could get 47 or 46, as the case may be, it will very happily take that.

LEHRER: Well, then, as Dan Rather told Mr. Conwell on the phone, the U.S. position, the public position, even expressed today by President Reagan, apparently, to those people in Chicago was that that was going to have to be part of the deal. Now, how could that be, Don?

Mr. OBERDORFER: Well, the United States' position is it's not making a deal. The United States' position is, "give us our hostages back." And that there's no linkage. That's their formal position.

LEHRER: So it's not inconsistent to say, "We want everybody back."

Mr. OBERDORFER: They want everybody back, but the odds are that they're not going to get everybody back unless everybody -- unless everybody -- unless there's a big surprise here. My understanding is that Assad has tried in the past, the president of Syria, to work for the release of the seven Americans who have been kidnapped, and he has made a good effort at it and he's been unsuccessful. He has no control over those who are holding them. And that he is trying again. But I don't have any degree of optimism coming to me that that will succeed.

LEHRER: Thank you, Don. Charlayne? Flight 847: Hostage Psychology

HUNTER-GAULT: We turn now to an examination of that peculiar relationship between hostages and their captors, a relationship that we have seen increasingly more of over the last few days as the hostages and their Shiite guards have appeared at news conferences and in interviews. One such interview took place yesterday at a seaside resort-restaurant near Beirut. Here is how the interview ended after more than a half hour.

Mr. CONWELL: [unintelligible crosstalk] All right, Charles, there's a new condition. These fellows say for our release to be effective they have to go to America with us.

CHARLES GLASS, ABC News: Might have trouble getting a visa. [unintelligible cz9osstalk]

GUARD: Okay, you get visa for me.

HUNTER-' AULT: Today, in another network interview, Allyn Conwell went out of his way to describe how well the hostages are being treated by members of the Shiite group Amal.

Mr. CONWELL: I want to assure everyone that there is no expressions of hostility on the part of our present either captors or protectors -- we don't know which, but there's not anyone abusing anyone else. There is, in fact, a very realistic expression on the part of the people here, not only the Amal militia but the Lebanese civilians in the surroundings that we're housed in did bring us things. They'd bring us food, fresh fruits, vegetables, soft drinks, cigarettes. This morning some of us had hardboiled eggs and other breakfast foods, it was very welcome. And I hope that the people in America will listen to this, will wake up and will stand up and say, "By golly, let's participate in returning these people home," and I'd also like for people to stand up to participate as equally strongly and as fervently in their plea for us, also make a plea for the people of Lebanon that are detained in Israel without just cause.

HUNTER-GAULT: We look now at some of the problems that may be confronting the TWA hostages with two experts in the field. The first, Moorhead Kennedy, learned his hostage lessons the hard way, as one of those held hostage in Iran in 1980. He is now the executive director of the Council for International Understanding here in New York. He is joined by Dr. Morton Bard, director of the Center for Social Research at the City University of New York. Professor Bard is co-author of a The Crime Victim's Handbook, and has extensively studied hostage situations. Dr. Bard, I notice both you and Moorhead Kennedy nodding and shaking your head throughout all of those excerpts we've just looked at. What signals are you getting from them? How do you read those?

Dr. MORTON BARD: I think one of the most important things that Allyn Conwell said was "captor or protector." And I think that explains a good deal of the behavior of the hostages whom we've seen on the television excerpts. What that really signifies to me is the degree of terrorization that probably existed during the early period of the hostage-taking.

HUNTER-GAULT: With the different set of captors.

Dr. BARD: That's right, with the different captors. That must have been so terrorizing that the present captors are looked upon as people who are protecting them. The great fear, I would suspect, is in being turned back again to that original group.

HUNTER-GAULT: So you don't see any schizophrenia about the present Shiite guards, or whatever you call them, in what he had to say?

Dr. BARD: No. I really believe, from what I've seen, that it would be consistent with our understanding of what happens to people who have been taken hostage and who have been terrorized, that they come to a point of being grateful for their own existence. That is, that their survival has been so importantly fulfilled for them that they feel gratitude toward the people who are now in charge of them.

HUNTER-GAULT: Some of which we just saw in that last part.

Dr. BARD: I think we just saw some of that.

HUNTER-GAULT: Is this what is commonly referred to as the Stockholm syndrome, and do you think that's what's happening?

MOORHEAD KENNEDY: Well, you're talking about the nodding between the professor and myself. We're both a little fed up with the overuse of the word "Stockholm syndrome." It is a specialized form of identification that arises under certain circumstances. It did not arise in my captivity. It is clearly not arising here. There is no identification between these hostages and their guards. What there is -- what we all did is a manipulation. You tend not to offend those who bring you food, water, softboiled eggs, mail, which is going to be important to them. You strike out from the very beginning if you seek to establish a balance, a relationship with them. And you try and get as much out of them as you possibly can. They in turn are learning and developing a relationship with you. And that has to be because you're going to have to live together. And we saw that relationship change from the time when we thought and they thought they were going to have to kill us. Because we didn't have two groups, you see, as these people did. It was one group. Until suddenly a sea change occurred in January and we learned how to get along together. Each hostage has to work it out for himself. Each relation, way he handles himself depends on his style, on his dignity. I treated my guards like stewards at a club. I thanked them when they brought me food, I thanked them when they took me back from the bathroom, and one of the guards said to our room, "You three are gentlemen." And that was very important because we wanted to be treated like gentlemen and we treated them like gentlemen.

HUNTER-GAULT: So you agree with that --

Dr. BARD: I agree with that.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, the hostages have denied that they have been brainwashed or abused in any way. Do you believe them, or do you think this is something you have to say?

Dr. BARD: I believe that they have not been subjected to any formal brainwashing techniques as we understand them technically, but that they have experienced changes in their outlook as a consequence of their experience. I think there's little doubt of that. It is shaped in large measure, again, by the threat to their survival. That's very real. It arouses very primitive feelings. If you look carefully, as I did in my long tape on the ABC show last night, at the behavior, you see evidences of some depression, you see expressions of anguish, you hear expressed in subtle form anxiety and the need for the group to support each other. All of these are characteristic of what goes on in a situation of this kind.

HUNTER-GAULT: Do you see much different between Four situation and the situation of these people?

Mr. KENNEDY: The basic difference is that their horror, their fear of being executed lasted two days, when they were on the plane and when they were being taken off the plane. That was the scariest moment. Ours lasted two months, and so there was a very major difference there. These people are not cut off. They can listen to the BBC any time they want. They are being exposed to the foreign press, they're taken to a beach, they have a change of situation. It's very clear that they're being treated at this stage very much more easily than we were treated. So thedVe's a very major difference there. And, of course, they've only been held for two weeks. There's a very strong -- everything is being telescoped for them. Hopefully the release, too.

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, does that mean that the long-term psychological consequences may be different for this group than they were for Mr. Kennedy's?

Dr. BARD: I think that that depends very much on how long they're held captive. I think as a general proposition the longer this goes on the more difficult it is for a greater number of the people in the long term. That's just a general proposition that would vary from one individual to another.

Mr. KENNEDY: That's very important. Each individual is going to come out differently, depending on how that individual is able to accept in a very positive way the situation, make the best of it, stop trying to bargain with God and say this is not the kind of deal that I am supposed to have in life, stop feeling sorry for yourself and make the best that you can out of your hostage experience, and that makes the difference.

HUNTER-GAULT: Yeah, I think we've heard some of that from the man on the tape who was saying they were reacting in varying degrees. In all of the tape things we've seen in the lastfew days, do you detect any hidden messages or any way of, you know, communicating something that they're not really saying?

Dr. BARD: The only message I hear is the discomfort and the unhappiness inherent in losing one's autonomy. That's a very difficult thing to give up, your freedom. Having someone to whom you are responsible at every moment of the day and night. And I think that message, which is a very normal one, is a message that comes through clearly, I think. The spokespersons, the three people we've seen, have been selected because they're probably most intact and most able to express what the captors would like to have expressed. I'm not talking about a party line. I'm speaking instead about the fact that the people who are being held captive are intact, and that's what comes across.

HUNTER-GAULT: Basically, very briefly, do you see any hidden message?

Mr. KENNEDY: It's explicit. Israel, in their view, its conduct has led to what happened to them, and Israel is the receptacle, the target of their anger at this point. And that's coming through to me very, very clearly.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. We'll come back. Jim? Flight 847: Media Role

LEHRER: We move the focus from psychology to journalism now, to look how the news coverage of this dramatic event may be shaping the event itself. Judy Woodruff has more of that. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: As this hostage situation has persisted, questions have been increasingly raised about the role of the media, whether the press and especially television, which is supposed to be observing events and reporting them, is becoming so involved that it is becoming a participant in the ordeal. There have been a series of TV interviews done, both with Amal leader Nabih Berri and with the hostages. Today, during his interview, CBS newsman Dan Rather asked three of the hostages about the role of the press and if they feel they are being used.

Mr. RATHER: You've said a time or two before, in response to questions, that you didn't feel that you were being used for propaganda purposes.

Mr. CONWELL: Well, no, I do indeeed feel that I'm being used for propaganda purposes. I think that's one of the primary goals in this particular hostage situation now. Certainly the Amal, the people under whom I'm under their control, want to utilize the situation to their best advantage, and with that goal, whether good or bad, I pass no judgment at this point, of securing the freedom of their relatives and loved ones. So, yes, as far as being a propaganda medium, I certainly am. We all are.

Mr. RATHER: Mr. Grossmayer, I know that you must be aware that there'll be some questions asked about whether you should have done this interview, whether I should have done this interview with you. Those kinds of questions, quite naturally in a country such as ours, are asked in this sort of situation. What would be your opinion on that?

Mr. GROSSMAYER: Oh, I don't mind. I think it should have been done, let the people know, let the people at home see, let them hear what the feelings are.

Mr. RATHER: Father, I was going to ask you -- I want to ask you personally and directly, and if the others have any response on this at all, do you think that we -- by that I mean, reporters, the press, particularly the American press -- should stop doing these kinds of interviews?

Rev. JAMES McLOUGHLIN, Geneva, Illinois: At first I was appalled by the sensationalism of the reports in some of the U.S. newspapers. Appalled because I knew that my family and the family and loved ones of others would just be hysterical knowing all the gross details of those days. But now that, fortunately, is over and the press seems to have calmed down and is a lot more circumspect and is quoting from people in the States who -- well, they're not quoting from people in the States who don't seem to wish us well. And I'm glad to see that.

Mr. CONWELL: In reading the accounts of the first press conference we had, I remember that one of the individuals in our -- I believe in our administration referred to that press conference as cynical exploitation. I would like to say that I am very surprised that you would participate in something of that nature, but I felt like I must warn you in advance that you will be accused of cynical exploitation in allowing us the opportunities to pass the word of our good health and our thoughts in this very dire situation to our fellow Americans.

Mr. RATHER: Well, I'm sorry that you can't see, but you know that I'm smiling as you say that, Mr. Conwell, and I say as one American to another I've been accused of a lot worse than that.

Mr. CONWELL: I've heard some of them.

WOODRUFF: To look at the role of the news media in this situation, we do so with two who have different views. Fred Friendly is with Columbia University's graduate school of journalism; he is director of the Media and Society Seminars there. Formerly he was president of CBS News. He is joined by Ed Turner, executive vice president of the Cable News Network. Mr. Turner, let me begin with you. Should TV news people be doing the kinds of interviews that we just saw with the hostages?

ED TURNER: Yes, and why not? I don't think that the viewing public is so fragile or so easily misled as to not understand the circumstances under which these interviews were done. I don't think they are sensationalized. The story in and of itself is sensational. It does not need any embellishing. I believe the viewer, given the circumstances, told clearly how the interview is done and surrounding the people present there at that time, they'll understand.

WOODRUFF: Mr. Friendly, do you agree with that?

FRED FRIENDLY: Well, I think there's nothing wrong. It's proper to do some interviews. When is enough enough? Somebody said the situation is calming down. Maybe the situation is calming up. If the President of the United States or His Holiness the Pope demanded air time, the networks, stations, wouldn't give it to him, yet these terrorists, which is what they are, are shooting their way onto the American air. Enough is enough. It's not just the interviews that bother me, although there's no one interview that I would be critical of, except those done by the hostage-takers with the hostages. That seemed to me like the theater of the absurd, the theater of terrorism, electronic though it be. But last week, for what seemed like two minutes to me, there were terrorists and there were Lebanese Shiites marching on the airplane at the Lebanese airport shouting expressions against the United States and with signs written in English.

WOODRUFF: But you don't have a problem with the kind of interview we just saw where an American newsperson is interviewing the hostages?

Mr. FRIENDLY: I don't want to say I have a problem with it as long as it's put into proper context. I'm not sure it's always put into proper context. I think some of the criticism of it has made the broadcasters try to put it into proper perspective.

WOODRUFF: What about the interviews with Mr. Berri? Is that different from interviewing the hostages?

Mr. FRIENDLY: I think Mr. Berri has become a media freak. I think he is now a national symbol for the Lebanese. He's like the president of the United States or the prime minister. We are dealing with him as though he were a principal instead of a protector, at best, of the terrorists. And I think -- I want to be very generous to the families who must be going through hell, and certainly to the hostages. But I think to let those people shoot their way onto our air, to have 20 minutes out of a 23-minute news program spent on the hostages while we have a tax problem of horrendous proportions, while we have test ban treaties, nuclear disarmament problems going on, while the president of the United States is as big a hostage as the news media -- we won't let him -- Carter or Reagan, Presidents Carter or Reagan -- concentrate on their job because the news media is constantly saying, "Stay tuned, we'll have more on the hostages." It's becoming too much of a media event. It needs perspective. One last line. I heard a very professional broadcaster say within the last few days, "When will we have the courage to say, enough is enough? I don't care about the competition. I'm not going to put that demonstration, which is staged for us, on the air just because the competition does."

WOODRUFF: Mr. Turner, do you think the networks should do something like that, or any of us in television should do that?

Mr. TURNER: Well, I sympathize with what Mr. Friendly is saying. Here when you are on the line producing 24 hours of news a day, I think it would be unwise to make general rules. You make them ad hoc sort of as you go along. Do you cover that demonstration? How fraudulent is that demonstration? On the other hand, what were we being shown back here in America based on those people on that tarmac at the Beirut airport? Nabih Berri is the principal figure in Lebanon today. You can hardly ignore him. He's a broker, he is a prime minister. The real president of Lebanon is barely a ward leader. He's the one around which it centers in that country, and Assad in Syria. He can't be ignored, and I don't think Mr. Friendly is saying that. I think you have to use common sense, as you go hour after hour and make very sure that you come to a halt throughout the broadcast day and say here is what we know, here is where we are, and here are some knowledgeable experts. Here are some people who have spent years studying this. Let them tell us what they think about it.

WOODRUFF: But what about Mr. Friendly's point that we're just spending -- we and the press, especially in television, are just spending too much time on this story?

Mr. TURNER: Well, you see, you act -- in a question like that you presume that we were a monolith, that the four, five, six networks, the major newspapers in the country, were all controlled by a person or a board of directors. That's not so. We're independent entities. We are competitive. Certainly we hope to have audiences. You don't go out to drive readers away, drive viewers away, and you hope that you're responsible. But you operate on what you think is in your best interests as broadcasters, as journalists, at NBC, at CBS, at PBS, at CNN. And therefore, to a viewer who sees it all -- and I don't think there are that many, I think that we are an exception -- it would seem overwhelming. Most people aren't watching it all day.

WOODRUFF: Mr. Friendly, has the press affected the course of events in Lebanon, in Beirut?

Mr. FRIENDLY: Oh, yes. And I think in a way for the good. It certainly has riveted the attention of the President on the issue. But you can over-rivet it. You can make the President, as President Carter was, possessed by this. It wrecked his administration. I know it doesn't make me a Republican or a Democrat to say that I don't want this President made a hostage by the news coverage, and I think as I watch him, not so much on cable television. You have 24 hours of news, you have a lot of experts on; the same is true of public television. I'm talking about the 22 minutes of network news at 7 o'clock or 6:30, where the whole thing has been skewed around this situation and it's put an enormous amount of pressure on the President, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state. It's all they can concentrate on, and I think it's time for the news media to say, "Even if we lose a rating point, what's right for the country and, in the end of the day, what's right for the hostages, is better than whether NBC, CBS, or ABC gain half a percentage point."

WOODRUFF: Mr. Turner, a quick response?

Mr. TURNER: Well, I don't think it's that easy to do. I think we all try to be responsible, but really in fact, don't you think, Mr. Friendly, that there's not much else right now, for now, that the audience, the readers, the viewers are truly interested in?

Mr. FRIENDLY: I think the problem is that you and your competitors, colleagues, are creating an appetite. I think every day I hear all day long -- I watch a lot of television, I listen to a lot of radio, "Stay tuned to this station for more on the hostages. Stay tuned. This is your station." That's hyping a terrorist situation. Of course you're creating the appetite.

WOODRUFF: Mr. Friendly, Mr. Turner, stay with us. Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Don Oberdorfer, has the television and the other news coverage affected the events and the decisionmaking in this situation?

Mr. OBERDORFER: Unquestionably. Not only has it affected the events, it has really become the events. Since the hostages got off in Beirut the event has been -- the real event has been a kind of discussion and negotiation, but the event that we've all been caught up with has been one after another of interviews by TV or statements by Berri or one thing and another. And this is the essence of this situation, just as it was the essence of the Iranian situation. This is what it's all about.

LEHRER: Has the result thus far been harmful?

Mr. OBERDORFER: To whom?

LEHRER: To anybody you want to name? To the hostages?

Mr. OBERDORFER: Well, I think --

LEHRER: To a resolution, to the President? Has it -- well, you're covering it, you're in contact with the State Department every day. Are they watching television or what they're doing over there?

Mr. OBERDORFER: Absolutely they're watching television. Is it harmful? I think you could argue whether it's helpful or harmful to the hostages to have the world attention on them. I argue that it is harmful, potentially harmful for the United States to be tied up in a situation like this for two weeks, just as we were tied up with the Iranian situation for 14 months, a concentration on this to the exclusion of everything else. And I think it's something this country had better think twice about because we can't afford it.

LEHRER: Moorhead Kennedy, what's your view of this?

Mr. KENNEDY: My view is a little bit like Mr. Friendly's. Enough is enough. But what my basic point, are we going to use this to educate the American people as to the message the Middle East is trying to send us, and that is the cause for this terrorism in the first place, or are we going to use it to appeal to the more immature instincts that we've seen coming out so often among the American people as they react to this? Television has a tremendous educational role to play here. This one episode can teach people an awful lot about the Middle East, and I'm not sure TV is doing it.

LEHRER: That's what I was going to ask you. What's your judgment as to how well they're doing that so far?

Mr. KENNEDY: I think they're -- my wife used to say that they ended up, the American people, knowing as little about Iran afterwards as they did before that particular crisis. I think a little more is coming through now; indeed, in the words of the hostages themselves. And I think that this is provoking some rethinking. I hope that continues.

LEHRER: Mr. Turner, do you think that -- do you see the role of CNN or anybody in television news in this situation is, are we to also educate the American people about the grievances of the Shiites and the situation in the Middle East?

Mr. TURNER: I hope that we're good journalists and we put the story on and it's fairly done and it's reasonably well balanced over a period of half an hour or several hours and several days and that, yes, people learn from it. I think we are being blamed for a lot of things that are not of our making. In part we're accused of almost almost participating in the hijacking. The life does go on outside Washington and New York. I don't mean to sound harsh, but people are going about their lives and doing other things.

LEHRER: Dr. Bard, from the hostages' point of view, the psychology of having a television camera available to where you can talk to Dan Rather or someone else, what's the effect, do you think, of that?

Dr. BARD: I think it probably is a very positive response for the hostages. They feel as if they're in touch, and it would probably have some positive effects on them.

LEHRER: In what way?

Dr. BARD: Well, in that they have some channel of communication, with home, with their families. They can, in effect, communicate their thoughts and their feelings. Even though much of what they're saying is at some very covert level, hopefully they think that their loved ones would probably read the real messages coming through, and at the same time they hope to reassure them. It's an ambivalent feeling, I'm sure.

LEHRER: Mr. Kennedy, would your situation have been different had you been able to talk regularly via television back to the American people?

Mr. KENNEDY: I remember our senior guards saying, "You don't know it but we're on prime time." And had we had that opportunity to communicate, to tell our families that we were all right, that we were bearing up, that we were coping under much freer circumstances, not controlled by the guards, but controlled by the American media, it would have made all of the difference in the world.

LEHRER: In what way? How would it have changed things?

Mr. KENNEDY: Because we were told in the very beginning, "Mr. Carter has written you off. You've been abandoned." We thought we had. And it wasn't until Christmas, until the students staged a media event with the aid of some American clergy, that our families saw us, that my wife knew that I was alive. And my son said, "Look, there's Dad with his coat and tie on. He looks like he's going to a cocktail party," and they said, "he must be all right." And that was terribly, terribly reassuring.

LEHRER: Mr. Friendly, John Cory of the New York Times assessed television's role in this situation a couple of days ago, and he said the thing that distressed him was that diplomacy should be conducted by diplomats and yet it is being conducted by television correspondents. Do you see that happening in this situation too?

Mr. FRIENDLY: Yes, I do. And I think that's unfortunate, although I don't want to be damming the interview. I think if it's right to have to the hostages talking to their families, you don't need to turn all of television for seven days a week, week after week, into a person-to-person telephone line. You can arrange to have them talk to their families as the President talks to them. And the excuse that the only way you can do it is to give the terrorists that prime time doesn't make any sense to me at all. But I do agree with Mr. Cory that this is a very sensitive diplomatic situation, and I think that a lot of journalists such as we are doing the negotiating day after day, hour after hour can come to havoc.

LEHRER: Don Oberdorfer, when the Iranian situation ended, you wrote a very thoughtful piece in The Washington Journalism Review, a magazine published here in Washington, in which you said -- this is 1981 -- you said the news media should look back on this situation and study what they did and what they did right and what they did wrong, because this could happen again, and if we don't learn some lessons we're going to be right back committing the same sins.

Mr. OBERDORFER: And we are.

LEHRER: Are we?

Mr. OBERDORFER: Yes. We have allowed this to take over the news organizations of America. In the words of Tom Shales, who is the television critic for my newspaper, he said before about Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini has got the country by the networks, and it's pretty much the same thing now with the Lebanese Shiites. I think what we have to understand here is that we have something new under the sun, and that is that people across the world can beam 22,000 miles into space, hit a satellite and come down into the living rooms of Americans, and that has created something new in this situation, in the Iran situation, in the Tet offensive in Vietnam, in Sadat's trip to Jerusalem, and when it's a gripping soap opera, we fall into it immediately and we can stay with it as long as the program goes on. But I think the American press has got to think about that long and hard. Otherwise, somebody else is going to think about it for us, if we don't consider our role.

LEHRER: What do you mean?

Mr. OBERDORFER: What I mean is, either we are going to come to a reasoned conclusion about what should and should not be done in these kinds of situations, or the government or the American people is finally going to say the situation is just too dangerous.

LEHRER: Mr. Turner, do you agree that it's time to do some thinking about all this?

Mr. TURNER: I'm not sure what the outrageous behavior has been that provokes such disturbed thoughts. It is imperfect. On the other hand, I've got a lot of faith in the viewer as being tough, sophisticated, resilient, and they too understand. I don't know of any cases where colleagues on the other networks or our own have done something so blatantly awful as to, say, lose the confidence of the American people or stir up Congress.

LEHRER: Don? Tell him what you mean.

Mr. OBERDORFER: Well, it's not any particular behavior, some interview or somebody going out and shouting something. It is the whole situation. The whole essence of this is a group of people far across the world have seized an American airplane and they are holding 40 Americans, which is a terrible thing. But 140 Americans are killed every day on the nations highways, or more, and we have, because of the drama inherent in this, because it happens across the world, because it bears the symbols of the United States, because people are threatened, we have allowed it totake over our country. We have allowed it to take over our news media and our lives. And that is what -- I'm not saying there's any one person at fault We're all swept up in this.

LEHRER: Mr. Friendly, is the question the redefining what journalism is in some cases? This is a good story. There's no question this is a good story.

Mr. FRIENDLY: This is a super story, and that requires a certain amount of restraint, and that's what we're talking about, Mr. Turner. Nobody is criticizing any one event unless it's that one event where they were on for two minutes protesting for the American television audience in English in Lebanon. But a president of the United States once said we come by our miracles easier than we can manage them. We have the airplane, the jet, a miracle. We have television, a miracle. What you hold in your hands, your levers. And you have the satellite. And into that web of miracles comes terrorism. We -- I'll take as much responsibility as anybody -- have not learned to manage those miracles, and Mr. Oberdorfer is right. If we don't find a way to do it, if we don't build into it a system of restraint and perspective, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is going to be breached by a government which is going to say, under a crisis situation, "Ladies and gentlemen, we'll teach you how to manage your miracles." Is that what you want?

LEHRER: Mr. Turner?

Mr. TURNER: Mr. Friendly, I'm sorry, I don't share your gloomy assessment. I think that common sense, more or less, will prevail and that we'll come out of this with our profession or trade or craft, whatever it is we do, fairly well intact and I hope will have done a pretty decent job.

Mr. FRIENDLY: Do you think that's the way we came out of Iran?

Mr. TURNER: Yes.

Mr. FRIENDLY: I don't.

Mr. TURNER: And I'm not Polyannish.

LEHRER: Well, I want to thank all of you for being with us, Don Oberdorfer here in Washington, Mr. Friendly and Dr. Bard and Mr. Kennedy, and, from Atlanta, Mr. Turner. Thank you all, all five, for being here. Update: Oklahoma In Mourning

HUNTER-GAULT: An update now on the sad aftermath of the explosion Tuesday at a fireworks factory in Oklahoma. Investigators from six federal agencies and state ones as well continue to shift through the rubble of the demolished plant today, searching for the exact cause of the blast. Twenty-one people were killed, their deaths touching in some way almost every family in the three neighboring small towns. Dana Sterling of public station KOED in Tulsa reports.

DANA STERLING, KOED [voice-over]: The town of Terlton is the smallest of the three communities that lost residents in the Aerlex factory explosion. It also lost the most people; 15 of the 21 victims lived here. Yesterday the town was quiet, the older people staying inside but some younger men gathering at the town store to talk about their losses. One of them was Gene Harper, the stepson of the plant's owner, Alan Johnson. Johnson was injured in the blast that killed a second son as well as other relatives and friends. Gene says Johnson told him what happened.

GENE HARPER, plant owner's stepson: My dad was standing outside of the warehouse and he was coating some comets. And Denny Bridges, my dad's brother-in-law, he was seeing my brother Dean and -- standing at the back of the truck. He'd been out in the truck. And he seen Bob Delsmer going into the building, and then the next thing that happened, it blowed up. And there wasn't time for nobody to run.

STERLING [voice-over]: Dean graduated from high school this spring. He was the star running back for his football team. The school retired his number yesterday. Gene talks lovingly of what his father has done for the town of some 200 people.