WHAT TV ISN'T TELLING US ABOUT THOSE SOVIET SPOKESMEN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807280001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 26, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
' Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0807280001-9
TV GUIDE
?6 April 1986
Truth in packaging? Not really.
Gerasimov is, in fact, editor-in-chief of
Moscow News, a Soviet government pub-
lication. What Jennings did not tell view-
ers was that Gerasimov, 55, has had a
30-year career that includes a two-year
stint as an official of the Central Com-
mittee of the Communist Party of the So-
viet Union. Gerasimov also spent six years
in the U.S. as a Novosti correspondent,
And, according to Arkady Shevchenko,
the highest-ranking Soviet diplomat ever
to defect to the West, Gerasimov is, like
a number of his colleagues who write for
Soviet government publications, an agent
of the KGB.
When interviewing Russian
experts, our network journalists
sometimes fail to mention their
government ties
By John Weisman
On Nov. 17, 1985, NBC's Meet the Press
broadcast a special expanded version of
the Sunday talk show from Geneva. where
U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet
General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev
shortly would begin their summit meet-
ings. Moderator Marvin Kalb in-
troduced one of his guests, Yulian Semye-
nov, as "one of the Soviet Union's most
popular novelists, but for this summit, a
member of the Soviet delegation and ad-
viser to Gorbachev. Semyenov has often
been compared to Norman Mailer."
Truth in packaging? Not quite.
Semyenov is, in fact, a popular Soviet
Above, I.-r.: GeorgiyArbatov, head of the Soviet
Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada,
and Vladimir Posner. a commentator for Radio
Moscow
novelist. But unlike Norman Mailer, a po-
litical maverick and literary enfant terrible
who once tried to start a foundation to
investigate the CIA, Semyenov is an in-
tegral part of the system under which he
flourishes. He is a writer of thrillers whose
villains often are Americans. In his 1979
book "Tass Is Authorized to State" (which
was also made into a successful Soviet
TV miniseries), a wise, avuncular, heroic
KGB general foils a CIA plot to overthrow
the government of a pro-Soviet African
nation.
But Semyenov does more than write
novels and occasionally advise the gov-
ernment. According to one confidential
U.S. Government document, he served for
some years as a ghostwriter for his father-
in-law, S.K. Tsvigun, who, from 1967-1982,
was first deputy chairman of the KGB,
the vast Soviet agency that combines the
secret police with intelligence-gathering
and propaganda functions.
^ The next day, on ABC's World News
Tonight, anchorman Peter Jennings intro-
duced a commentary segment that pitted
George Will, ABC News's conservative
commentator, against Gennadiy Gerasi-
mov, whom Jennings described as "ed-
itor-in-chief of the Moscow News."
"The phrase 'Soviet journalist' is an oxy-
moron," insists George Will, who believes
viewers should always be reminded they
are hearing the Kremlin's line when Soviet
correspondents appear. "There is no such
thing as a Soviet journalist."
Truth in packaging. It is a constant
problem on television news where, be-
cause of time constraints, carelessness
and consistent oversimplifications, visual
and verbal shorthand often is used to
describe people, places and things. It is
a shorthand of easy-to-understand labels
and generalities that can-and often do-
mislead viewers.
And almost nowhere is television's use
of misleading shorthand more evident than
when Soviet scientists, commentators and
academics appear, which they have done
recently in a virtual flood. Indeed, ac-
cording to U.S. Information Agency di-
rector Charles Z. Wick, more than 100
Soviets have appeared as guests on U.S.
news shows in the last year and a half.
"In the past," says Dorrance Smith, ex-
ecutive producer of ABC's This Week with
David Brinkley, "the Soviets paid very
little attention to what the 'public con-
sumption' was here. I think they now pay
a great deal of attention to it."
ABC White House correspondent Sam
Donaldson, who grills Soviet officials reg-
ularly on This Week, says: "Every time
we interview them, there should be some-
thing said to make plain they work for the
Soviet government. What we are getting
from Moscow, through these guests, is
the approved view, and our viewers should
be made aware of that."
Sometimes, viewers are made aware. In
a February 1985 broadcast, David Brink-
ley called Radio Moscow commentator
Vladimir Posner "a journalist." Soon
thereafter, however, commentator George
Will (who had truth-in-packaging prob-
lems of his own when he helped prepare
Ronald Reagan for a 1980 Presidential
debate with then-President Jimmy Carter
and spoke favorably on ABC about Rea-
gan's performance without disclosing his
own role) put Posner's position in context.
"Mr. Posner," he said, "you're a journalist
of a certain sort; that is, you're an em-
ployee of the government on which you
report."
Posner, whose colloquial, idiomatic,
American-accented English is the result
of nine years spent growing up in New -+
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0807280001-9
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807280001-9
OL-
York City during the 1940s, has probably
appeared more often on U.S. television
than any other Soviet. By Soviet stand-
ards, he is a journalist. But on U.S tel-
evision he becomes, in effect, a govern-
ment spokesman whose responses to
questions by U.S. reporters reflect the
official Kremlin view just as surely as
White House spokesman Larry Speakes
represents the Administration's.
Indeed, ABC used Posner to respond
to President Reagan's Feb. 26 address
to the Nation The Soviet's seven-minute,
unchallenged interview attacking Mr
Reagan drew an angry response from the
White House, and an apology from ABC
News president Roone Arledge, who con-
fessed in a letter to the President that
Posner's appearance "was a deviation
from good American common sense and
the standards of fairness for which ABC
News is known."
Some news broadcasts are better than
others at truth in packaging. This Week,
along with Nightline and the CBS Morning
News, tends to identify its Soviet guests
accurately. Some-such as NBC's To-
day-are not so precise.
Sometimes Today's viewers are woe-
fully misled. Perhaps the most glaring
recent example took place last Nov. 20.
Anchor Bryant Gumbel interviewed a man
named Samuil Zivs, whom he introduced
simply as "a spokesman for the Soviet
Anti-Zionist Committee."
State Department Soviet experts agree
that introducing Zivs in such a manner is
about the same as introducing a black
South African as a spokesman for "Black
South Africans for Apartheid." In fact,
Zivs-like virtually the entire leadership
of the Soviet Anti-Zionist Committee-is
a Jew. He is a moderately high-ranking
party official and one of the lawyers who
prosecuted recently released Jewish dis-
sident Anatoly Shcharansky at his 1978
trial. The Soviet Anti-Zionist Committee,
of which he is deputy chairman, also has
published a large number of documents
alleging ties between Zionism and fas-
cism and Nazism.
Would it have been helpful to identify
Zivs as a Jew who prosecutes other Soviet
Jews, since he spent his time on Today
telling American viewers that Jews have
no problems in the Soviet Union?
"In that instance." says Gumbel, "prob-
ably so-but that's hindsight."
American officials see things different-
ly. "The interviewers just aren't prepared,''
says one. "The Soviets know this; they
know how to play us "
One of the aspects of putting Soviet
officials on U.S. television with which U.S.
viewers may not be familiar is the way
Soviet spokesmen are selected. It is easy
i for the producers of Nightline, Meet the
I Press, Face the Nation or This Week to
call American sources on every side of
an issue and line them up as guests. With
the Soviets, says This Week's Dorrance
Smith, things aren't so simple. First, the
show's coordinating producer calls ABC's
Moscow bureau and describes what This
Week is looking for. Next, says Smith, the
bureau calls its contacts, "then they call
us back and tell us either no one is speak-
ing on that topic at that time, or that these
are the people who are available to
speak." In other words, the Soviets control
all network access to Soviet news sources.
There is another, more subtle element as
well: the possibility that, if challenged too
strongly, the Soviets will shut off the flow
of guests. Television talk shows have time
to fill. They need guests with opposing
points of view to engender conflict, con-
troversy-and ratings. The Soviets, who
control access to their commentators, sc.-
enlists, academics and government offi-
cials, understand television's need for a
constant stream of guests. And they have
not been above threats in the past: last
winter, for example, ABC's Moscow bu-
reau chief, Walter Rodgers, was told by
the Soviet Foreign Ministry that if the net-
work proceeded with plans for a mini-
series depicting a Soviet occupation of
the U.S., ABC News operations in the
USSR might be jeopardized. (ABC will
produce the miniseries.)
As former Carter Administration official
Nodding Carter III puts it: "Television is
not altogether journalism. And the interest
in getting people to appear is often served
by the least amount of embarrassment to
the guest-embarrassment meaning those
things that might carry a negative load
up front.... And I'm afraid there is some
implicit punch-pulling-unstated-that
goes on."
It is not through lack of resources that
the network news operations often fail to
observe truth in packaging when they put
Soviet spokesmen on the air, because
biographies of virtually every Soviet of-
ficial, scientist and commentator who has
appeared on American television are
available to anyone who asks, either from
the U.S. Department of State, or other
"The phrase `Soviet
journalist' is an oxymoron.
There is no such thing as a
Soviet journalist:'
-George Will
ABC News commentator
Government and private sources
ABC's George Will attributes such laps-
es to the fact that "journalism, at all times,
but especially television journalism, is
done on the fly, and there's often just not
enough time."
One State Department official who has
spent time in Moscow adds that the So-
viets use words differently from Ameri-
cans On U.S. television, spokesmen like
Gerasimov and Posner are called "jour-
nalists." To American audiences the word
connotes an adversarial, freewheeling,
often skeptical attitude toward govern-
ment policy. "American journalists," says
the official, "don't want to appear as if
they are defending the U.S.'s position
because, in fact, they don't speak for the
Administration. It isn't that way with the
Soviets."
Other Soviet experts also provide offi-
cial points of view. During the summit, a
number of academics and scientists ap-
peared on U.S. television. Many, such as
Yevgeniy Vslikov, deputy chairman of the
Soviet Academy of Science, and Roal'd
Sagdeyev, director of the Soviet Institute
of Space Research, are reputable sci-
entists. But, adds George Will, "they are
trading upon their reputations as scien-
tists to serve the Soviet state in funda-
mentally political ways."
It irks some U S. officials, for example.
that when Georgiy Arbatov, head of the
Soviet Institute for the Study of the U S A
and Canada, appears on American tel-
evision (which he does with some regu-
larity these days), his organization is made
to sound like a purely academic think
tank, when in fact its leaders include KGB
and GRU (military intelligence) officials.
It is true that Arbatov is a high-ranking
and influential Soviet official. But Amer-
ican audiences perceive him, the off icials
feel, more as an academic than a political
animal whose close ties to Yuri Andropov
and Mikhail Gorbachev gave him much
of his power and influence.
One confidential Department of State
bulletin, describing the role of Soviet ac-
ademics, says their main function "would
seem to be less one of advising the lead-
ership than of providing the trappings of
scholarly argumentation for Soviet policy
perspectives and actions. Their role as
advocates is especially important in deal-
ing with foreign audiences... Given their
credentials, they can and do attract at-
tention in Western media and among spe-
cial-interest groups: scientists. physi-
cians, businessmen and journalists. It was
primarily for this purpose that they were
sent to Geneva. Not as on-the-spot ex-
perts, but as public-relations flacks for
Gorbachev." Adds a mid-level State De-
partment official who deals regularly with
Soviet affairs: "The networks have the re-
sponsibility to point out that the Sagdey-
evs and Vslikovs are no less official
spokesmen than the Posners or Arba-
tovs."
The problems of truth in packaging are
not unique to Soviet spokesmen. As NBC's
Gumbel admits: "I think there's a rule of
thumb that, overall, American audiences
aren't told enough about most of the peo-
ple they see on TV-be they Soviet or
American... We wind up taking an awful
lot for granted-maybe too much."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807280001-9