February 12, 1990

LEAD: Not Quite Watchdogs Yet Across Eastern Europe, the once mighty official press is in even bigger trouble than the Communist parties it has praised for so long. Some papers have fallen into oblivion. Others are hoping for independence. Page A12. A Turn in the Drug War? In what experts hope is a turning point, the crime rate in and around Washington, D.C., is growing more slowly, and the number of suspects testing positive for cocaine use has dropped in recent months.

LEAD: There aren't many doctors like Ronald Myers, a jazz-playing, Baptist-preaching family practitioner whose dream has always been to practice medicine in the kind of place most other doctors wouldn't even stop for a tank of gas.

LEAD: James (Buster) Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson this weekend and won the world heavyweight championship in one of the greatest upsets in boxing history. But Douglas's victory in Tokyo may be undone by a rancorous dispute over a long count on Tyson's knockdown of Douglas in the eighth round.

LEAD: When the chairman of the City Council's education committee was quoted last month as having said that among black and Hispanic students ''there appears to be no liking of learning,'' many people were appropriately appalled.

LEAD: The husky-voiced caller from Pittsburgh was almost pleading. ''Tell me something that will restore my confidence in the free-enterprise system,'' he asked the guest on ''Larry King Live,'' a popular Cable News Network talk show.