Equal Time

Communists lecture the media

The call was intended to strike a nerve among politically sensitive French journalists. Instead, it drew jeers of cynicism and outrage. Nonetheless, all of France remained fascinated last week with an extraordinary campaign by the Soviet government and the French Communist Party that demanded a greater diversity of views in the reporting by France's state-run radio and television networks. The reason for the hubbub was easy to discern: a desire to affect French news coverage of the Italian allegation that the Bulgarian secret police, and by implication the Soviet KGB, were behind Turkish Gunman Mehmet Ah Agca's attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981.

Like other Western newsmen, French broadcasters have given prominent coverage to the Italian government's charges. In response, an aide to Soviet Ambassador to France Stepan Chervonenko sent a letter to all major French news organizations demanding "fair" treatment of the U.S.S.R. and accusing the French of making "our country the object of the most shameless defamation." The French press wasted no time in responding. Replied the conservative Paris daily Le Quotidien: "One can easily imagine the scandal that would ensue if a U.S. ambassador in France dared to send an insulting letter to all the newspapers, radio and television stations demanding that they judge his country more sympathetically."

Through no coincidence, the Soviet theme was also taken up by the French Communist Party daily L'Humanite. The paper lambasted the French media for their alleged anti-Soviet bias and declared that there were "no established facts" and only "inexistent proof [and] uncertain hypotheses" behind the reports of the Bulgarian-Soviet connection. The television networks were singled out for blame because, the Communist newspaper said, they were state-run and thus "public services." The failure to give equal play to Soviet denials of a role in the assassination attempt, L'Humanite piously said, was "serious, serious for democracy." Added the newspaper, in one of 1982's most ironic statements: "When you only hear one bell struck, you can't distinguish truth from falsehood. When you're only given one opinion, always the same, it's your independence of mind, your chance to judge for yourself, that's threatened."

As it happens, the Soviet leadership last week had only a single opinion to offer on Pope John Paul II. The official TASS news agency condemned the Pope for his "conservative and rigid" attitude toward the Soviet bloc. TASS also denounced the Vatican for using the "cover of religion" to engage in "antiCommunist propaganda on a broad scale." The Vatican said it had "no comment or reply" to that sound of one bell ringing in the Kremlin. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.