ON FRIDAY NIGHT, after his regular evening newscast, NBC’s Tom Brokaw relaxed and took in an Olympic track-and-field event and then went out for a few beers with correspondents and producers. He returned to his hotel, read a bit of a book on Atlanta and went to bed around midnight. Less than two hours later he was awakened by a producer: an explosion had gone off in Centennial Olympic Park. Brokaw threw on a mismatched jacket and slacks, grabbed a tie, took a bag with his earphone and notebook and was on the air by 2:20 a.m. For more than seven hours, until 9:57 a.m., Brokaw remained on the air without a commercial break–and precious little powder on his nose. Finally, at noon, still looking like he was ready for the marathon, he passed the job to Bob Costas. “Adrenalin is a great diet in these circumstances,” Brokaw later told NEWSWEEK.
NBC was lucky Brokaw’s adrenalin was running–and for more than purely journalistic reasons. For one thing, the remarkably adroit performance could give NBC a big bounce in its race to edge out ABC in the evening news ratings. It gave NBC’s barely walking cable channel, MSNBC, a chance to simulcast Brokaw, a great showcase for curious viewers. But it also allowed the television critics to forget, for the moment at least, a week’s worth of Olympics coverage that they had lambasted for turning sports into canned sappy entertainment. With the bomb injecting an awful reality into a Disney World concoction, Brokaw was able to cover the news as news.
He did so in the grand tradition of Walter Cronkite, a role we have grown to expect from our television anchors. He hit the appropriate notes of concern, without scaring, and of outrage, without becoming indignant. He repeatedly called the bombing “madness” yet never sounded melodramatic. His emotion showed, and we wanted to see that, yet we somehow didn’t have to worry about a meltdown on camera. After an interview with an Irish tourist, he underlined the irony. “What a world. An Irishman visiting to get away from the Troubles, hears an explosion–and he knows it’s a bomb.”
In a perverse journalistic sense, Brokaw and NBC were also lucky in the same way that ABC was lucky when the San Francisco earthquake hit during its broadcast of the 1989 World Series. Brokaw was minutes away from an elaborate studio, and so were hordes of NBC producers, researchers and correspondents, including many from affiliate stations around the country covering the Olympics. It was an affiliate cameraman, from station KNBC in Los Angeles, who caught the suspected bomb bag on tape.
But heck, CNN was even better situated. Its headquarters sit directly across the street from Centennial Park. Anchor Judy Woodruff was rushed on the air at 2:42 a.m. And CNN scored a coup by buying (it wouldn’t say for how much) a video from a visitor who recorded the explosion from the rear of the rock-concert scene. CBS and ABC also went full speed and performed admirably. But they didn’t have their main anchors, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, nor did they have the advantage–or scrutiny–of being the Olympics network.
Brokaw’s performance again shows the experience of the major networks in covering big national stories. Viewers are abandoning the evening news shows in droves, turning instead to cable, the tabloids or the Internet. But in times of tragedy or crisis the nationally known anchors provide the storytelling and handholding TV viewers tend to look for. “You can drive yourself nuts worrying about who has one better frame,” Brokaw said, discounting CNN’s amateur video. “Ultimately, you succeed or fail in how well you do the big picture.” That’s not to say the little things don’t count, and indeed mistakes were made. Early on Brokaw said there “probably” were at least four people killed. He also said a second bomb had been found. He corrected the mistakes quickly, one “virtue” of live coverage, he said.
He didn’t say so, but maybe Brokaw was thinking of NBC’s Olympics coverage when he said that. The network’s “plausibly live” policy–not disclosing what was taped–maddeningly teased viewers about results that were hours old. NBC sports executives had a ready defense: they were targeting female viewers who they say are more interested in the story than in the results. And the ratings backed them–more than 90 million Americans watched a portion each night, easily topping 1992 Olympic viewing . This week, as the investigation continues, NBC’s double life will be in full view again–offering news as reality and sports as fantasy.
