NEWSWATCH by Thomas Griffith: When Seeing Isn't Believing

Newswatch

Were Iranian troops still loyal to the Shah, and would they fire on their own people? When the Shah left, the answers weren't clear. But in Tehran these days, the way to make your point is to demonstrate, preferably in front of cameras. And, so reported the New York Times nervously, about 80 soldiers in gas masks "advanced toward the correspondents, stabbing the air with their bayonets." This press demonstration by the Immortals Brigade of the Imperial Guard was organized by one Amir-Sadeghi, who then said of the Ayatullah Khomeini, "We'll chop him up for dog meat—or maybe use him for target practice." Amir-Sadeghi was characterized by the Times as "the first person to give foreign correspondents accurate information about the Shah's plan to leave Iran"—and less generously by the Washington Post as "the son of the Shah's former chauffeur and a young man much given to verbal exaggeration."

The news out of Iran has been like that: rarely has reporting from anywhere been so tentative. Dispatches are full of "Little is known about . " "A day of contradictory developments ..." "Other sources gave a slightly different account ..." "How many civilians harbor such feelings is impossible to say since many keep their views to themselves." Only when Ramsey Clark after a short visit, proclaimed that 99% of the people were behind Khomeini did the New York Times's R.W. Apple Jr. commit himself to a "conservative guess" that at least 15% to 20% of Iranians were antagonistic or indifferent to the Ayatullah.

In the current situation, even seeing isn't believing, as all television viewers know who saw and heard the Ayatullah's "spokesman" address the cameras only to have everything he said repudiated by the old man the next day On the eve of Khomeini's return to Tehran, the New York Times admitted all in a frontpage headline: AYATULLAH, THE SYMBOL OF REVOLT, ELUDES DEFINITION.

The Iran story is a textbook example of why it is necessary to weigh on different scales what reporters say and what columnist-pundits do. A columnist is usually admired for the vigor of his opinions and regarded as wishy-washy if he does too much on-the-other-handing. In Iran, where so much is happening but so little is conclusive, a reporter who must return to the same story day after day just hopes events haven't undone what he has just written. His ambition is a humbler one: to describe confusion lucidly, and to allow a comfortable margin for the unknown.

CBS News does think it clearly knows how Americans feel about President Carter's recognition of Communist China—he hasn't got a majority behind him. Just before Teng Hsiao-p'ing's visit, the CBS News-New York Times poll telephoned 1,500 American homes and asked, "Do you think Jimmy Carter should have pushed for closer ties with Communist China even though that meant breaking off relations with the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan?" With the question put that way, only 32% said yes, another 22% had no opinion and 46% disapproved. Is this America speaking?