Přehrávání středa 22. dubna 1981

News Analysis

Date: 23 April 1981

By Tony Schwartz

Tony Schwartz

This week WBBM-TV, the CBS-owned station in Chicago, broadcast a hard-hitting documentary that raised questions about certain controversial techniques of investigative reporting on television, including selective editing, the confrontation interview, undercover reporting and the preoccupation with dramatic pictures at the potential expense of accuracy and fairness. The WBBM documentary focused on a report on the ABC-TV newsmagazine ''20/20'' titled ''Arson and Profit,'' criticizing not just the way it was reported, but the accuracy of its conclusions. Yesterday, ABC News released a detailed rebuttal to each of the WBBM charges, including statements from two persons who appeared on the WBBM documentary in which they asserted that the program failed to accurately reflect their views. The ABC response casts considerable doubt on WBBM's charges, and also suggests that in reporting the documentary, WBBM may have been guilty of using some of the same investigative techniques that its documentary criticizes. Next week, ABC also plans to respond to the WBBM documentary in a special segment of ''20/20'' that airs only in Chicago.

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Economic Scene; Good News For Consumer

Date: 22 April 1981

Leonard Silk

Leonard Silk

WORRYING about Congressional action on President Reagan's proposed three-year, 30 percent tax-cut program, Administration spokesmen have been playing down the surprisingly strong surge of the gross national product in this year's first quarter. ''Real'' G.N.P. - total national output adjusted for inflation - climbed at an annual rate of 6.5 percent. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, attributing much of the first quarter's strength to the ''momentum'' of the final quarter of 1980, assured reporters that the strong pace ''almost surely won't be sustained.'' Murray L. Weidenbaum, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, who had described the economy as ''soft'' and ''soggy'' just a few days earlier, conceded that the first-quarter rise had been ''nice'' but said it would not be duplicated.

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News Summary; THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 1981

Date: 23 April 1981

International U.S. commitment to Israel's security was reaffirmed by the Reagan Administration after protests from the Israeli Government and Israeli diplomats in Washington over the Administration's announcement that it would sell arms to Saudi Arabia. Israel is especially against the proposed sale of five Awacs surveillance planes. After a meeting in Jerusalem with the United States Ambassador, Samuel Lewis, Prime Minister Menachem Begin said ''the Government of Israel expressed deep pain and unqualified opposition'' to the arms deal. (Page A1, Column 6.) Senator Jesse Helms was challenged by the White House in his efforts to have a person of his choice named assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began confirmation hearings on key State Department appointments. The White House nominated Thomas O. Enders, a career diplomat and economic specialist with no Latin American experience. Senator Helms, who indicated he would oppose Mr. Enders, has put forward Louis Tambs, a professor at Arizona State University and a former contractor in Latin America. (A1:5.)

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News Summary; WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 1981

Date: 22 April 1981

International A decision to sell arms to Saudi Arabia was formally announced by the White House. The multibillion-dollar sale will include five Airborne Warning and Control System planes. The formal announcement, making official a decision that actually was reached on April 2, said the ''United States has made a commitment to Saudi Arabia to move forward.'' State Department officials said that following the Administration's public announcment of its commitment to Saudi Arabia it might delay for several months its formal notification to Congress, thus opening the way to a Congressional debate. (Page A1, Column 6.) Pakistan was offered arms and economic aid by the Reagan Administration, its Foreign Minister, Agha Shahi, said after two days of talks with Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. and other officials. The assistance, to be spread over five years, is being offered to offset the Soviet threat from Afghanistan. Pakistan would get $500 million in the first year, Mr. Shahi said, though Mr. Haig said no figure had been settled upon. Last year, Pakistan rejected as ''peanuts'' a Carter Administration offer of $400 million over two years. (A1:5.)

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News of the Theater; NEW ROLE FOR MISS DEWHURST: DIRECTOR

Date: 22 April 1981

By Carol Lawson

Carol Lawson

COLLEEN DEWHURST has played a great range of roles in the theater, but never one like this: She is going to direct a play for the first time. The play is ''Ned and Jack,'' a new work by Sheldon Rosen, an American playwright living in Canada and making his New York debut. The production will open May 13 for a monthlong run at the Hudson Guild Theater. ''It's a fascinating play because it's about actors and playwrights,'' Miss Dewhurst said over the phone from the QE2 while cruising in the Caribbean and resting up for her new venture. Of the three characters in ''Ned and Jack,'' two are actors, John and Ethel Barrymore, and one is a playwright, Edward Sheldon, John Barrymore's close friend. It was Sheldon who talked the matinee idol into branching out as an actor by taking on classical roles.

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ARCHBISHOP BUILDING BRIDGES FROM ENGLAND TO U.S.

Date: 22 April 1981

By Charles Austin

Charles Austin

When he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1979, Bishop Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie worried that the highest ecclesiastical post in England might not leave him enough time to see his pedigreed Berkshire pigs. Today Archbishop Runcie begins a three-week tour of the United States, where he will preside at a six-day meeting of Anglican leaders from around the world. The Archbishop also wants to get a first-hand look at the American church, and it is not surprising that his six-city tour includes a stop at C. Robert Brenton's pig farm near Ames, Iowa. A knowledge of pig breeding is only one of several nonecclesiastical aspects of the life of the man who is Primate of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Little that occurred in his early years indicated that he would reach that pinnacle.

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News of Music; 2 HALLS TO CO-PRODUCE 4- CONCERT SERIES

Date: 23 April 1981

By Bernard Holland

Bernard Holland

CARNEGIE HALL and Lincoln Center, genteel and amicable rivals for New York music audiences since the latter's opening 15 years ago, will co-produce a series of four concerts next season. The players for this unprecedented cooperative venture will be the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra under its new music director, Pinchas Zukerman, with Itzhak Perlman, violinist, and Erie Mills, soprano, as soloists. The music is by Mozart, and the programs will include his complete works for violin and orchestra. There will be two concerts each in Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall. Both parties will sell subscriptions to the complete series jointly, and subscription revenues will be shared equally. Remaining single tickets will be handled through each hall's own box office. Stewart Warkow, Carnegie Hall's executive director, points to a tradition of cooperation with Avery Fisher Hall's concert activities but does admit to a certain rivalry between the two. Both institutions, he says, are in constant contact in attempts to avoid duplications of programs and events.

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Books of the Times

Date: 22 April 1981

By Jonathan Friendly THE WASHINGTON REPORTERS. By Ste- phen Hess. 174 pages. The Brookings In- stitution. Cloth, $17.95; paper, $6.95. WHAT can one learn from a book about the Washington press corps that doesn't discuss leaks, Watergate or George Will, that doesn't excoriate background sessions and unattributed quotes, and that only gently reminds one that the reporters there may be out of step with the rest of the country?

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PAPER'S FALSE ARTICLE IS A MAJOR TOPIC AT A CONVENTION ON NEWSPAPER EDITORS

Date: 23 April 1981

By Jonathan Friendly, Special To the New York Times

Jonathan Friendly

Benjamin C. Bradlee, executive editor of The Washington Post, went before fellow newspaper editors today to explain and defend his newspaper's handling of what turned out to be a fabricated article about an 8-year-old heroin user. Mr. Bradlee told the annual convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors that in the fast pace of events since the article won a Pulitzer Prize last week and then had to be withdrawn when the reporter confessed it was a hoax, ''I haven't had time to collect my thoughts and formulate rules, which I suspect we will do.'' But he added, ''You cannot make a rule that is going to protect you from a pathological liar.''

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BRADY HAS SURGERY FOR BRAIN PRESSURE

Date: 23 April 1981

Special to the New York Times

James S. Brady, the White House press secretary who was shot in the head three weeks ago in the attempt to assassinate President Reagan, underwent nearly six hours of cranial surgery last night after his doctors discovered that an air leak was putting pressure on his brain. Dr. Dennis S. O'Leary, medical spokesman at George Washington University Hospital, said toward the end of the surgery that Mr. Brady was ''not in any danger'' and ''looks very good.'' But he said the need for the operation meant that the 44-year-old Mr. Brady had been set back in what doctors had previously described as a remarkable recovery. ''There has been no interruption in the recovery of his neurological status,'' Dr. O'Leary said, explaining that, in terms of Mr. Brady's thought processes, there was no reason to think his latest operation would impede the progress he had been expected to make.

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