Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 29, 1994 TAG: 9401290067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
But in a tape of the speech provided by North's public relations firm, canned applause followed North's punch lines.
The "live" tape actually was made in a studio Wednesday, a day before the announcement, and engineers dubbed in the applause.
The PR firm offered the recording to stations that did not cover the speech in Norfolk and told them it was recorded there, said Jon Lewis, news director for a station that received one of the tapes.
It is not clear how many stations received recordings.
Lewis, of WKDW in Staunton, said he got the recording from North American Network about 9:15 a.m. Thursday, slightly more than an hour after the rally began.
"It sounded funny. That's the best way to say it," Lewis said. "So I called in people from our station to listen to it, and they told me it sounded like a laugh track from a '60s television show. It sounded like `I Love Lucy' or something."
Lewis said he then asked the news director of a Norfolk radio station who covered the rally to replay his live feed so Lewis could compare the tracks. "They were two totally different sound cuts. Even the words were different," he said.
In the actual crowd reaction, North supporters chanted "Ollie, Ollie, Ollie. . . ." The tape sent to the radio stations had a short clip of people applauding during North's remarks.
Bernie Ksiazek, a news feed producer at Bethesda, Md.-based North American Network, admitted the tape was recorded in a Norfolk studio the day before North's announcement.
Ksiazek told Lewis the North for Senate Committee provided the tape.
Mark Merritt, spokesman for the North campaign, said the group intended to send out a tape without the applause. He said the canned applause was added by "an over-zealous young member of our staff."
"Somebody thought they'd get a little more helpful than we needed them to be," Merritt said. "That's not the way we do things. We talked to the guy - it's not going to happen again."
Merritt said he knew nothing of the dubbed recording until radio stations began calling him Friday.
North American Network President Tom Sweeney called Lewis later Thursday and told him that technicians unsuccessfully tried to remove the dubbed-in applause, Lewis said.
North American Network officials did not return several telephone messages left by The Associated Press on Friday.
"This is someone doctoring a tape and passing this off as news," Lewis said. "I can't imagine the rationale of this, especially with the credibility problem Oliver North has. It's unconscionable."
North is seeking the Republican nomination for the seat now held by Sen. Charles Robb, a Democrat.
Jay Hart, a reporter at WLEE-AM in Richmond, said North American Network did not call his station to offer the North recording Thursday, but said he has received calls from the company on other stories.
North American Network typically offers a "courtesy feed" over the telephone, which stations can tape and then play on the air, Hart said.
"The PR firm does what they're paid to do," Hart said.
Kathleen Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, said it is not unusual for candidates to "redeliver" information.
"The important issue is what's said in the two places, and if there's applause where there was applause," she said. "It's hard to fault him if he was saying the same thing" in both recordings.
The news media should not be accepting such feeds, anyway, she said. "If nobody ran them, PR firms wouldn't be getting money to create them."
If anything, she said, the taped feeds show that North's staffers are not as sophisticated as they think they are. "It would have been smarter for North to put a feed out of the actual event. It was an inept use of technology."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB