Wrongly attacking `Quiz Show'

It's bad enough to read a specious review of ``Quiz Show'' in the New York Times, but it verges on recklessness to discover the identical distortion two months later in the opinion-page article ``Quiz Show - Rigged Again,'' Oct. 28.

Before launching his attack on Robert Redford, the author hunkers down in defense of his past territory, the business of television. He blithely describes the 1958 fraud perpetrated by the game show ``Twenty-One,'' as ``fooling the public'' for ``fun and profit.'' The author then proceeds to compare the fun and games of fraud to the molehill of artistic license that Mr. Redford forthrightly interprets for the critics.

Developing a composite character is standard procedure in movies, literature, and other art forms. And apparently, the Redford research team unearthed sufficient evidence about NBC President Robert Kintner to assume he had some knowledge of the scam.

Redford made a movie about one of television's grandest frauds, which, appropriately enough in this political season, is being spun about for '90s consumption as something that everyone does; so who's to say what's right or wrong here? Certainly not former TV commentators. Elizabeth D. Earls, Washington