MEDIA'S MICKEY MOUSE MESS; JOURNALISTS QUESTION PAPERS' COURT FILING.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

The bitter dispute between Jeffrey Katzenberg and The Walt Disney Co. took a bizarre turn this week as the Los Angeles Times and four other news organizations sought a court order to keep documents about Katzenberg's DreamWorks SKG secret.

Some journalists within the news organizations questioned the unusual tactic, since media normally try to get information made available to them, and prominent media attorney Pierce O'Donnell withdrew the motion a day after it was filed.

On Friday, Ben Bagdikian, former dean of the graduate school of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, sharply criticized the friend-of-the-court filing.

``This is the first time in almost 50 years in journalism and media research that I have heard that the managements of news organizations - including important national ones - filed a brief asking a court in a civil case to keep secret (including from their own organizations) documents in which the news organizations are not directly involved,'' he said.

``It is all the more bizarre that this happens to be a highly publicized case that these news organizations have been covering in considerable detail.''

The episode - involving the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily Journal, Time magazine, Variety and the Wall Street Journal - left the publications ``with egg on their faces,'' according to the Hollywood Reporter, which carried a story in Friday's edition.

``There was a mistake,'' Karlene Goller, deputy general counsel for the Los Angeles Times, said through a spokesman Friday. ``These papers should not have been filed.''

Bagdikian said he was particularly disturbed by the trend of reporters and editors deferring to business considerations in news gathering.

``What is ominous to me is the possibility that the growing intrusion of the business offices of news organizations into the selection and presentation of news has gone so far that the corporate side of major news organizations now act more as fellow corporations in a corporate case and not as detached journalistic observers covering the case,'' he said.

The original filing, made Wednesday by O'Donnell, appeared to place the organizations on the side of Katzenberg - one of the founders of DreamWorks - because it backed his motion that the DreamWorks documents should not be allowed in the record. The filing said the documents were ``not relevant'' and had been submitted by Disney ``in bad faith'' and were intended to ``punish'' Katzenberg.

``DreamWorks has been reluctantly dragged into this dispute,'' the filing said. ``While we do not want to be drawn into this bitter feud, we cannot support such bad faith litigation tactics.''

The Hollywood Reporter said unidentified reporters at one of the organizations had ``gone ballistic'' after learning of the filing.

``I was surprised and disappointed,'' said Daily Journal Editor Katrina Dewey in describing her reaction to the original filing. ``I would say that because of miscommunication, I was not apprised of the brief before it was filed. We decided, in consultation with the other entities, that this was a position we did not support.''

The Times also filed a notice Thursday substituting a new attorney for O'Donnell on media issues, Goller said.

Katzenberg victory

The filings occurred following last week's major victory for Katzenberg, who is suing Disney for more than $250 million that he claims he is owed after spending a decade heading Disney's film studio. Retired judge Paul Breckenridge ruled on May 19 that Disney had breached its fiduciary duty and owed Katzenberg interest worth millions of dollars on the yet-to-be-determined bonus.

Time, Variety and the Wall Street Journal did not respond Friday to requests for comment. For his part, O'Donnell stressed that the filing included language that stressed the public's right to DreamWorks documents if they remain part of the public record.

``I also want to emphasize that the position we took in court was previously approved by our clients,'' O'Donnell said in an interview. ``I can see how the filing might be misinterpreted that we were taking sides. That was never our intent.''

Dewey pointed out that O'Donnell had successfully argued last month on behalf of the organizations that Katzenberg's suit be open to the public. ``I hope no one loses sight that this filing would not have been an issue if we had not been successful in opening this part of trial,'' she added.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Oudenkirk made the ruling on April 15, spurning Disney's arguments that the case should be closed because it will include information about its film-release strategies that would help rivals. But he also gave lawyers the opportunity to make a case before Breckenridge as to why some of the documents should be kept under wraps.

Trade secrets

Disney claimed in a filing earlier this week that its planning documents qualify as trade secrets and that the DreamWorks documents show that Katzenberg ``considered a virtually identical type of planning and forecasting document to qualify for the highest level of confidentiality.''

It pointed out that DreamWorks executives have provided legal advice to Katzenberg, have attended court hearings and are expected to provide testimony.

``To claim, as DreamWorks does now, that Disney has somehow dragged DreamWorks into this case is disingenuous at best,'' Disney's filing said.

Katzenberg left Disney in 1994 after a falling-out with Chairman Michael Eisner and sued the Burbank-based entertainment giant in 1996, citing failure of the company to pay him the bonus he was owed. Disney paid Katzenberg a partial settlement of $117 million in 1997, and the current phase will determine how much more Disney will have to pay.