February 19, 1984

THE Times Mirror Company, the media conglomerate whose flagship is The Los Angeles Times, is basking in prosperity. Just this month, it reported that net income had risen by 43 pecent last year, to a record $200 million, on revenues of almost $2.5 billion, also a record. A big chunk of the earnings came from The Los Angeles Times, which runs more advertising than any other newspaper in the country, and from Newsday, the hugely successful Long Island daily that also combines high advertising revenues with quality news coverage. ''The Times Mirror Company represents one of the finest diversified media companies we have,'' said R. Joseph Fuchs, vice president and media analyst at Kidder, Peabody & Company, the investment house. ''They have invested heavily to build a strong base for the future.''

Interest Rate Worries Last week was full of good news for the economy. But, in some quarters, the robust growth statistics sparked worries that interest rates could be on the rise - even before March is over. First the Government reported that personal income grew 1.1 percent from December to January and that during the same period, personal spending grew 1.2 percent, housing starts surged 15 percent and retail sales climbed 2.2 percent. Then the Federal Reserve reported last Thursday that M-1, the basic money-supply measure, had jumped $2.5 billion, compared with an expected $1.8 billion.

NEW HAVEN C RATES of dented cans of soup, corn and other food line one wall. Along the other walls thousands of boxes are piled up, filled with unsold containers of soft drinks, dry cereals and many other commercially prepared foods. Here, in the chilly warehouse of the Connecticut Food Bank, on James Street in the Fair Haven section, one can suddenly see what tens of thousands of pounds of groceries look like. The people who run the food bank, which opened its doors in July 1982 to serve soup kitchens and other food- distribution services for the poor throughout the state, have come to think in terms of mass quantities.

Syria signaled President Amin Gemayel of Lebanon today that it was not prepared to consider a reconciliation until he unconditionally abrogated his 1983 accord with Israel, Lebanese opposition officials said. The officials said the whole debate over the Israeli agreement was becoming increasingly irrelevant. The only issue now, they said, is whether Mr. Gemayel stays or goes. ''The whole place is just disintegrating,'' said a former Christian Cabinet minister now in the opposition. ''Either Amin Gemayel resigns and the Moslems and Christians quickly agree on a successor, or else we are going to see another round of wide-scale fighting that will destroy what is left of the Lebanese system.''

During the last two weeks of fighting in Lebanon the Reagan Administration has witnessed the almost complete collapse of all of its policy objectives for this country. Since the marines arrived in Beirut in September 1982, President Reagan has articulated three basic American goals - the removal of all foreign forces from Lebanon, the extension of the Government's authority throughout the country and the rebuilding of the Lebanese Army. Army Has Collapsed Instead, it is the American peacekeepers who are retiring to their ships in frustration; the American-sponsored troop withdrawal agreement of last May has been torn up; the territory under the control of the central Government has now shrunk to the fence around the Presidential palace and even that is no longer secure; and the army has collapsed along religious lines after two days of serious fighting with ragtag militiamen. ''The United States is lucky that Lebanon is not that strategically important,'' Ghassan Salameh, a top Lebanese international affairs expert, said. ''If it had made the same miscalculations in dealing with a strategically important ally like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan that it did here, the destruction to American interests would have been enormous.'' If the Lebanese had serious questions about the purposes and effectiveness of United States policy, so did other friendly nations in the Middle East as well as critics at home. Even Administration officials seemed to throw up their hands in frustration, leaving the initiative, for the moment, to others.