MEDIA WATCH

In contrast with '86, agency viewed as responsive to inquiries

By Mark Jurkowitz, Globe Staff, 2/6/2003

n a post-mortem he wrote about the 1986 Challenger accident, William Harwood, who had been the UPI's Cape Canaveral bureau chief, described NASA's ill-conceived approach to dealing with the news media.

''As hundreds of reporters converged on the Kennedy Space Center, NASA public affairs officers struggled to cope with an impossible situation,'' he wrote. ''On the one hand, the agency was asking news organizations not to speculate on the cause of the worst disaster in space history. But on the other, it encouraged such speculation by withholding even the most rudimentary information.''

Now a CBS News space consultant, Harwood said that NASA's response to Saturday's Columbia disaster is nothing less than ''night and day'' compared with 1986. Instead of stonewalling reporters, the agency holds two news briefings a day -- emanating from Washington and from Houston -- and its officials are widely viewed as being candid and even remorseful. And the agency is already reaping the rewards of its media-friendly strategy.

''Reporters are definitely giving upper management the benefit of the doubt,'' Harwood added.

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NBC chief science correspondent Robert Bazell, who characterized NASA's post-Challenger behavior as ''close to criminal,'' said the agency's response to this tragedy has been ''as good as it gets. . . . When [NASA shuttle manager Ron Dittemore] says he's sharing everything with you, it is so believable.''

Those watching NASA closely in recent days attribute this openness partly to a change in the organization's culture since the dark days of Challenger.

''I think it was two or three weeks before they even offered anything substantive to reporters'' in 1986. ''I can't think of a worse media strategy,'' said Miles O'Brien, CNN's space correspondent who anchored the network's coverage on Saturday. ''These guys are a different breed. They've risen to management with that [Challenger] cloud hanging over the agency. . . . The program's on the line. I don't think they have anything to hide.''

Dittemore's public and pained introspection is also helping convince the media and the public that NASA is leveling with the nation. His remarkable admissions that he is ''the accountable official,'' and that he had trouble driving in his car ''alone with my thoughts'' have been front-page news and struck a chord in a society in which public officials are not often eager to shoulder blame or share doubts.

''I think, in large part, the reporters are bending over to give NASA the benefit of the doubt largely because of Dittemore's credibility,'' said Harwood.

Some observers also suggest the communication problems following the Challenger resulted from the sheer shock of a catastrophe befalling what had been viewed as an infallible program. It was ''hubris, coupled with denying,'' said O'Brien. ''It wasn't on their radar screen that this could happen. It was like the Titanic.''

''After Challenger, contingencies were put in place,'' said NASA's assistant administrator for public affairs Glenn Mahone. This time, NASA was better prepared to handle a human, scientific, and public relations emergency.

Still, reporters say, the good feelings may not last. NASA's relations with the media could become more strained and adversarial as the investigation deepens and, in O'Brien's words, ''the questions get harder.''

NASA could become ''more defensive . . . if it gets to be more and more the idea that this was someone's mistake,'' added Bazell. On Tuesday's ''NBC Nightly News,'' he reported on a nearly decade-old study warning NASA that insulation debris could put a shuttle mission in peril, a story that was widely reported yesterday. For now, however, the space agency -- in contrast to 1986 -- seems to be out in front of the story rather than engaged in a game of coverup and catch-up.

''There's no question they have been playing offense, much to their advantage,'' says Larry Rasky, a Boston public relations and communications consultant. ''It's crisis management 101. The press abhors a vacuum. If you don't fill it, they will.''

This story ran on page A22 of the Boston Globe on 2/6/2003.
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