As the networks scale back their international news coverage, the new technology is taking up a bit of the slack. A case in point is an experiment being carried out the The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in conjunction with Time Warner Inc. Time correspondents are being provided with Hi8 cameras that will allow them to shoot video of or use by the NewsHourM while gathering information for their print dispatches. Each side figures to profit by this trial marriage of convenience: MacNeil/Lehrer hopes to plug into an established network of seasoned correspondents throughout the world; Time, for its parts, will get to test out its potential as a supplier of foreign news footage.

This past May, Time's Cairo-based correspondent Bill Dowell reported, shot, and narrated a seven-minute piece on oil fires in Kuwait for a mere $ 1,800 (the discount cost of his camera). Dowell's piece aired on MacNeil/Lehrer the same week that his print story ran in the magazine. CBS This Morning also used Time and MacNeil/Lehrer footage.

Weighing only about five pounds and retailing for less than $ 10,000 -- approximately one quarter the price of a standard network rig -- the Hi8 is small enough to be mistaken for the video camera of a tourist. It can also be easily concealed. This makes it invaluable as a means of documenting events in countries that attempt to censor independent reporting.

The PBS program South Africa Now was a pioneer in the use of the Hi8, slipping several into South Africa and putting them in the hands of locals, making it possible for those closest to the story to describe what was happening at a time when censorship was being strictly enforced. Danny Schechter, the show's executive producer, is preparing to launch Rights and Wrongs, a broadcast that will use Hi8 to capture human-rights abuses worldwide. "Our motive for using Hi8," he says, "was its low cost, high flexibility, and low visibility compared to TV news rigs."

Two years ago, when Bob Parry, a former Newsweek reporter, approached PBS's Frontline about new leads that might tie former CIA Director William Casey to the Iranian captors of American hostages, executive producer David Fanning was wary -- wary about the allegations and about the resources needed. He eventually consented to send Parry off with a Frontline producer and a Hi8 camera.

Whenever Parry found somebody who would talk on the record, he did not have to make arrangements for a crew to arrive several days hence and reshoot an interview, but was ready to film. Without Hi8, sources might have slipped away or had time to have second thoughts about going public. As executive producer Fanning says, "High Crimes and Misdemeanors is a major documentary that could not have been done within our budget without Hi8."

Another boon of the new technology is the intimacy it helps to create between interviewer and subject. People often freeze up when cables and hot lights invade their living room: a videocam, on the other hand, has become afamiliar presence at many family gatherings. As Al Briganti, executive producer of CBS's new real-life courtroom program The Verdict, suggests, "The more show-business baloney involved in gathering video, the more uptight your news source is."

In smaller markets, where hardware and operational costs were once considered daunting, the Hi8 has encouraged innovative ways of covering the news. Fox Incorporated is considering using the Hi8 as an affordable means of establishing news coverage for its 120 affiliates in smaller markets. Freedom Newspapers Inc., a privately held corporation that owns and operates five network affiliate stations and fifty newspapers, recently established a twenty-four hour-a-day local news channel in Orange County, California. In its first year of operation, OCN -- the acronym stand for Orange County NewsChannel -- has not only covered school boards and traffic, but has also created OCN Sports Talk, a Friday-night broadcast with highlights from nearly thirty Orange County high school games. Shot by a dozen teams working with Hi8s, the highlights are punctuated by coaches and star players, fresh from the showers, dropping by the studio. Local retailers have responded by choosing OCN's cheaper ad rates and local market share over those of Los Angeles affiliates.

The new technology has its drawbacks -- and its critics. Even under optimal conditions, the Hi8 produces an image that is less clear than that normally seen on network television. But as Jay Fine, NBC News's vice-president of operations, says, "If this is the only picture you have, you're not going to care about quality."

Even Hi8 fans, like CBS executive producer Andrew Heyward -- whose broadcast 48 Hours has used the cameras for combat footage and underwater photography and has even put them in the hands of Soviet policeman for a segment called "Moscow Vice" -- points out that "it's a leap of faith to jump from everybody possessing the technology to everybody being an accomplished, professionally trained journalist." Also, the jury is still out on such questions as whether print journalists can or should double as cameramen, and whether videojournalists can effectively produce, report, and shoot their own footage.

Not surprisingly, union officials express concern about the Hi8, which, they content, may encourage news divisions to send cameramen out alone into dangerous situations. Calvin Siemer, a vice-president of Local 11 of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, says, "If you don't have that extra pair of eyes around you because you're totally involved in what you're shooting, you can be very vulnerable."

Nevertheless, the future of the new technology appears bright. PBS is planning to give cameras to several print correspondents covering the '92 presidential campaign and have them shoot footage that may become video's equivalent of T. E. White's The Making of The President.

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