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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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100989
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10098900.012
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1990-09-18
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VIDEO, Page 98TV News Goes HollywoodRe-enactments are turning journalists into moviemakersBy Richard Zoglin
The time is the late 1940s, the place Montgomery. James Earl
Jones, portraying civil rights pioneer Vernon Johns, walks into an
all-white diner, plops himself onto a stool and orders lunch. When
the proprietor scornfully pours a Coke all over the counter, Jones
erupts. "There's something inside of me," he growls, grabbing the
man by the lapels, "that doesn't like to be pushed around!"
It is perhaps the archetypal scene of the early civil rights
struggle. Yet this particular restaging of it was a breakthrough
for a quite different reason. It appeared not in a TV movie or a
PBS docudrama but on a network news show.
Dramatized "re-creations" of real-life events are suddenly
everywhere. Tabloid shows like A Current Affair, Fox's America's
Most Wanted and NBC's Unsolved Mysteries use them to re-enact just
about everything from grisly murders to purported UFO sightings.
Now the technique has entered a region some thought sacrosanct. It
is the centerpiece of two network prime-time news shows: NBC's
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (which drew good ratings in three
outings in late summer and will return for three more this season)
and the just-introduced Saturday Night with Connie Chung, on which
Jones appeared.
As the real and only-looks-like-real are mixed with abandon,
a viewer can get disoriented. Newscasters like Connie Chung and
Mary Alice Williams introduce Hollywood-style mini-dramas one day,
news stories from Warsaw and Capitol Hill the next. Real-life
victims of brutal crimes return to the scene to act them out for
the TV cameras. At least one actor from America's Most Wanted was
turned in to authorities by a concerned viewer -- who mistook him
for the fugitive he played in a re-enactment.
The confusion is shared by TV journalists, who are trying to
locate their ethical bearings in this brave new world. At one
extreme are the traditionalists, who insist that a staged scene of
any kind is inappropriate on a news program, which depends for its
credibility on presenting the truth and nothing but. On the other
side are a new generation of TV news producers, under pressure from
network bosses to come up with programs that will draw
prime-time-size audiences. Re-enactments, the proponents argue, if
carefully used and clearly labeled, can help impart information and
expand the kinds of stories TV news can do.
Not all re-creations, of course, are created equal. ABC's World
News Tonight last July aired a dramatization of alleged spy Felix
Bloch passing a briefcase to a Soviet agent. The scene, visually
enhanced to look like the real thing but inadvertently not labeled
a simulation, was a mistake because it was misleading: it made an
event that is alleged to have taken place appear to be a recorded
fact. ABC apologized for not identifying the scene properly, and
network newscasts have since steered clear of simulations.
Re-creations are less likely to cause confusion the further
one gets from hard news -- and from the present day. The old CBS
News series You Are There used actors to dramatize historical
events and did no permanent harm to the Republic. CBS's new series
Rescue 911, which features re-enactments of hairbreadth rescue
missions, is quite entertaining and probably harmless. In general,
however, the technique's proliferation is fudging the line between
news and entertainment, and news is the loser.
The two new network magazine shows highlight the problem. Both
are treading gingerly with their re-creations. At the opening of
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, a correspondent notes, "When
re-creations are used, we have carefully documented every important
detail and have clearly identified the re-creations." The producers
of Saturday Night with Connie Chung point out that their
re-enactments must adhere to strict CBS News standards -- which
means that all dialogue is taken from documented sources.
Yet the shows are troubling. Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow is
both journalistically superfluous (the gimmick seems to be to
repeat the words yesterday, today and tomorrow in each story as
often as possible) and dramatically clumsy. A re-creation of the
near crash of an American Airlines DC-10 in 1972 featured the
original pilot and one flight attendant (now 17 years older)
playing themselves, not very convincingly. Another story recounted
the ordeal of a woman, nearly paralyzed with cystic fibrosis, who
spent 16 years neglected in a mental institution. The piece was
light on facts and heavy on sensationalism: the asylum scenes
looked like outtakes from The Snake Pit.
Saturday Night with Connie Chung is at least less tacky. Its
story on civil rights leader Johns glided smoothly between
interviews with real-life colleagues and re-enacted scenes from his
life. Forthcoming episodes will use re-creations to focus on such
issues as AIDS, abortion and capital punishment. Chung has asserted
that her show's re-creations stand apart from those on other
programs. "Ours," she says, "will be of motion-picture quality."
Which is just the problem. The scenes with James Earl Jones
were not just of motion-picture quality; they were virtually
indistinguishable from a motion picture. TV news producers may well
be capable of making docudramas as good as or better than
Hollywood's; the question is whether they should. Journalists are
in the business of conveying reality; re-enactments convert reality
into something else -- something neater, more palatable, more
conventionally "dramatic." Mental institutions are filled with
raving loonies; murderers move in grainy, horrific slow motion;
civil rights leaders look like James Earl Jones. There was no
better drama on TV last week than the joint appearance on ABC's
Nightline of Dr. Elizabeth Morgan and the ex-husband she has
accused of molesting their daughter. No re-creation could possibly
capture that. Let's hope no journalist tries.