BY TERRY JACKSON

 There was the ABC news anchor, standing on her head, being splattered with
 a can of Silly String, down on the floor drawing -- all in an effort to find out
 what 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez is thinking.

 Was it necessary? Was it ethically right? Was it a case of media manipulation?
 Or was it just another yank on America's heartstrings in the ongoing drama?

 Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer scored a media coup Monday
 when she broadcast the only exclusive television interview of Elian since the
 youngster was rescued from the sea on Thanksgiving.

 Monday was the first chapter in Sawyer's interview, conducted Thursday and
 Friday at the Lincoln-Marti School in Little Havana. Another segment was
 scheduled this morning on GMA before the story moves to Wednesday night's
 edition of 20/20.

 Although the interview was exclusive, Elian said very little to Sawyer in the first
 installment that hasn't been passed along by his family over the past four months.
 When the two weren't playing or drawing together, Elian talked about the
 porpoises he says protected him while he was adrift in an inner tube.

 He also spun a tender, childlike fantasy that his mother is in Miami, has lost her
 memory and doesn't know where to find him. When gently pressed by his cousin
 Marisleysis Gonzalez -- who was present for parts of the interview -- Elian
 seemed to acknowledge the truth about the death of his mother.

 In today's installment, ABC said the boy told Sawyer he doesn't want to return,
 but because of the sensitive nature of the boy's situation it decided not to
 broadcast his exact words.

 Also today, Sawyer asked Marisleysis Gonzalez, who has become a mother
 figure to the boy, if she would take Elian back to Cuba to help him adjust.

 ''That would be the worst thing that could happen to this kid,'' she said. ''The
 person that he is so close to him, the person he most loves ... I feel I would
 betray him if I do that, and I will not betray him.''

 She told Sawyer that she has told the boy he should return to Cuba and that his
 father loves him, doing so to lessen the trauma if he is forced back.

 No matter what Elian says in the remaining part of the interview, Elian's
 one-on-one with Sawyer raises an ethical debate.

 ''I don't inherently see a problem,'' said Joe Saltzman, associate dean at the
 Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
 ''People are interested in what the boy has to say. You put the answers on, and
 it's up to the public to decide their value.''

 Sam Roberts, a professor at the University of Miami and a 32-year veteran of CBS
 News, said interviewing a child should raise caution flags.

 ''You don't enter into it lightly,'' he said. ''It really depends on the issue and the
 child. There is no hard-and-fast rule on this that I would lay down if I was running a
 newsroom.''

 KEY QUESTION

 Roberts believes that any interview with a child should answer one key question:
 ''Are we helping or hurting the child?. If you're hurting the child in any way you
 have to back away.''

 David Westin, president of ABC News, said GMA -- which is locked in a fierce
 ratings battle with NBC's Today show -- did move cautiously when Elian's relatives
 offered the interview last week.

 ''From the beginning, all of us at ABC knew it was important to consider whether
 we could do this interview in a way that was respectful of Elian's dignity,'' Westin
 said. ''We asked how we would we feel if it was our child. If we came to the
 conclusion that we could not do this with the right tone and approach, then we
 would pass on the interview.''

 Armando Gutierrez, a Gonzalez family spokesman, said Elian was made
 available because, ''We felt that the world needed to hear about this tragedy in
 Elian's own words.'' Sawyer was chosen because the family believed she had ''the
 right temperament . . . to interview a 6-year-old.''

 FEW RULES

 The interview was done with few ground rules. Elian's relatives wanted an
 unnamed child psychologist present; ABC could bring in its own, Dr. Gunther
 Perdiago of New Orleans, a Brazilian who speaks Spanish. Sawyer, who speaks
 little Spanish and relied on Perdiago, was free to ask anything she wanted and
 Elian was free to answer -- or not.

 In Monday's broadcast, Sawyer went to great lengths to make the point that the
 interview was primarily to show viewers how Elian is coping, not determine
 whether he should go back to Cuba.

 She acknowledged that all sides fighting for Elian have an agenda -- his father in
 Cuba, Fidel Castro (who denounced ABC for not getting permission from the boy's
 father for the interview) and the uncles and cousins in Miami.

 ''You should know that we debated long and hard about meeting Elian, and here's
 why we decided to go ahead,'' Sawyer said. ''Because the U.S. government is
 now increasing a drumbeat of talk about his immediate return and yet no one in
 the U.S. government has met with the child.''

 Westin said that even after Sawyer returned from Miami, the decision to air the
 interview was not made until late Saturday afternoon.

 But given the international profile of Elian's life in Miami, few if any news
 organizations would have turned away.

 ''We would have done the interview, absolutely,'' said Mark Seibel, The Herald's
 assistant managing editor for local news. '' 'Elian Speaks' would be a headline.''

 The Herald was told last week it, too, could interview Elian, but that apparently
 was ruled out once an exclusive deal was worked out with ABC.

 Seibel said he sees nothing ethically wrong with interviewing a 6-year-old, and
 that any agenda Elian's Miami relatives may have in choosing to let the child
 speak now is not crucial.

 ''The news media are always prone to manipulation,'' Seibel said. ''It then
 becomes a matter of presentation and making sure you're aware of what the
 agenda is.''

 QUESTION OF SUBSTANCE

 No matter the format, it's debatable whether there can be much substance to any
 interview with a 6-year-old.

 ''It's better than interviewing 5-year-olds, but not as good as 7-year-olds,'' said
 Tom Peterson, a senior Miami Circuit Court Judge and UM sociology professor
 who has spent much of his career in juvenile court watching children be
 interviewed.

 ''What young children say is really subject to a lot of malleability. To get
 anywhere close to the truth you have to look at the external adult players
 involved.''

 Herald staff writer Alfonso Chardy and Herald news services contributed to this
 report.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald