TV Ethics: A Passing Familiarity

PBS will broadcast an ambitious special next week, “Endgame: Ethics and Values in America,” which presents a fictional scenario, in a short dramatic film, to spark an exploration of ethics, complete with a panel discussion and interactive component allowing viewers to weigh in.

To which some of you might say: Television advocating ethical behavior? Talk about the odd couple. What’s next, Wile E. Coyote educating youth on the need to protect the poor endangered Roadrunner?

Let’s face it: The television industry’s relationship with ethics is fitful at best, more on the order of casual acquaintances than true romance. The two nod politely when their paths cross, but it’s not like they hang out together.

Indeed, for all the soul-searching that was supposed to be inspired by the events that took place a year ago, author Haynes Johnson turned out to be right when he predicted on “Nightline” days after the attacks that it wouldn’t take long for the nation to “go back to our delights and diversions.”

The task of delighting and diverting is clearly a formidable one, not only because we live in financially challenging times but also due to the sheer number of outlets vying to do so--a combination that isn’t particularly conducive to fostering ethics and values. In fact, it leads programmers more in the direction of standing on the roof, stripping their clothes off and screaming, just to get attention.

How else, really, do you ascribe ethics to E! exploiting Anna Nicole Smith in a series with all the depth and charm of a carnival sideshow? Or CBS planning a miniseries about Hitler as a youth--ostensibly to shed light on a how the man became a monster, but realistically because it’s sure to generate oodles of publicity? Or providing TV forums to psychic mediums like John Edward and James Van Praagh who talk to the dead--the executives responsible cloaking their own skepticism so long as they see a buck to be made off the living and grieving?

Moreover, where do values connect with any number of programs built around exhibitionists with questionable judgment, from “Big Brother” to “Fear Factor” to “The Bachelor”? As if giving such exposure to people desperate to be on TV wasn’t enough, the media then helps these contestants milk their 15 minutes of fame--exalting those who prove most adept in the art of manipulation and promoting a win-at-all-costs mentality, with the spoils going to those who “outwit, outlast and outplay.”

And that’s just what you see on screen. Anyone operating on Hollywood’s fringes has heard stories about agents undermining colleagues or selling out one client to benefit another, executives taking pains to torpedo projects from writers they don’t like, or producers spreading rumors to gain leverage in a negotiation--usually all before lunch.

Then there are the excesses of broadcast news, from the unsavory jockeying of the network booking wars--including the frenzy to interview teenage rape victims on camera, a contest “won” by “Today” and Katie Couric--to synergistic promotion masquerading as news, including news reports on CBS’ local radio outlets plugging the network’s programs; to allegations of outright deception, such as Geraldo Rivera’s dispatch from what he erroneously said was a “friendly fire” site in Afghanistan--”an honest mistake,” Rivera explained later, in which he was off by 100 miles.

Still, when it comes to television and ethics, it may be a case where those who can’t do (or more accurately, those who don’t do) really can ... teach--and in this age of Enron and WorldCom, the lessons could hardly be timelier.

“Endgame” executive producer Scott Goldstein has been kicking around this kind of multimedia project for years--long before those corporate scandals or a former president quibbled over the definition of the word “is.”

“I’m fascinated by the things that people do when no one’s watching them,” Goldstein said, adding that his goal is to avoid being preachy or providing simple answers to complex issues.

At its best, he noted, television dramas do precisely that--with programs such as “The West Wing,” “Law & Order” and “The Practice” concocting scenarios that invite viewers to ponder what they would do in a similar situation where the admonishment to “do the right thing” isn’t always clear.

“Endgame” will explore such points with ethicist Michael Josephson and David Kaczynski, who turned in his brother, Theodore, as the Unabomber. The program is also hosted by Carol Marin, who quit her TV anchor job at WMAQ in Chicago in 1997, when the NBC-owned station hired talk-show host Jerry Springer as a commentator.

Although the flap generated national headlines, Marin, who has since worked for “60 Minutes II,” noted that it was hardly her first skirmish over ethical concerns. In fact, she was briefly suspended the year before when she refused to read copy that she says was forced on the news department because of an advertising deal.

The Springer incident “isn’t a marker for me,” she said. “I got way too much credit for something that people do every day, because I was on television and it involved Jerry Springer.”

Rather, Marin said people in television, and especially news, regularly face tough decisions about the compromises required when personal or professional standards and commerce come into conflict.

“We sort of lose sight of the fact that this has never been a pristine undertaking, this business of news and television,” she said.

Such choices are seldom easy, a point Goldstein (who previously worked with Marin in Chicago as a TV news producer) hopes the special will address--shifting the conversation from the obvious corporate lawbreaker, say, to the whistle-blower whose actions could have unintended consequences, such as putting friends and colleagues out of a job.

“I’m really trying very hard not to go after obvious targets and knock them down,” Goldstein said, adding, “The color palette of this show is black, white and gray.”

What a refreshing concept for TV, where, as most evidence suggests one year after Sept. 11, green is still a primary color.

“Endgame: Ethics and Values in America” will be shown next Wednesday at 8 p.m. on KCET.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at brian.lowry@latimes.com.