(2 of 3)
Docudrama producers argue that they are creating art, not reportage. They liken their work to Shakespeare's history plays, which also had an unmistakable political point of view, and to historical novels, which frequently fabricate details for verisimilitude and mingle actual and fictional characters. Says CBS Vice President Donald Wear: "Dramas based on fact are a part of literature and the theater, and if television is going to be a vital and contemporary medium, they have to be part of TV, too."
There is, however, a fundamental difference between the stage or the printed page and the TV screen: books and plays are not news media. Television serves as a primary source of news for a majority of Americans. The reasonable viewer can, of course, distinguish between a sitcom and a news special. But it is not clear how many viewers recognize that a network may have one standard of fidelity to fact in its 7 p.m. newscast, and another an hour later in its docudramas.
In the case of The Atlanta Child Murders, Mann is so convinced of the rightness of his case that he says he was, if anything, "too fair to the prosecution." But Atlanta officials understandably regard the CBS show as simply wrong. Says Mayor Andrew Young, who took office while the 1982 trial was under way: "What Abby Mann has done is to make the city the enemy. It is an abuse of the power of the media. I think CBS should be just outright ashamed of themselves." CBS admits that the protest from Atlanta has "caused some introspection." At the last minute the network inserted an onscreen advisory to viewers that conceded that "some of the events and characters are fictionalized for dramatic purposes." CBS executives have yet to explain why, if they wanted to make a film about the Atlanta case, they chose Mann's perception as the one to endorse.
Television is at all times a powerfully believable medium, even when it is not invoking names familiar from the headlines. The docudrama-style 1974 CBS movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman portrayed the struggle of American blacks for civil rights through scenes from the life of a wholly fictional centenarian. That title character seemed so compellingly real that former New York Governor Hugh Carey gave a speech while in office citing Jane Pittman as a historically important black American.