A crystal blue sky over North Texas becomes a nightmarish scene of fire and white contrails — an ever-increasing number of white streaks. Shuttle Columbia ripped apart and spread thousands of pieces of debris along a northwest to southeast line into the Piney Woods and Louisiana.
Photographer John Pronk of WFAA-TV was in Fair Park on assignment to shoot the spacecraft about 15 minutes before its scheduled landing. Pronk got it all on tape and the rest of the world saw his pictures in a matter of minutes.
What similarities, what differences are there to the equally frightening scene of Challenger in late January, 1986, when it blew up 73 seconds into lift-off.
In 17 years, television technology has changed dramatically. Some of the reporting issues, however, remain unchanged. Our ability to go live, which was established years before Challenger, demands much of network and local reporters. Caution should rule.
Get it first, but first get it right, the old adage goes. Brad Watson, who was anchoring the morning news on Channel 8 when Pronk’s tape appeared, told the Dallas Morning News: “I had a suspicion, but I don’t have a trained eye. I would not have wanted to say, ‘ Oh something looks real wrong. It looks like it blew up.'”
Unfortunately, not all news organizations showed such restraint. The presence of Israeli jet pilot Ilan Ramon aboard the shuttle led many 24/7 cable news networks to play off the threat of terrorism long after sources in Washington said there was no evidence of sabotage. One of my students in a broadcast news seminar said this morning, they “overdid the terrorist thing and I thought it was annoying.”
When I was news director of WFAA-TV years ago, I found that dominating a major breaking story increased the reputation and stature of a news organization — even though, sadly, most of these breaking news situations involved tragedy and suffering.
Once a station or a network breaks into regular news or entertainment coverage with a special story, something difficult happens. I have called it “the Vietnam Syndrome.” By that, I mean it is easy to get in, and hard to get out. Callers bombard the station switchboard complaining about an organization trying to spike the ratings (nothing but the farther from the truth) as a newscast attempts to keep the coverage flowing. But the news managers are victims of events.
Until reporters get in place to broaden the coverage, until news conferences are called, until you are able to get eyewitness accounts on the phone or experts into the studio, you go with what you’ve got — the same video, the same facts over and over again.
Another of my students complained this morning that the last transmission between Columbia and Mission Control in Houston was replayed continuously. “I felt sick,” she said.
A propos to this university’s declared objective to create a convergence curriculum in journalism, there is one huge technological difference between 1986 and now. The World Wide Web. Web sites provided information to thousands of users over the weekend. Video was streamed and elaborations of information that were constrained by time appeared on station Web sites. Information could be gathered in the blink of an eye.
Go to google.com and find out about sonic booms, the atmosphere or the Challenger story. Go to various Web sites to see how local newspapers were handling the story of Lt. Col. Michael Anderson.
Another technical coup was the use of sophisticated weather computers and graphic programs to show the debris field over East Texas as pieces of Columbia fell to earth. It was eerie, to say the least.
If one of the first casualties of war is the truth, it may be said that one of the first casualties of live coverage is restraint. At the time of the Challenger explosion, CNN cameras showed an explosion followed by the crazy curling smoke as the solid rocket boosters spun away and were blown up by NASA to keep debris from falling onto populated areas. People on the ground, spectators and reporters, didn’t have the advantage of the cameras’ magnified lenses. They wondered what happened. So too, presumably, were the parents of teacher Christa McAuliffe wondering. But the photo that was splashed across front pages of newspapers — alongside a picture of the smoke — — -made it appear that they recognized the horror that befell their daughter.
Now, it appears a debate is starting about lack of restraint on explicit descriptions of body parts found in Texas. Too much information? One report mentioned that debris was roped off on the 17th hole of a golf course in Nacogdoches. But play didn’t stop, regardless of the charred leg, skull and upper half of a body, officials said.
John Zarella, the CNN reporter who covered Challenger, was asked about the legacy of Christa McAuliffe. His response: “I think that her legacy is that space flight is not — and in our lifetimes, won’t be — routine. It’s a lesson that was learned through this terrible tragedy.”
And learned again on Saturday morning.
