Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1989. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Chung: no problem mixing actors, news
San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday September 23, 1989
Chuck Ross, Chronicle TV Writer
"Heyyy, It's Connie." That's what David Letterman says "Saturday Night With Connie Chung" should really be called. "Well, it's worth thinking about," Chung said earlier this week in a phone interview from New York. "I don't want to reject anything out of hand," she added with a laugh. Chung has been criticized because her new show, which replaces "West 57th" at 10 tonight (channels 5, 10, 12 and 46), will use actors to re-create events. Until recently, the major networks didn't do re-creations on their news-magazine shows because they didn't want to blur the line between fiction and reality. Tonight, James Earl Jones will portray the late civil-rights pioneer Vernon Johns. Chung said in upcoming shows that actors might be used to tell the stories where the principals are unavailable, such as those who are incarcerated or who just plain refuse to go on the air but give CBS permission to re-create their lives. This is new ground for a network "news" magazine show produced under the auspices of a news division, but it doesn't trouble Chung. "If that's the only way to tell the story, I don't see anything the matter with it," she said. The former NBC newscaster is consistently praised in focus groups conducted by network research. David Letterman knows she's no stiff, and Chung enjoys the chemistry that she has with the late-night host. "I've been on three times since I left NBC," Chung said, "and I don't see any reason I can't keep appearing, even though it's an NBC show." Chung has a reputation for being a person who hugs her co-workers at times, and Washington Post columnist Tom Shales recently asked her about that. Chung related a story of how she once got Jesse Jackson to stop from going "on and on" in response to a question she asked him at the Democratic National Convention. "I just put my hand right on his arm, you know, and just a grrrrr, sort of a half nelson, and then he would stop," she said. "Each time he'd go on, I'd grrrrr and he'd kind of stop, because nobody had done that before to make him stop." Chung is married to Maury Povich, host of the tabloid show "A Current Affair." They appeared together on "Later With Bob Costas" (another NBC show) earlier this week, and had fun joking together. Chung also appeared on Povich's show on Thursday. "I don't think we came off very good on that one," she said. "We were too serious. Maury asked me where I got the idea for doing re-creations, and I was supposed to say from 'A Current Affair,' but I forgot to say that. What a dummy. What a knucklehead." '60 Minutes' Focuses On S.F. Surgeon Dr. Lorraine Day, the controversial chief of orthopedic surgery at San Francisco General Hospital who thinks surgeons are at considerable risk of getting AIDS from their patients, will be on "60 Minutes" tomorrow. The 14-minute report, which will be the second segment on the show, is called "Dr. Day Is Quitting," a reference to the fact that Day has submitted her resignation to the hospital, effective February 1. The piece is reporter Steve Kroft's first for "60 Minutes" since leaving the now defunct "West 57th." He introduces the segment by saying that there have been some doctors and nurses at teaching hospitals who have quit because of their fear of contracting AIDS. Day, who supported the passage of Proposition 102 last November, which called for reporting the names of people who test positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to the state, says that the medical establishment downplays the risk of occupational exposure to AIDS. Dr. John Luce, former chief of staff at San Francisco General Hospital, disagrees with Day, and he also is interviewed on the show. He calls Day an "alarmist." Also interviewed is Dr. Jim Curran, who heads the AIDS program at the national Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. He says there are 18 documented cases of health-care workers who have tested HIV-positive based on their occupational contact with blood. There are probably more such cases among the nation's 6 million health-care workers, he says. "I think that surgeons and people who have a substantial amount of needle sticks and cuts during surgery," Curran tells Kroft, "have considerable potential of infection from blood-borne infections, including HIV as well as hepatitis B."
Keywords: TELEVISION
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