Video: What’s Under the Blanket Coverage?

Was all the world’s news last week taking place within taxi-hailing distance of Red Square? One might have thought so from the TV networks’ saturation coverage of the Moscow summit. The main event, of course, was the face-to-face meeting between President Reagan and Soviet Leader Gorbachev. The most fascinating sideshow: Raisa and Nancy playing a catty game of one-upmanship. But there was more — much more. Religion in the Soviet Union was suddenly a hot topic for TV reporters, as were Soviet rock music and the effect of glasnost on the Soviet press. There were tours of the Moscow subway, a visit to the first Miss Moscow beauty pageant and an interview with artists who, in honor of the summit, made plaster casts of people shaking hands.

With all three evening newscasts (and a good portion of the morning news shows as well) transplanted to Moscow for much of the week, summit news squeezed out all but the briefest wrap-up of other news. Monday night’s CBS Evening News, incredibly, mentioned not a single non-summit-related story. It was, to be sure, a slow news week apart from superpower summitry. But the blanket coverage raised questions of TV overkill. With little substantive news expected from the summit, and the network news divisions already facing severe budget constraints, some wondered whether the extensive TV effort was journalistically warranted.

Actually, network executives claimed, the TV armada was comparatively lean this time. Each network sent between 80 and 100 people to Moscow — “barely enough to do what we needed to do,” asserted CBS News President Howard Stringer. Though the summit dominated regularly scheduled newscasts, none of the three networks aired a prime-time or late-night special on the subject. And except for CNN (which devoted about 50% of its schedule to the doings in Moscow), live coverage was relatively sparse. When Reagan appeared at Moscow State University on Tuesday for an extraordinary question-and-answer session, CNN carried the event live in its entirety, but of the networks only ABC did so.

Still, the three networks together spent $5 million on the event, according to one former network executive; shipped in 50 tons of equipment; and showcased star correspondents. All three evening news anchors — Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw — were in attendance. Also along were Washington heavyweights like ABC’s Sam Donaldson and a morning anchor from each network: Today’s Bryant Gumbel, Good Morning, America’s Charles Gibson and CBS This Morning’s Kathleen Sullivan. The networks built temporary studios on a balcony at the Rossiya Hotel. Soviet officials even lighted up the onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square every night for the cameras.

Just what to do with all this equipment and manpower was another matter. With little chance for enterprising scoops, the networks elbowed one another for minor coups. ABC noted that it was the first to transmit pictures from inside the Kremlin, and CBS landed an interview with former Moscow Party Chief Boris Yeltsin. CBS’s Rather, meanwhile, was the only anchor to get a face-to- face encounter with Gorbachev. It came by chance when the CBS crew, shooting inside the Kremlin, spotted the Soviet leader’s entourage. While CBS Executive David Buksbaum created a diversionary scene, Rather squeezed past security guards for a few brief questions. (CNN’s Steve Hurst also managed to corral Gorbachev separately for a short interview.)

As usual, TV seemed more fascinated by small, vivid, personal moments than by the big strategic picture: Reagan dozing during a speech, the First Lady trying to get reporters’ attention away from Raisa Gorbachev at the Tretyakov Gallery, Gorbachev directing reporters at a press conference to change seats when they could not hear the translations. In the meantime, the networks filled out their nightly half-hours with interchangeable feature stories and ponderously superfluous analysis (“Well, I’ve been thinking about the cold war, Tom,” began a John Chancellor commentary; snores followed).

It was another case of the Big Story Syndrome. When the networks scramble to outdo one another, they seem to lose a measure of perspective. The CBS Evening News, in particular, turned into an odd cross between PM Magazine and The McLaughlin Group, with Rather strolling around Red Square with his temporary co-anchor, Charles Kuralt, and sitting down each evening to gab with three correspondents about the day’s events. Adding to the prepackaged, magazine- show look: Rather, unlike Brokaw and Jennings, taped his segments several hours in advance, so he could be seen in the bright sunshine rather than in the Moscow darkness.

To be sure, TV’s go-for-broke approach on such big stories has its rewards. With so much attention focused on the Soviet Union, viewers got many more background stories than would normally be allowed on the tightly formatted evening news. The importance of summit coverage, contends NBC News President Lawrence Grossman, is “not in terms of specific agreements. The major issue is trying to give people a sense of the landmark changes taking place inside the Soviet Union.” With budgets growing tighter, however, the networks will have to take a harder look at whether such reporting extravaganzas are justified as journalism, or merely as public relations.