A Matter of "Live" and Death   

In the next Waco-type episode, should television exercise more restraint?

In its grim, closing hours, the Waco story was treated on television like a sports event with play-by-play reporting; perhaps that's all that could have been expected as the compound was quickly engulfed in flames. But the tragic outcome also raised questions about the way the press, especially television, had covered the previous 50 days, and whether the media's coverage had played a role in extending the siege and contributed to its horrific ending. Was Waco just another big story that should have been covered in the usual way? Or do events of this type demand new thinking and new policies from television news managers?

Many believe that from David Koresh's Ranch Apocalypse to the prison uprising at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville, broadcast news had become too involved.

"I have not resolved in my own mind how we fulfill the public's desire, if not need, to know when something as dramatic as Waco is happening and not at the same time encourage someone who wants headlines to do something atrocious," says veteran CNN correspondent Mary Tillotson, expressing what many reporters and producers are feeling.

At Waco, television news provided Koresh the global audience he never would have had otherwise. By doing so the media may have unwittingly encouraged him to extend the confrontation, according to numerous hostage negotiators and cult experts. Frank A. Bolz Jr., who was a New York City police detective for 27 years and cofounded the department's hostage negotiation program, says Koresh did not want to surrender because that would have meant having to leave the stage. "[Koresh] might have come out right away but when he saw what great coverage he was getting, he figured, 'The hell with this. Let's keep this going!' " Bolz says.

At Lucasville, where inmates took eight guards hostage while the Waco confrontation was unfolding, a live broadcast may have played a role in the murder of a hostage. Local stations had broadcast an imprudent remark made by a government official and heard by the inmates. Prisoners later said that the comment incited inmates to kill a guard.

News executives defend their coverage of both events. Some broadcasters say that law enforcement is at least partly responsible for the coverage since it allowed cameras in the first place. Others defend their news judgment and say their coverage might have done some good.

One of the problems in covering an event like Waco, however, is that there are no rules or guidelines to help stations decide what is and is not appropriate. "I wish we had time to reflect in situations like these" says David Overton, news director at KXAS-TV in Fort Worth. "But we really don't. We're plowing new ground every time we get involved in a situation like this. And all situations are different. One thing we keep saying in our editorial meetings is that there are no rules."

Without guidelines, the competing agendas of the media and law enforcement authorities will ultimately shape the news in ways that are unpredictable and possibly damaging to the interests of innocent victims. Police want to be portrayed uncritically as heroes who act with restraint; television wants to tell the story fast and dramatically, hoping for accolades and high ratings, but with little concern about the effect of overall coverage.

The Media as Player

Many experts in cult and terrorist psychology believe that broadcasters, as well as the government, need to take a hard look at how the media cover situations like Waco and the hostage crisis at Lucasville. In those circumstances, they say, the media becomes more than just an observer, it becomes a player.

Gary Weaver, who holds seminars for the FBI on hostage negotiations and is a communications professor at the American University's School of International Service, says television coverage of Waco was like the mob on the sidewalk chanting, "Jump! Jump!" to someone threatening to leap from the roof of a tall building. "You [television broadcasters] can say you didn't push [Koresh] and that's true," he says. "But on the other hand, you contributed."

Robert Kupperman, an often-interviewed terrorism expert, likens television's overall performance to "inciting a riot." Kupperman, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes that television news needed to be much more aware of the impact its coverage was having on Koresh's actions. "They were communicating with one man, amplifying his effects and promoting an incendiary situation which eventually led to the burning down of the compound. [It] was like yelling fire in a crowded theater; but all this was occurring in slow motion until the conflagration."

Indeed, a local television reporter in Waco has been accused of inadvertently tipping off Koresh to the initial raid on the compound during which four Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents were killed. Dallas radio station KRLD read a statement written by Koresh just hours after the initial gunfire, and aired a 58-minute "sermon" by Koresh, after which he reneged on a promise to surrender following its broadcast. CNN was criticized for running a lengthy interview with Koresh.

Experts say that television news managers should have considered two issues when deciding how to cover the Waco siege: Koresh's potential reaction to what would be broadcast and the impending actions of the government agents. Beginning on the ninth day, the FBI cut electricity and used jamming devices, but many believed Koresh could still see or hear some live television broadcasts.

"Koresh had access to outside television when news media were broadcasting things that were not helpful to the overall negotiations," says FBI Special Agent Charles Mandigo. "They were broadcasting the government's intentions and some of our tactical movements, how [we were] setting up..operations." In addition to possibly giving away FBI and ATF tactics, Mandigo says the media massed at Waco – especially television – seemed to feed Koresh's hunger for attention to his own brand of apocalyptic philosophy: "He wanted publicity and knowing media was out there and wanting a story about him" may have contributed to the outcome.

Clinical psychologist Margaret Singer, a cult expert based in Berkeley, California, agrees. She says television news reports about Koresh and his Branch Davidian sect, especially negative comments, fed Koresh's ego and "confirmed" his followers' view that they were beleaguered by forces of darkness that they felt compelled to resist.

Pastor Richard Dowhower of All Saints Lutheran Church in Bowie, Maryland, has been studying cults and helping their victims for nearly 20 years. Dowhower believes that television news managers need to see themselves as potential players in this kind of conflict situation. "I'm not sure that assembling an army of media standing behind the ATF and the FBI was helpful in defusing the situation," he says. "I think it hyped it up and escalated it to higher and higher levels of conflict." Dowhower also believes that the coverage made it more difficult for both sides to back down in the negotiations.

Not everyone in the media or the government agrees. David Bartlett, the television news industry's chief lobbyist and president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, says, "There's no credible evidence that the news media contributed to that situation. To say that is childish at best, mean-spirited at worst and plain ignorant under any circumstances."

NBC's Executive News Director David Verdi adds that while he worries about individuals or groups who use dramatic or violent means to gain network coverage, he rejects the charge that television news was a participant at Waco.

KRLD's Charlie Seraphin, who ordered his staff to broadcast some of Koresh's statements, has a different point of view. He says that those broadcasts led to the release of some of the cultists. At the same time, Seraphin believes that if ATF hadn't been worried about television coverage, the aborted raid on the compound might have gone forward, resulting in fewer deaths than occurred in the fiery ending to the standoff. "The media, in one sense, forced the standoff to a much longer length..," says Seraphin. "If this event had happened without TV, [ATF would have] ended the standoff in a matter of hours, not days."

"We always have to be cautious when entering into these kinds of stories," Verdi says. "We were fortunate in that this time we remained outside observers throughout, which is ultimately what we want to do." Verdi says he assumed that Koresh was watching, but it didn't affect the way his network covered Waco. "We have worked with the military in the past..to report within parameters to insure the safety of U.S. troops..," he says. "We were never asked by the FBI to change the way we were reporting."

Some believe the FBI bears at least some of the responsibility for what television news broadcast from Waco since the bureau allowed the press within camera range.

FBI Special Agent In Charge Jeff Jamar, who was the on-scene commander at Waco, says he did not ask broadcasters to refrain from live shots. "I thought it was beyond our bounds to say to them, 'You can't use those cameras,' " says Jamar. "What we said was, 'Beware of what you're doing.' There was no way we could say, 'Hey! Turn the cameras off for the next hour.' That's beyond our bounds and beyond any expectation. That's obviously what we would have preferred but that's not the way things are done in this country... I expect what we do to be given the closest scrutiny."

But television producer and former CNN Vice President Ted Kavanau believes the FBI's desire for good press may have also played a part in the bureau's failure to exercise full control over the media. "All the FBI had to do was control the air space and keep the press too far back to see and hold no press conferences until it's over. Case closed," Kavanau says. "But the FBI was too afraid of bad, angry press reactions to impose that kind of freeze. And although TV news hounds like me would have instinctively hated and fought that, it might have been the right thing to do and maybe should be tried in future circumstances, no matter how much we in the news business hate it and scream that it's unconstitutional."

Others, like Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), wonder if the huge media presence and its daily output didn't indirectly pressure the FBI into taking action. "What got me about TV's role at Waco and the way it all ended," says Leahy, "is that I wondered how much pressure for action was caused by TV's constantly harping, 'Nothing's happened yet, nothing's happened yet,' as though it had to end with a big event."

Weaver has similar feelings. "I don't think [television] is capable of portraying a tragic reality where there are all kinds of in-betweens, gradations and shades," he says. "I think the story is dramatic, good guys and bad guys, black hats and white hats... I know in law enforcement this is a common way of thinking. The media contributes to that and Koresh got caught up in it as well."

"That's a pretty astute portrayal of what happened," says Dave Overton, news director of KXAS-TV in Fort Worth. "Who [do] reporters drink beer with? It's their sources, their buddies, the cops. We as an industry have to examine our relationship with law enforcement. A lot of people down here believe law enforcement murdered those people in the compound and that we media people helped them... Some of those who believe it are sane, thoughtful people who truly believe we were working for the FBI."

Special Agent Jamar maintains that "the existence of the cameras was in our minds but it didn't change what we did." He says the only potential danger television coverage posed to the FBI's operation was if there had been armed action. "What affected the decision was the negotiations going nowhere; we could have been there another year without any change."

Going Live

A large part of the controversy over the media's role in unfolding, volatile events like those at Waco or Lucasville is the use of live versus tape-delayed coverage. The capability to transmit events as they happen has always posed problems and ethical dilemmas.

"The use of 'live' always comes under question," says CNN Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief Bill Headline, "because of your inability to edit and think, to have a complete idea of what you're dealing with; there are times when we in television should be restrained in our use of 'live' and we tend not to be."

"The question is, with all this technology, is it running the coverage or is the coverage going to use technology for its own good?" asks NBC "Today Show" Executive Producer SteveFriedman. "Right now, the technology lets you go live anywhere, anytime and present it as it's happening with no editorial [control] function. In a lot of cases this [going 'live'] is working against us."

At Lucasville, the live news broadcasts of a state official belittling the demands of the rioters resulted in the murder of one of the hostages, according to inmates. They were watching a local newscast when a prison spokeswoman dismissed the seriousness of the inmates' threat to kill the hostages, saying, "It's not new. They've been threatening things like this from the beginning." She also called their demands "self-serving and petty, as they always are in these situations."

According to veteran hostage negotiator Frank Bolz, the live broadcasts transmitted a message to the rioters that essentially challenged their manhood. "Never dare the hostage holders to prove their power," says Bolz. "They can rise to the challenge and hurt someone."

Had the state official's words been uttered during a taped news conference instead of during a live shot, she might have realized her error and asked that it not be broadcast, or her superior could have second-guessed her and asked the television and radio reporters to not broadcast the potentially deadly comment.

Lucasville is just one of a long list of hostage situations in which live broadcasts have played a role in the unfolding events. The FBI's Jamar has vivid memories of a 1970s airplane hijacking that attracted aggressive television news coverage that could have cost the lives of federal agents, hostages and innocent bystanders. "We're passing a gun up on a stick to an agent who's up in the plane [masquerading as a pilot] and that was seen [live] on television!" Jamar recalls. "[If the guy had a TV set] with him, or if he was in radio communication with someone who was watching the coverage, he would have known immediately that a cop with a gun was on the plane."

In September 1990, local television stations in San Francisco provided live coverage of a Berkeley hostage barricade, including details of police tactical operations. A man with a gun was holding hostages in a bar, watching the live coverage when he heard that the SWAT team was closing in. He also heard that one of his earlier victims had died. According to some of the hostages, the coverage he was watching made him even angrier and he asked some of the 30 college students to volunteer to be next to die. A police marksman shot and killed the gunman before he killed again.

One of the San Francisco crews worked for Harry Fuller, news director of KPIX-TV, who also covered the aftermath of the Jones-town mass murder-suicide in 1978 for another station. Since the night with the gunman in the bar, Fuller has decided to never allow such live coverage again. "The lesson from Jonestown ought to have been, you can't use reasonable dialogue with unreasonable people," he says, "and the lesson out of Berkeley is that if your signal is available to them, they probably have access to it, and you can't predict what they're going to do with it."

Fuller was troubled by the networks' handling of Waco. "Much of the reporting was extremely naive," he says. "It was done as a cops and robbers story as opposed to what it really was – a psychodrama based on the mass delusional perception centered around Koresh and the people that followed him...

"There was a perception that this was another hostage-taking where force and strategy matter. I didn't see [reporting] in the early days [of the siege about] the psychology of what goes on in a cult. In the end, some of the networks were pulling out their troops based on the fact that it didn't look like there was going to be a showdown, that it looked like it would go on forever, when in fact it was clear that at any moment there could have been a holocaust and in fact, there was."

But hostage negotiator Bolz believes there was another, more critical, dynamic taking place between Koresh and the television news media: "With all that money expended on putting [so many television crews] out there, [stations and networks] had to put something on the air to justify why you had them out and [Koresh] benefited from that constant, constant notoriety."

Press Responsibility

Virtually no one in the media is eager to take responsibility for tragic outcomes in unpredictable situations like Lucasville. Earl Casey, CNN's vice president and managing editor for domestic newsgathering, rejects the idea.

"Is that our call? I don't think so," Casey says. "That's very much within the control of the authorities to say to themselves, 'They're watching television inside that prison. If we get on the air, we better be right in what we're going to say because this is an environment in which real-time news is reported and the [rioting inmates] may be watching it.' "

NBC's David Verdi, who has the final say in how his network covers major stories, bristles at the suggestion that television news might bear some responsibility for killings which follow live news broadcasts, as happened in Lucasville.

"What we do for a living is we cover news events. It is the prison's responsibility to say or not say whatever it [wishes]," Verdi says. "If the prison has put someone in a position which can jeopardize the safety of their people inside, if they put that person in the position of being the public spokesperson in a news conference situation, it is not our responsibility to edit her remarks."

Verdi concedes there are some inherent problems with losing editorial control during live broadcasts. But, he says, "we maintain control in two ways. First, that we've decided that it's a major event worthy of live coverage and second, we can always knock it down when we need to."

But at the local level, that kind of control can be elusive. Overton of KXAS says with a situation like Waco, it's easy to get so caught up in producing a live shot that you can miss the obvious. "We don't have time to reflect on what we're doing. Early on, when we got our telephoto lenses onto the cameras [during live coverage of the first day], the next thing you know we're showing troop movements, the ATF on the roof, we're looking straight into the windows of the compound." Overton said it is frightening to him that it was only after an irate viewer called to complain that the station might be helping Koresh that he ordered a halt to the live shots.

NBC's Friedman warns that there are dozens of potential David Koreshes who watched the coverage and may have learned something from it. "Our industry has got to stop glorifying these guys..," he says. "You can't treat these things as a normal story. We can't fall victims to the wackos of the world. You know: Kill someone, take hostages and we'll put you on TV."

Doing It Better

Professor Weaver says police and reporters have to improve coverage next time. He recommends that law enforcement officials prohibit live coverage or the airing of live briefings to avoid the clash of egos that figured strongly in the 51 days at Waco. He also says television news should resist the lure of immediacy and urges news managers to use experts on hostage negotiation and cults to help steer coverage to keep their cameras from becoming a player in the crisis.

Some say network pools may be the answer. Hostage negotiator Bolz believes there should be an agreement among local stations and the networks to send a single pool camera crew and one pool correspondent, eliminating the competition and the need for dozens of reporters.

Rick Bradfield, news director of the CBS affiliate in Waco that was on the scene when the ATF raid took place, was amazed by the "astonishing amount of money" invested by stations and networks to "be in at the kill." To Bradfield, a network pool for such events "makes a lot of sense," but probably wouldn't work at a local level because of the competitive pressures.

Others say a lack of rules or guidelines about how to handle such situations is the problem. At KPIX in San Francisco, News Director Fuller says the television news business needs nationwide guidelines for future Wacos and Lucasvilles. "It needs to be understood going in that here are the ground rules and [the people behind the wall] can ask for whatever the hell you want and you either are or are not going to get it based on some guidelines."

Fuller believes that it's a mistake to leave decisions about coverage up to a police chief, a news director or the head agent of an FBI office. He would like to see Congress or another government agency like the Federal Communications Commission look into the issue.

That's hardly a popular idea, however. "God forbid," says Overton. "Congressional involvement in something like this would be a serious abridgement of freedom of the press." But he concedes that television has failed to deal effectively with creating voluntary guidelines. "We haven't had the guts to back away from this competitive aspect. Until news directors have the guts to say no to that, and establish our own guidelines, these things are going to get worse and worse and there very well could be a mass casualty directly because of the coverage."

Until that happens, and since hostage barricades and cult standoffs are such "good television," it is probably useless to argue against all live coverage. During hostage situations, the New York Police Department follows techniques Bolz helped create and has long offered broadcasters this advice, which is generally followed by New York stations:

• Always assume the hostage-taker is watching or listening to your broadcast. That is almost always true with terrorists, often with psychotics, and a clear possibility with the criminal who grabs a hostage after he's discovered in the act of his crime.

• Never include in your broadcast any tactical details such as, "The SWAT team has arrived and appears to be moving in," "Police snipers are on the roof across from the apartment where the people are being held hostage," or "Police have tapped the phone in the apartment, they're watching the gunman with surveillance cameras." In such instances the media can become the intelligence arm of the hostage-taker.

• Never describe the hostage-taker's state of mind or motive. Phrases such as, "Police believe the captor is a psycho" and "The hostage-taker went berserk after he discovered his neighbor in bed with his wife," are fine after the incident is over, but if such chracterizations are heard by the perpetrators they could become additionally violent to others or themselves.

• Never reveal the condition of the wounded unless specifically authorized by police who are in touch with the hostage negotiators. Information about the wounded could cause the gunman to shoot again. If he's heard that one victim has died, he might think, "I'm already a murderer, so what've I got to lose by killing another?"

To raise media consciousness of its role in circumstances like Waco, cult expert Dowhower is calling for a simulated "war game" on cult standoffs conducted jointly by law enforcement, cult experts, the media and academics.

At Michigan State University, professor Frank Ochberg, who teaches psychiatry, journalism and criminal justice, is planning to establish a resource center to help reporters and government officials by providing consultation on how to cope with the sometimes conflicting interests of law enforcement and the media in covering a Waco-like crisis. Ochberg, a hostage negotiation and terrorism expert, says a way must be found to "defend the relationship between the media and the general public but look around for new ways to stop the [television and radio] signal from the outside world getting into the siege world."

Sens. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) and Leahy are among those members of Congress who want the television industry to meet with law enforcement and cult experts to examine broadcasting's role in Waco so that all parties can do a better job. "I'm in favor of a conference," says Simon, "so long as there is no suggestion of censorship."

Making decisions on how to report such stories puts tremendous stress on news executives, who want to make sure that doing their job doesn't contribute to the loss of life. NBC's Verdi admits to going home at night and "praying that the only thing I contributed to was excellent coverage of major stories." l