What was going on when I was born?

President Reagan voiced disappointment over lagging support among business executives for his economic recovery plan. He asked a meeting of the N.A.M. to back his budget for next year. (Page A1.) The public disagrees with Mr. Reagan's unyielding budget priorities on taxes and arms spending, the New York Times/CBS News Poll shows. (A1.) The President's Economic Policy Advisory Board decided that the budget deficits he has proposed must be reduced. In a nearly six-hour meeting, most of the advisers favored cutting spending, but some - including Arthur F. Burns, Herbert Stein and Charls E. Walker - suggested deferring a tax cut. (D15.)

West Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands cut key interest rates today in a coordinated move to stimulate investment and adjust to a decline in inflation. Bankers said the cuts demonstrated that European governments were determined to lower rates, despite the recent rebound in American rates. European governments have charged in recent months that high rates in the United States have forced them to keep their own rates high to protect the value of their currencies. They have also said that the high cost of money has caused unemployment in Europe to climb rapidly because investment has been stifled.

President Reagan expressed disappointment today over flagging support among businessmen for his economic program and called on the business community to support his budget for the 1983 fiscal year. ''What we need now is not last-minute haggling or displays of blatant self-interest,'' Mr. Reagan told a meeting of Excerpts from address, page D15. the National Association of Manufacturers. ''We need the support that only America's businessmen can give us.''

Four members of a Dutch television crew were killed Wednesday in a rural part of El Salvador where they had gone to film a guerrilla group. The Salvadoran Army said tonight that the newsmen had died when guerrillas accompanying them opened fire on an army patrol. Reporters who went to the scene in Chalatenango Province north of the capital found bloody clothing and 30 spent M-16 shells near the spot where associates of the four men said they had been dropped off at 5 P.M. Wednesday. Residents of nearby villages reported they had heard 20 minutes of firing shortly after 5 P.M. Bodies Reported Mutilated Confirmation of the death of the four newsmen first came from Koen Steendick, the Dutch Consul in El Salvador, and from Hendrick van den Broek, a spokesman for the Dutch Embassy in Mexico City. Mr. Steendick said he had been told by Foreign Ministry officials that the four bodies had been mutilated.

After the United States Postal Service began its electronic mail service on Jan. 4, one happy customer wrote that ''neither system downtime, line noise nor software bugs'' had stayed the new service from its appointed rounds. But while the system, introduced with great fanfare, seems to have worked technically, it has so far been a flop commercially and the Postal Service will likely fall far short of its initial targets for message traffic. In its first 10 weeks of operation, the electronic mail service carried 66,500 letters, an average of 6,650 a week. While volume spurted to nearly 15,000 messages for the first week of this month, bringing the postal authorities to predict an upturn, it plunged to about 5,000 messages last week. The Postal Service had projected a first-year volume of at least 20 million letters, or 385,000 a week, and are clearly dismayed by the slow acceptance. ''It's low, what can I tell you?'' said Karen T. Uemoto, director of the electronic mail operations.

King Hussein of Jordan said today that dangerous rifts in the Arab world and the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank were bringing the Middle East to the brink of a new war. ''We are passing through one of the most critical stages we have witnessed in our time,'' said the King, regarded as one of the most pro-Western of Arab leaders. ''It is far more serious than it has ever been.'' In an interview at his residential palace in the wooded hills outside the capital, the King said American foreign policy has ''eroded to the point where it has now adopted the role of a postman, a carrier of messages.''

The American public generally disagrees with President Reagan's unyielding budget positions on taxes and arms spending and is registering sharply increased concern about his foreign policy record, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. The poll indicates that four of five Americans consider the budget deficit for the fiscal year 1983, projected at $91.5 billion, as ''something we should worry about.'' Differing with the President in two budget areas that Mr. Reagan has insisted are untouchable, those polled, by a margin of 53 percent to 32 percent, favored eliminating a 10 percent cut in Federal income taxes that is to take effect in July while a plurality, 49 percent to 41 percent, backed a reduction in Pentagon spending. New Cuts in Aid to Poor Rejected In addition, the respondents, by a 2-to-1 ratio, rejected further reductions in Federal programs designed to aid the poor. This is one area of Federal spending in which Mr. Reagan's proposed 1983 budget now calls for further cuts and in which he has invited Congress to make new reductions.

A conviction obtained in the Abscam investigation was affirmed yesterday by a Federal appeals court in a decision that said lawenforcement agents could use ''special investigative techniques to uncover insidious corruption.'' The ruling focused on a relatively minor defendant, Alexander A. Alexandro Jr., an investigator with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Mr. Alexandro was convicted of accepting a bribe to obtain an immigration document for the friend of an ''Arab sheik'' who turned out to be an undercover agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In dismissing the appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in Manhattan that Mr. Alexandro's constitutional right to due process had not been violated by the methods of the Abscam investigation.

Since they took office in 1978, Mayor Koch and City Council President Carol Bellamy have clashed over some important issues - foster care, tax abatements for real-estate developers, police and sanitation hirings, the Charlotte Street housing project in the Bronx and the Westway highway project. Except for the Westway, which is still a point of contention, each issue has been resolved in a way eventually acceptable to both. The tilt of the compromise changed with the issue, but over all there was agreement. That record has led many city officials to conclude that as Mayor -which she would become if Mr. Koch were elected Governor next fall -Miss Bellamy would probably fashion a government very similar to the Koch administration. The serious differences between Mr. Koch and Miss Bellamy are primarily ones of style, not substance, according to many observers.

Oil ministers of the 13 OPEC nations gathered here today for a crucial policy meeting amid uncertainty that the group could find a way to prevent the worldwide abundance of oil from forcing a general reduction in prices. ''I don't believe we can make a formal decision about production levels,'' said Humberto Calderon Berti, the Venezuelan minister of energy, referring to proposals that OPEC production be cut back to remove enough oil from the market to firm up prices. Earlier this week, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the Saudi Arabian oil minister, reportedly told a confidant, ''This will be the most difficult meeting I've attended.'' Lack of Prearranged Strategy That concern, and the apparent lack of a prearranged strategy, was reflected in the attitudes of the ministers as they arrived for the Friday session. It was also reflected in the reclusiveness of several who have often been among the most voluble. Few expressed substantial optimism that the group would be able to reach an agreement on oil production cuts sufficiently tough and specific to bolster the softening prices.

''Let me be honest with you, however, and tell you I've been a little disappointed lately with some in the business community who have forgotten that feeding more dollars to government is like feeding a stray pup: It just follows you home and sits on your doorstep, asking for more.'' - President Reagan. (A1:6.)

Concerned that its price for Marshall Field stock was too low, Batus Inc., the American subsidiary of B.A.T. Industries of London, yesterday raised the price of its cash tender offer in an attempt to assure its acquisition of the big Chicago-based retailer. Batus announced that it would offer $30 a share for at least six million shares, or 50 percent, of Field's common stock, up $4.50 from its initial offer, and $54 per for each of Field's preferred shares, an increase of $9.10. Marshall Field's stock did not trade yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange after the Chicago retailer asked for a trading suspension pending an afternoon meeting of the Batus board. The last trade was on Wednesday, when the stock advanced $1, to $25.50, after jumping $2.50 on Tuesday. In all, about a million shares changed hands in the two days as arbitragers and investors accumulated stock.