INSIDE STORY: INSIDE THE USSR (TV)
Summary
One in this series of programs that examines the news media. Hosted by Hodding Carter, this program explores some of the pressures and challenges involved for Soviet and American reporters covering the conflict between the two superpowers. U.S. correspondents who have been assigned to Moscow reveal their impressions and express some of their frustrations about working in a climate of suspicion and fear. Topics discussed include the difficulty of gathering news in an atmosphere of limited information; the need to become adept at distinguishing fact from propaganda and the ways to determine that information is being withheld; the sense of alienation imposed by the housing and office compounds, which isolate foreign journalists from the Soviet people; the function of the U.S. embassy as an information source; and the expulsion of Newsweek magazine reporter Andrew Nagorski from the Soviet Union in 1982, and the reciprocal expulsion from Washington of Soviet foreign correspondent Melor Sturua of Izvestia. Soviet journalists criticize American correspondents for their coverage of the Soviet Union, saying that their reports only scrutinize foreign policy and government structure without exploring the cultural or social aspects of Soviet life. Those interviewed include Anne Garrels, who covered Moscow for ABC; Don McNeil of CBS News; Robert Gillette of The Los Angeles Times; Robert Kaiser, a former Moscow reporter; Robert Zelnick of ABC News; Arthur Hartman, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union; Stuart Loory of CNN; Izvestia columnist Melor Sturua; Soviet TV commentator Vladimir Dunaev; Vladimir Pozner of Radio Moscow; and Samuel Rachlin of Danish Television.
(This series ran regularly on PBS from 1981 to 1984; occasional special editions aired thereafter.)
Cataloging of this program was made possible by a grant from the Times Mirror Foundation.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: April 14, 1983 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:27:57
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:03848
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Cold War; Communism - 1983; Journalism; Press; Press, Communist; Reporters and reporting; She Made It Collection (Anne Garrels); Soviet newspapers; U S S R - Foreign relations - U S
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1981-1984
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Ned Schnurman … Executive Producer
- Joseph M. Russin … Senior Producer
- Katherine Carpenter … Coordinating Producer
- Chris Koch … Producer
- Jane Stoddard … Associate Producer
- Hodding Carter … Reporter, Chief Correspondent, Host
- Vladimir Dunaev
- Anne Garrels
- Robert Gillette
- Arthur Hartman
- Robert Kaiser
- Stuart Loory
- Don McNeil
- Andrew Nagorski
- Vladimir Pozner
- Samuel Rachlin
- Melor Sturua
- Robert Zelnick