Lesson 6

The Senate has voted to override President Reagan's veto of sanctions against South Africa by a decisive seventy-eight to twenty-one. As the House has already voted to override, the sanctions now become law. NPR's Linda Wertheimer reports. "American civil rights leaders, including Mrs. Caretta Scott King, watched the Senate debate from the Senate family gallery as members argued not so much about sanctions and the efficacy of sanctions, more about the choice between affirming the bill already passed by congress or supporting the President."

American food aid to southern African countries could be cut off if South Africa carries out its threat to ban imports of US grain. Foreign Minister Pic Botha said if US sanctions were imposed, his government would stop imports and would not allow its transport service to carry US grain to neighboring countries.

The White House today denied that it planted misleading stories in the American news media as part of a plan to topple Libyan leader Muammar Quddafi. The Washington Post reported this morning that stories were leaked this summer alleging Quddafi was resuming his support for terrorist activities, even though National Security Adviser John Poindexter knew otherwise. Today, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Poindexter denied the administration had involved the media in an anti-Quddafi campaign but Speakes left open the possibility a disinformation campaign was conducted in other countries.

The question in Washington today is this: Did the federal government try to scare Libya's Colonel Muammar Quddafi in August by way of a disinformation campaign in the American media? The Washington Post Bob Woodward reports today that there was an elaborate disinformation program set up by the White House to convince Quddafi that the United States was about to attack again, or that he might be ousted in a coup. The White House today denies that officials tried to mislead Quddafi by using the American media. NPR's Bill Busenburg has our first report on the controversy.
The story starts on August 25th when the Wall Street Journal ran a front page story saying that Libya and the United States were once again on a collision course. Quoting multiple official sources, the paper said Quddafi was plotting new terrorist attacks and the Reagan Administration was preparing to teach him another lesson. The Journal reported that the Pentagon was completing plans for a new and wider bombing of Libya in case the President ordered it.
That story caused a flurry of press attention. Officials in Washington and at the western White House in California were asked if it was true. "The story was authoritative," said the White House spokesman Larry Speakes. Based on that official confirmation, other news organizations, including the New York Times , the Washington Post , NPR and the major TV networks, all ran stories suggesting Libya should watch out. US naval maneuvers then taking place in the Mediterranean might be used as a cover for more attacks on Libya as in the past.
Today's Washington Post , however, quotes from an August 14th secret White House plan, adopted eleven days before the Wall Street Journal story. It was outlined in a memo written by the President's National Security Advisor John Poindexter. That plan called for a strategy of real and illusory events, using a disinformation program to make Quddafi think the United States was about to move against him militarily. Here are some examples the Post cites, suggesting disinformation was used domestically: Number one, while some US officials told the press Quddafi was stepping up his terrorist plans, President Reagan was being told in a memo that Quddafi was temporarily quiescent, in other words, that he wasn't active. Number two, while some officials were telling the press of internal infighting in Libya to oust Quddafi, US officials really believed he was firmly in power and that CIA's efforts to oust him were not working. Number three, while officials were telling the press the Pentagon was planning new attacks, in fact nothing new was being done. Existing contingency plans were several months old, and the naval maneuvers were just maneuvers. The Post says this policy of deception was approved at a National Security Planning Group meeting chaired by President Reagan and his top aides.

Two new studies were published today on the links between television coverage of suicide and subsequent teenage suicide rates. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that both studies suggest that some teenagers might be more likely to take their own lives after seeing TV programs dealing with suicide. NPR's Lorie Garrett reports.
The first suicide study, done by a team from the University of California in San Diego, examines television news coverage of suicides. David Philips and Lundy Carseson looked at forty-five suicide stories carried on network news-casts between 1973 and '79. The researchers then compared the incidence of teen suicides in those years to the dates of broadcast of these stories. David Philips says news coverage of suicides definitely prompted an increase in the number of teens in America who took their lives.
"The more TV programs that carry a story, the greater they increase in teen suicides just afterwards."
The suicide increase among teens was compared by Philips to adult suicide trends.
"The teen suicides go up by about 2.91 teen suicides per story. And adult suicides go up by, I think, around two adult suicides per story. The increase for teens, the percentage increase for teens is very, very much larger than the percentage increase for adults. It's about, I think, fourteen or fifteen times as big a response for teens percentagewise as it is for adults."
The TV news coverage appears to have prompted a greater increase than is seen around other well-known periods of adolescent depression, such as holidays, personal birthdays, the start of school and winter. Philips could not find any specific types of stories that seem to trigger a greater response among depressed teens. Philips says it seems to simply be the word "suicide" and the knowledge that somebody actively executed the act that pushes buttons in depressed teenagers. Psychiatrists call this "imitative behavior."
"What my study showed was that there seems to be imitation not only of relatively bland behavior like dress, dressing or hairstyles, but there seems to be imitation of really quite deviant behavior as well. The teenagers imitate apparently across the board, not just suicides, but everything else as well."
In a separate study, Madeline Gould and David Shaeffer of Columbia University found that made-for-television movies about suicide also stimulated imitative behavior. Even though the movies were intended to portray the problem of teen suicide and offered, in some cases, suicide hot line numbers and advice on counselling, the team believes the four network movies prompted eighty teen suicides. One of the made-for-TV movies examined by the Columbia University team was a CBS production. George Schweitzer, a CBS's Vice President, is well aware of this research. He says, "It is terribly unfortunate that any teens took their lives after the broadcast, but if they had it to do over," says Schweitzer, "CBS would still run the movie."
"Studies like these do not measure the most, what we think is the most important thing, which I don't think can be measured, and that is the hundreds and hundreds and probably thousands of teenagers who were positively moved by these kinds of broadcasts."
Moved to call suicide hot lines, moved to seek counseling, and moved to discuss their depressions with family members. Schweitzer does not dispute today's studies: some teens may moved to suicide.
"But ignoring the issue for fear of that, I think, would be far more disastrous than addressing important social issues to help create awareness and again to have a positive effect."
But researcher David Philips suggests the media could decrease the teen suicide problem by avoiding some suicide stories all together and changing the way the others are covered. For example, says Philips, "Don't make suicide seem heroic." He cites the story of a young Czechoslovakian dissident who set himself on fire. But the dissident action was taken to draw attention to government repression in Czechoslovakia. Should the news media really have ignored such a story? "I think it's a really difficult question. There are all these goods on all sides of the issue. And thank God, I don't have to be the one to disentangle that issue."
One prominent expert in this field said the young people moved to take their lives, following a news story or movie, are particularly vulnerable, suicidal individuals. In the absence of television stories, some other events in their lives might well have triggered their actions. So while most psychiatrists agree there is an imitative component to teenage suicides, that tendency, they say, should not lead society to repress information. On the contrary, some say we are now facing a major epidemic of adolescent suicide in America. We must publicize and confront the problem. Last year some fifty-five hundred adolescents between fifteen and twenty-four years of age took their lives. At least ten times that tried. Some estimates are that 275 thousand teens attempted suicide last year. The rate of teenage suicide in America has tripled since 1955.