Notwithstanding the requirement in 47 C.F.R. s 73.1202
that a licensee keep and make available all letters received
from viewers, WUSA-TV in Washington, D.C., forwarded the
letters it received to CBS's main office in New York. When a
representative of the Ukrainian-American Community Net
work asked to see the letters, WUSA contacted CBS in New
York and was told by Raymond Faiola that the letters were
in storage and that a response had been sent to each viewer
who wrote in; Faiola attached what he said was a copy of that
response. After failing to locate any viewer who had received
such a reply, the UACN representative questioned this story.
A CBS attorney in turn questioned Faiola, who then ex
plained that the response letter had been sent to only about a
quarter of the viewers who had written in about the program.
When an intensive advertising campaign, however, failed to
turn up even one person in the Ukrainian-American commu
nity who had received a response, the UACN representative
complained to the Commission and sent a copy of the com
plaint to counsel for CBS. When CBS's counsel asked Faiola
for an affidavit confirming his story, Faiola admitted that the
letter he had sent WUSA had been merely a draft and that he
had forgotten to have any actual response letters sent out.
Nos. 95-1385, 1440. Alexander Serafyn, an American of
Ukrainian ancestry, petitioned the Commission to deny or to
set for hearing the application of CBS to be assigned the
licenses of two stations, arguing that the "60 Minutes" broad
cast showed that CBS had distorted the news and therefore
failed to serve the public interest. In support of his petition,
Serafyn submitted the broadcast itself, outtakes of interviews
with Rabbi Bleich, viewer letters, a dictionary supporting his
claim about the mistranslation of "zhyd," historical informa
tion about the Galicia Division, information showing that CBS
had rebuffed the offer of a professor of Ukrainian history to
help CBS understand the subject, and seven other items of
evidence.
Serafyn also submitted evidence that "60 Minutes" had no
policy against news distortion and indeed that management
considered some distortion acceptable. For example, accord
ing to the Washington Post, Mike Wallace, a longtime report
er for "60 Minutes," told an interviewer: "You don't like to
baldly lie, but I have." Colman McCarthy, The TV Whisper,
Wash. Post, Jan. 7, 1995, at A21. Don Hewitt, the executive
producer of "60 Minutes," is quoted in the same article as
saying that some deception is permissible because "[i]t's the
small crime vs. the greater good," and elsewhere as saying
that "I wouldn't make Hitler look bad on the air if I could get
a good story." Richard Jerome, Don Hewitt, People, Apr. 24,
1995, at 85, 90.
CBS, taking the position that any official investigation into