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| WORLD

And now the
evening news...

The following is reprinted from Deadline,
a bulletin published by the Centre for War,
Peace and the News Media, New York Uni-
versity.

Inan editor’ s note, writer Tony Kaye says:
“During a recent high-level meeting of CBS
Evening News executives, the debate over
Dan Rather’ s fall wardrobe grew so intense
that Deadline was able to obtain unnoticed a
Copy of the top-secret CBS Stylebook for

Overing Soviet-American Relations. In the
excerpts that follow we have concentrated on

ee with quotations from Rather him-
AY e if: ,

Arms Control

1. American Proposals — always
Characterize official U.S. statements on
arms control as prodding the Soviets,
Suggesting that the administration wants
an agreement but the USSR does not.
For example, when Mr. Rather reported
the president’s announcement that he in-
tended to abrogate SALT II, he said:
‘President Reagan prodded Moscow again
on arms control.’’ (May 27, 1986) Or:
“Secretary of State Shultz repeated Presi-
dent Reagan’ s prodding of Moscow to live up
to SALT II.’’ (May 30, 1986).

When the president took a more con-
Ciliatory approach in a speech in Glass-
boro, New Jersey, Mr. Rather nimbly
Stayed with the verb: ‘‘/n more manoeu-
vering between Washington and Moscow,
President Reagan used more carrot and less
| Stick tonight in a speech prodding the So-
| viets. He prodded them both on arms control
| and a new summit meeting.’’ (June 19,
1986)

_ 2. Soviet Proposals — in referring to
the Soviet arms control. initiative the
words proposal and offer should always

be closely followed. or preceded by the
words propaganda or public relations.
For example: ‘‘Touring East Germany to-
day, Soviet leader Gorbachev kept up a
string of proposals and public relations,
much of it aimed at trying to influence West-
ern Europe.’ (April 21, 1986). Or: ‘‘Gor-
bachev had just spent days and weeks doing
public relations, photo opportunities and
arms control proposals by the handful, much
of it designed to win friends and influence

people in Western Europe.’’ (April 30,

1986).

Note, too, how Mr. Rather can adhere
to this important rule and keep his an-
choring tight at the same time: White
House officials tell correspondent Lesley
Stahl that the latest Soviet offer, made public
over the weekend, is considered a propagan-
da ploy.”’ (June 30, 1986).

Official

The word official is an extremely use-
ful modifier in telling our viewers that
while we’re passing along information

about the Soviet Union, we don’t believe

it and neither should they. For example:
“Yet still another official version of the
Chernobyl disaster casualty count from the
Soviets.’’ (May 28, 1986). Or: ‘‘Again to-
day, the official Soviet line was to say that
everything’s fine.’’ (April 30, 1986).
Party Line

Use this important phrase when re-
porting on Soviet political change to
make clear CBS knows that the USSR
remains the same monolithic totalitarian
dictatorship it was before the change oc-
curred. “‘Soviet and foreign reporters got a
rare look inside Soviet mission control today
near Moscow, but they got the same old party
line from two cosmonauts up in space, an-

Swering screened-in-advance questions from
their new Soviet space station.’’ (April 7,
1986). Or: notice how Mr. Rather deftly
uses the phrase to dismiss the signi-
ficance of any change that may have
taken place at the last Communist Party
congress before we even tell our viewers
what happened there: ‘‘Wyatt Andrews re-
ports on a Party congress that shook the
rty but not the party line.’’ (March 3,
1986). When the use of party line grows
repetitive, substitute rubber stamp, as in:
“The Soviet parliament, or Supreme Soviet,
met today. It rubber-stamped the latest
Jive-year economic plan.’ (March7, 1986).

Soviet Achievements

Attempt to reduce their significance
through the use of appropriate imagery
and by invidious comparison with
American achievements, to wit: ‘‘Two
cosmonauts took a four space walk and built
castles in the sky, Soviet style .. . The Soviets
didn’t say what all this empire-building in the
sky was all about, but in late 1985 American
shuttle astronauts conducted very much. the
same experiments with potential building
blocks for a U.S. space station.’’ (May 28,
1986).

The Pregnant Pause

Timing is all here, but if properly done,
it can be very effective in casting doubt
on Soviet statements when the facts
themselves are unknown or in dispute.
For example: ‘‘The White House response
to Gorbachev: Both his attack and his offer
amount to . . . posturing.’’ (April 18, 1986).
Or: ‘‘Wyatt Andrews in Moscow begins our
coverage of the official Soviet view ... and
the clouds of doubt about it almost every-
where else.’’ (April 30, 1986).

What it...

In reporting Soviet statements, sep-
arate the verb in the sentence from its
direct object with the phrases, what it
says, or what is called. These phrases are
valuable for providing our report with an
anti-Soviet spin. For example: ‘‘The So-
viet Union says it is ending what it says has
been its own moratorium on nuclear weap-
ons tests.’’ (April 11, 1986) Or: ‘‘Even as
the Soviets stuck to their official story of only
two. dead, no more fire, nor radiation, Mos-
cow did acknowledge for the first time today
that there were what it called 197 people
injured and hospitalized.’’ (April 30, 1986.

INTERNATIONAL FOCUS Tom Morris

re

Convenient
memory lapse

Months in the making, cast
_ Of thousands, weeks of testi-
mony, stacks of transcript —
and the pivotal question may
never be answered...
-.. Because the President of
the United States forgot.
€ Tower commission
looking into who-knew-
What-when and who author-
ized the illegal Iran/Nicaragua
arms deals, has run into the
Swamp of Ronald Reagan’s
Mind. They’ve become stuck
In the mental meanderings of
an expert liar.
Imagine this: Tower com-

mission investigators, finally
getting White House ‘‘co-
operation’’, interview Reagan.
They want to know if he
authorized the deal.

Well, gosh, gee, Reagan says
I can’t remember.

During Watergate, Nixon
simply chopped out chunks of
evidence of his crimes from
tapes. Reagan lapses into a
selective memory mode, effec-
tively stonewalling a USS.
Congressional investigation.

Not a bad tactic. You just
convince the senators that you
‘can’t recall’ whether you
signed an authorization to il-
legally sell weapons, transfer
funds to the contras, open se-

GosH, HERE'S AN INTERESTING

LAST YEAR - SEE,/TS FOR A
WiTH MAYO ON RYE
sag ot | KNEW NOTHING

WHITE HOUSE ORDER? FROM LATE

ABOUT THIS AT THE TIME. _ \

"THE PRESI

DENT

cret bank accounts, organize
shipments, pay off people,
build airstrips, etc.

Just play the doddering old
fool. Smile a lot, offer them
some jellybeans.

Meanwhile, in far-off Nica-
ragua, people are murdered
and mutilated on secret orders
from a not-so-forgetful, dan-
gerous right-wing zealot with
two more years left in the
White House.

Wandering about
fooling no one

Five months after taking up
his job, Time magazine does a
story about Edward Perkins,
Reagan’s new ambassador to
South Africa.

Perkins, the magazine re-
ports, ‘““has ducked the press”’
and is trying to ‘“‘burrow into
the fabric of South African so-
ciety’’. He attended Christmas
services in Soweto and ‘‘has
taken long walks through the
mean slums of Alexander
Township’’. His chosen role,
says Time, “is to encourage all
sectors of society to talk to one
another.”

Perkins, who is Black, has
been accused of accepting a

> : eas ae Sie, ‘ws

U.S. ambassador Perkins:
Reagan’s eyes, ears and fist.

racist appointment from Rea-

gan whose policy in South
Africa is to bitterly oppose
sanctions against apartheid
while quietly backing attacks
by South Africa against neigh-
boring states. While publicly
critical of apartheid, the U.S.
considers Pretoria an indis-
pensable ally in the region.

But nowhere in Time’s story
do we see Washington’s policy
of ‘‘constructive engagement”’
mentioned. Nor the words,
““sanctions’’, ‘‘boycott’’,
“‘emergency measures’, or
“‘banning’’. The murderous
actions of the security forces is
absent, as is the detention of

children and muzzling of the
press.

Nothing.

To read Time, Perkins
(“Big, distinguished ... im-
mobile face’’) could be any-
where in Africa. He could be a
casual observer, a tourist —
rather than the eyes, ears and
fist of Reagan’s State Depart-
ment and CIA in the land of
apartheid.

The F-111, a
loose cannon?

The report in the New York
Times magazine last week that
a small group (Poindexter,
North, Casey - included) in
Reagan’s administration plan-
ned to murder Libyan leader
Moammar Gadhafi in last
year’s bomber raid, is simply
amazing.

The raid, which killed one of

Gadhafis children and hospital-
ized others, missed the target,
says the story, because the la-
ser-guidance systems on four
of the nine F-111 bombers
failed

Guess what the U.S. air-
force plans to fly over Ontario
and Quebec at tree top levels
beginning March 8?

You’ve got it — the F-111!

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 4, 1987 ¢ 9