cal inaccuracies and offensive statements or characterizations
in the show.
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
its news broadcasting "offends the protections of a free
press," did not submit any evidence. Nonetheless, the Com
mission denied the petition without a hearing. See WGPR,
Inc., 10 FCC Rcd 8140, 8146-48 (1995). Explaining that it
would not investigate an allegation of news distortion without
"substantial extrinsic evidence" thereof, the Commission de
termined that only three of Serafyn's items of evidence were
extrinsic to the broadcast itself: the viewer letters, the
outtakes of interviews with Rabbi Bleich, and CBS's refusal
to use the services of the history professor. All the other
evidence, according to the Commission, either concerned "dis
putes as to the truth of the event ... or embellishments
concerning peripheral aspects of news reports or attempts at
window dressing which concerned the manner of presenting
the news." Id. at 8147 (emphasis in original, citations omit
ted). The Commission then held that the three items it
regarded as extrinsic evidence "in total ... do[ ] not satisfy
the standard for demonstrating intent to distort." Id. at
8148. Serafyn had therefore failed to show that CBS had not
met its public interest obligations and had "failed to present a
substantial and material issue of fact that the grant of the
application ... would be inconsistent with the public inter
est." Id. at 8149.
Serafyn and Oleg Nikolyszyn, another viewer who com
plained to the Commission and whose appeal we consolidated
with Serafyn's, argue that the Commission violated its own
standard in concluding that no hearing was necessary.
Serafyn implicitly objects also to the standard itself insofar as
he argues that it "imposed an impossible burden" upon him
by requiring that he present extrinsic evidence sufficient to
prove his claim without the benefit of discovery, and that the
"objective" evidence he offered should be deemed adequate to
warrant a hearing upon the public interest question.
No. 95-1608. Serafyn and the Ukrainian Congress Com
mittee of America also petitioned the Commission to revoke
or set for a revocation hearing all of the broadcast licenses
owned by CBS, arguing that CBS had made misrepresenta
