Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 16, 1993 TAG: 9302160085
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
WHAT'S NEXT FOR `DATELINE NBC' - DAMAGE CONTROL OR GUILOTINE?
It's a dreadful feeling, and one that every reporter experiences at one time or another. Words like "embarrassment," "guilt" and "regret" pale in comparison to that feeling.You get it when you know your story was wrong. You know your story is out there, irretrievably, for all the world to see. And it feels like everybody on the planet knows you were wrong.
Last week, reporters everywhere felt that feeling and winced when they learned just how badly "Dateline NBC" had blown its Nov. 17 story about a possibly deadly gas tank design on 4.7 million General Motors light trucks.
For 14 minutes, "Dateline NBC" showed a responsible, careful story about GM's "sidesaddle" truck tanks. Then, for about one minute, it showed an "unscientific demonstration" of a side-on truck crash and fiery explosion.
What "Dateline NBC" didn't tell viewers was that the truck had model rocket engines taped to its underside, ignited by remote control moments before the crash to guarantee an explosion if the tank released gasoline.
That's not the worst of it.
GM last Monday, just days after a $105.2 million jury award to the family of a teen-ager killed in a side-impact GM truck fire, filed a defamation suit against NBC.
Last Tuesday night, the NBC peacock ate crow on national TV. "Dateline NBC" co-anchors Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips copped to a list of basic journalistic omissions, oversights and mistakes.
NBC had to admit it misrepresented the speed of its crash tests and wrongly stated the truck's gas tank actually had broken. NBC also had to admit that the tank was overfilled and gas escaped from a non-standard gas cap.
Even that was not the worst of it. Here is the worst of it:
"Dateline NBC" is the network's 18th and, until this imbroglio, its most successful attempt to establish a prime-time news magazine show.
"This program is going to be nurtured, this program is going to be developed, this program is going to be worked on," Steve Friedman, its executive in charge of production, said just before the show's March 31, 1992, debut. "We're in this for the long haul."
In overreaching on the GM affair, "Dateline NBC" may have fatally compromised its credibility.
The news media discussion about the fire problems of General Motors light trucks has been cut short by the automaker's skillful, pre-emptive and well-deserved counterstrike.
GM scored a public-relations masterstroke. Who can muster facts and ask good questions about side-mounted gas tanks when a news organization as prestigious as NBC's had to rig its coverage?
Even if GM light trucks had nitroglycerin bumpers, it would be a long time before anyone went near that story.
Somebody's head has got to roll for it at "Dateline NBC," and given the collaborative nature of TV news shows, it might be more than one person.
Right now, however, the segment's producer, Bob Read, has got to feel like the loneliest man in journalism.
Read spent eight years as a producer at ABC's "20-20" before going to "Inside Edition." Two months before joining "Dateline NBC," he produced a segment on GM trucks for the syndicated magazine show.
"I could never believe that Bob Read would be deceptive in any story that he would cover," said "Inside Edition" anchor Bill O'Reilly.
Some would trace the ancestry of NBC's foulup to the 1980s, when network news divisions changed from being loss-leaders to profit centers.
They would argue that this trend has compelled reporters to make "good television" rather than good journalism, and forced the medium to produce striking imagery, lots of superlatives and entertainment that masquerades as news.
That may be the root cause of the "Dateline NBC" debacle. Or perhaps it was just garden-variety bad journalism.
But in either case, an entire network has that sinking feeling.