War Stories from the Nightly News
Electronic Camera and Sound Operators
are the Eyes and Ears of the Nightly News
by Stan Wedeking and Jeffrey Alan Goldenberg
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News camera and sound operators are the
eyes and ears of the modern world. Through their efforts,
anyone with a television set may see and hear images from
wars, riots, natural disasters, and other major news stories--often
as these events are unfolding. Satellites (see Feeding
the Bird) provide us with instantaneous communication
of this electronic information, crossing over continents
and oceans, turning the world into one big--if not happy--community.
But although satellites easily bounce microwave information
from war zones to our living rooms, these images don't come
as easily to the camera and sound operators in the field.
At best, their job is demanding, at worst, it's dangerous.
Sometimes it may even be tragic, as those covering a news
event fall among its victims.
FROM BEIRUT TO L.A.
Take William Purdy II, SOC. For over three
decades as a news cameraman, using first film then later electronic
cameras, Bill Purdy has spanned the globe covering major events
in Korea, Vietnam, Israel, Lebanon, China and the Philippines.
Danger has dogged his steps.
For example, in 1982, shortly after the Israelis
invaded Lebanon, Purdy was assigned to tape NBC news anchor Tom
Brokaw's interview with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, who was holed
up on the west side of Beirut. To get the story, Purdy and Brokaw
along with producer Mike Mosher and sound technician Peter Yu,
had to travel across the Green Line, a no-man's-land dividing
the city that was watched by both the PLO headquartered on the
west side of the city and the Israelis on the east. Snipers from
both sides constantly took potshots at one another across the
Green Line.
The only way the news crew survived their trip
to the west side of the war-torn city was by finding a good local
driver, who drove like a "bat outta hell" to deposit the newsmen
at their destination. Heavily bombed, western Beirut was a battle-zone,
strewn with rubble. Yet the five-star Commodore Hotel, where
the press stayed, stood out like a jewel, a testament to more
affluent, peaceful days in the tree-lined streets of what was
once known as the Paris of the East. Indomitable, even in those
days of strife, the Commodore still had a fine stock of vintage
wines, Beluga caviar, and the finest French cuisine. Top drawer.
Purdy stayed there for two nights.
In the blue-gray streets outside the plush
hotel, the sound of gunfire echoed across the rubble. Purdy felt
as though he was constantly in the cross-hairs of some sniper.
Apparently, Arafat's people felt their leader was in grave danger
as well. The PLO demanded that Brokaw's interview with the chairman
take place in a makeshift bunker, well below street level. The
crew climbed down into the bunker and waited, afraid, but Arafat
never arrived. Ever cautious, the PLO staff feared that Israeli
intelligence agents were watching Brokaw, in hopes that the high-profile
newsman would lead them to Arafat.
Once out of the bunker, the news crew placed
their fate, once again, in the hands of their driver who whisked
them back across the Green Line to the Israeli stronghold. "In
foreign countries," says Purdy, "your local driver is really
the boss. He's the only one you can trust to get you in and out
quickly. Only he knows the way."
Four years later, in 1986, Purdy was in the
Philippines covering the aftermath of the long-time strongman
Ferdinand Marcos' electoral victory over Corazon Aquino. Angered
Aquino supporters openly protested, accusing Marcos' party of
widespread cheating and corruption. For weeks, Purdy covered
the protests, waiting for something to happen. Then one evening,
after a long day's work, Purdy was taking a well-deserved bath
in his room at the Manila Hotel when the phone rang. Aquino forces,
he was told, were on the move toward the palace. Within minutes,
the soaking wet Purdy, camera in hand, found himself in front
of the palace gates with his sound technician Yu. Priests and
nuns, fearful of bloodshed, were pleading with the Aquino supporters
to keep them from storming the gates. Then, as an American helicopter
whisked Marcos away from the palace, the protesters crashed the
gates, carrying Purdy and Yu in their wake. Inside the palace,
anarchy reigned. Purdy rolled his camera on people smashing windows,
trashing paintings, and setting fire to curtains. "We were caught
in the throng. There was no way to go but forward."
As if that wasn't enough danger for one tour
of duty, six months later, after Aquino had gained power, Purdy
was once again caught in a march on the palace by twenty or thirty
thousand people, this time members of the Communist labor movement.
The palace grounds were ringed by barbed wire. Behind the wire,
the Philippine Marines stood at attention, rifles at the ready.
As the crowd bore down on the palace, Purdy's driver handed him
a ladder so he could get above the throng for a better view of
the action. "The demonstrators flowed down the street like waves
of water," Purdy recalls. "Armed with sticks and clubs, they
were a force to be reckoned with. I got off a few good establishing
shots: The Marines. The barbed wire. The crowd. I assumed the
protesters would stop at the gates, but they didn't. They just
kept on pushing past the barricade."
Suddenly shots rang in Purdy's ears. His sound
man, to whom he was tethered by a video cable (in those days
the sound technicians recorded both audio and video on three-quarter
inch tape), yanked him off the ladder. By the time the two of
them had scampered for cover behind a pillar, the shooting was
over. In a matter of minutes, it was eerily silent. Purdy kept
his camera running on the rustling debris of litter, discarded
weapons, and shoes scattered on the ground.
All around him were bodies, laid waste by the
palace guard. A mind-numbing carnage, unlike anything he had
ever experienced, even during the worst days of his three ninety-day
tours of duty in Vietnam. Soon, trucks rather than ambulances
arrived and people began to scoop up the bodies. Purdy stayed
on the job. "I continued to roll. I tried not to think about
what was happening. I could hear myself breathing. I just kept
repeating to myself, 'This is good stuff. You know you gotta
roll on it.'"
Purdy was not impervious to the dangers of
his profession. He was greatly affected by the tragic deaths
of his colleagues, Australian reporter/cameraman Neil Davis and
his sound man Bill Latch during the 1985 coup d'etat in Thailand.
Davis, a legendary cameraman was so brave that at the end of
the Vietnam conflict, while the Americans took out their last
helicopter, he remained in Saigon so he could get the famous
shot of a North Vietnamese tank crashing through the palace gates.
After the war, Davis moved to Thailand, from where he covered
all the hot stories in Southeast Asia. Coups were common in that
area of the world. He covered them all. So when NBC's Tokyo bureau
chief asked him to cover the Thai coup, he was not particularly
concerned.
Davis and Latch were given a routine assignment:
to cover a radio tower that had been seized. Davis was so comfortable
that he showed up on the scene in his tennis clothes, shortly
after a game. A tank protected the gate. Davis set up his camera
facing the tank and got ready to deliver his report. Without
warning, the tank let go a round of ammunition. It hit a wall
near Davis, killing him instantly. The camera fell to the ground,
still running. Through its lens the shrapnel-scarred Latch could
be seen crawling away from the blast. Latch died later that day
in a Thai hospital from loss of blood. "The news world was stunned," Bill
ruefully recalls. "Neil was a careful guy. He didn't make mistakes.
Just when you think you're safest, that's when it hits you."
The untimely deaths of Davis and Latch, as
well as his experience in Manila, helped to convince Purdy it
was time to throw in the towel and return to the United States. "I
began to worry about my safety and anyway, after the fall of
the Berlin Wall, NBC was beginning to trim back its overseas
bureaus."
What a cruel irony it was that found Purdy,
shortly after he had covered the war zones of the world, shooting
an event more dangerous than anything he had seen overseas--the
1992 riots on the streets of Los Angeles. "I had just come back
from vacation. I think I still had a couple of days left," Purdy
recalls, "when I happened to catch the riots on TV. Immediately
I called in to work. I was so used to being on the scene."
When Purdy arrived on that scene a short time
later, the streets of Los Angeles were raging out of control.
He was stupefied. "I couldn't believe this was happening here.
It was more frightening than Beirut or other places I had been
where there were revolutions. Here, there was no control, no
authority anywhere. There was no group you could talk to. It
was totally chaotic. The worst thing you can encounter as a news
cameraman is a civil disturbance. I'd much rather cover conflicts
where identifiable factions are fighting." Says Purdy without
a trace of sarcasm, "It's a lot easier and a lot safer."
Listening to a police scanner, Purdy moved
freely through the streets of Los Angeles, trying to stay on
top of the action. His sound man watching his back, Purdy shot
tape of countless numbers of looters, snipers, stores in flames,
firefighters and policemen. He moved through Koreatown where
Korean-Americans protected their stores with guns, and where
police took those guns away from them. The madness seemed endless. "The
police couldn't stop it. They could only try to protect themselves
and the firefighters."
Much saner was the scene this year outside
the Los Angeles County Criminal Courts Building as the OJ Simpson
jury delivered its not guilty verdict. Many African-Americans
who were there demonstrated once again, but this time in jubilation. "In
truth, I didn't feel these people believed in Simpson's innocence
so much as they were elated at finally seeing a black man make
the system work for him," remarked Purdy. "I had expected chaos,
but it was peaceful, considering the situation. At one point,
I heard a scuffle behind me and thought a riot had started, but
as I turned my camera around, I saw that it was only two cameramen
who had gotten into a fist fight over a camera position."
THE JONESTOWN MASSACRE
Not all camera operators are as adept at dodging
bullets as Bill Purdy. The tragic death of Bob Brown--as well
as correspondent Don Harris and others--in 1978, outside of Jonestown,
an evangelical religious outpost in the Guyana jungle run by
the American ex-patriate minister Jim Jones, serves as a constant
reminder of the grave risks taken by those covering the news.
The rapidly unfolding events of that day are permanently etched
in the memory of Stephen Sung, SOC, the crew's sound operator.
Jones had taken a group of followers from what
he called the People's Temple in San Francisco into the South
American jungle where he established a religious and agricultural
community named for himself. Congressman Leo Ryan from San Francisco
had heard stories of People's Temple members being tortured and
held hostage at Jonestown. At the same time, the multiracial
temple had numerous supporters throughout the Bay Area. Ryan
decided to go to Guyana to evaluate the situation. "We tagged
along to see who was telling the truth," remembers Sung.
"We arrived at Port Katuma, a small village
hundreds of miles away from Georgetown, the main city of Guyana.
We landed at a dirt airstrip, about seven miles from the Jonestown
compound. When we arrived, we weren't allowed to go to the compound,
so we had to spend most of the evening at the airstrip. Finally,
we got the go-ahead. The dirt road there was torturous. It was
a tropical area and it rained a lot, so it took us about an hour
to drive there by truck."
By the time Ryan's party arrived at Jonestown,
everyone was exhausted. The People's Temple members acted pleasantly,
proudly showing off their compound. As darkness fell, the camera
crew wanted to avoid another trip on the rough road back to the
village and asked if they could spend the night in the compound.
Although Jim Jones agreed to host Ryan and his staff, he ordered
that the press party be taken back to Port Katuma. "We spent
that night sleeping on a disco dance floor in the village," Sung
recalls.
The next morning, the camera crew was picked
up and rushed out to the compound. "We knew this might be our
only chance to get good footage," Sung explains, "so we did all
the videotaping we could. We taped the temple members' ‘song
and dance' about how they conducted their lives. We taped children
learning in classrooms, plowing the fields, and so on."
Later, while Bob Brown taped and Sung recorded
an interview between Don Harris and Jim Jones--his last interview--several
of the cult members approached Congressman Ryan and told him
they wanted to leave with him. Jones, taken aback, begged his
followers not to leave with Ryan's party. At the same time he
promised that he would allow anyone to leave at a later time.
One family refused to wait, and pleaded with Ryan to take them
away from Jonestown.
Shortly before the crew was to leave for Port
Katuma, the temple members were summoned to the main hall by
the ringing of a bell. Neither Brown nor the photographers were
allowed to continue taking any pictures. "Jones looked worried," Sung
remembers. "He was surrounded by his aides. We knew something
was going down, but we didn't know what. Jones' people forced
us to leave the compound."
When the press party arrived at the jungle
airstrip, the plane from Georgetown had not yet arrived. While
they were waiting for the plane, a temple member suddenly assaulted
Ryan with a knife, stabbing him in the shoulder! The press corps
convened an impromptu press conference by the airstrip at which
a bleeding Ryan explained what was happening in Jonestown. By
the time the press conference was over, the Georgetown plane
had landed and was waiting.
"As we began to board the plane, we saw a truck
speeding toward us," says Sung, reliving the moment. "The temple
members who had come with us warned, ‘They're coming, they're
coming.' Don Harris told us to spread apart. ‘There might be
violence,' he said, and he wanted a picture." Sung ruefully remembers
Harris' laugh as he mentioned the possibility of violence, unaware
of how correct his prediction would be.
"Bob and I moved to the tail of the plane to
get a wide shot of the area. The truck drove toward us, and five
or six temple members jumped out and asked us where everyone
was. They weren't carrying weapons, and we hadn't seen any weapons
in the compound. We weren't aware of the danger." So as Jones'
followers returned to the truck, Brown and Sung assumed they
were going to return to Jonestown. They were wrong.
"The next thing I remember was people picking
up guns from inside the truck and shooting at us. That's the
footage the world saw." That now-famous shot came at a great
cost. Brown took a bullet in the thigh, Sung in the arm. Seconds
later, a gunman shot Brown at point-blank range, wanting to make
sure he was dead. Only Sung's ability to lie completely still,
despite the wound burning in his arm, saved him.
THE ALASKAN OIL SPILL
Danger and courage know no gender. Camera operator
Lee Serrie, the third woman to be hired by NBC as a member of
a news crew, is the only one still with the network. She has
paid her dues many times over, having spent fifteen years as
a sound person and a post-production mixer before she landed
her first camera position in 1989. She got behind the lens just
in time to head up to Alaska to cover the oil spill from the
Exxon tanker Valdez. "I was on the oil chase crew," Serrie recalls. "By
the time I arrived in Alaska, two weeks after the spill, the
oil was beginning to move out of Prince William Sound. They put
a sound person and me in a helicopter. We followed the oil seeping
down the coast of Alaska. We followed the slick out to Kodiak
Island--over one thousand miles."
Shooting from a helicopter, dangerous in the
best of circumstances, was particularly arduous in the bitter
Alaskan climate. "It was bitterly cold and, of course, we had
to shoot out of the helicopter with the door off! We spent four
to five hours a day in that helicopter, blasted by the Arctic
winds…but we got great shots." Serrie traced the oil as it devastated
the environment, wreaking havoc with fish and wildlife wherever
it went. She shot endless footage of animals, scenery, and glaciers. "I
shot just about anything I thought would interest someone sitting
in a studio in New York. I put it all on tape and the network
ran nearly everything because they found the shots to be just
as fascinating as I did." At NBC, Serrie struck a blow against
the network's outmoded notions regarding camera crews. She hired
a female sound person to work with her. "Everyone thought I was
crazy," remarks Serrie with a knowing grin. "They questioned
whether two women could move the gear around and solve all the
problems that needed to be solved. Even other women asked why
I didn't get a guy to help me carry the equipment. I pointed
out to them that if I had a guy on my crew, the network would
probably think it was the guy who had figured out how to do everything."
Also, Serrie worked without a producer, further
proving her point. "We weren't supervised. We were only on the
end of a phone line to the office once every eight hours. We
would tell them what was out there, then we told them how we
planned to get the shots. People began to sit up and take notice
of us."
THE FABRIC OF OUR LIVES
Hearing these war stories makes one think differently
about the nightly news. The stories broadcast around the globe
take on an even more dynamic aspect if one imagines where the
camera and sound operators were standing and what dangers they
faced to bring us unforgettable images that have become part
of the fabric of our lives, our history: A lone man halting a
line of tanks rolling into Tienanmen Square. Hundred foot flames
and black smoke licking the sky above the religious compound
in Waco. A white Ford Bronco ambling its way along the San Diego
Freeway chased by a squadron of police cars and news helicopters.
The ashen and saddened face of a yellow-coated fireman carrying
the scorched, limp body of a child from the Federal Building
in Oklahoma City.
Yet, despite the difficulties and dangers encountered
by the news camera and sound operators who bring us these images,
perhaps Bill Purdy sums it up best when he says, "I wouldn't
trade the experiences I've had for anything in the world."
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