TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082790/0827010.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.0 KB | 128 lines

                                                                                THE GULF, Page 37

And on This Map We See . . .


Granted only limited access to the action, reporters scramble
around the Middle East to cover the crisis


    For diplomats and military strategists, the key question
arising from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was this: Could the
crisis be resolved without war? For the nation's TV networks,
there was a question of almost equal moment: Which would be
first to get a correspondent into Baghdad?

    The first puzzle remains unanswered, but not the second. In
a coup that left its rivals seething, ABC last Wednesday
proudly displayed a tape of Nightline's Ted Koppel conducting
a softballing 50-minute interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister
Tariq Aziz. "Scoops are getting harder and harder to get," said
Koppel, who had arrived in Baghdad the day before Dan Rather
of CBS was able to enter Saddam Hussein's xenophobic
dictatorship. At the same time, to the dismay of his network
colleagues, NBC's Garrick Utley was cooling his heels in Jordan.

Cheryl Gould, a senior producer of NBC's Nightly News. "It's
infuriating and frustrating."

    Also on the sidelines were two Amman-based reporters from
CNN, which had a special reason for suffering the pang of
exclusion: Saddam Hussein reportedly gets much of his
information about world events from the network's satellite
broadcasts. An American engineer who escaped from Kuwait last
week complained that CNN unwittingly caused a near panic among
Westerners still there with its grisly prophecies of what
chemical warfare would do to the city.

    The gulf crisis was a tough story for the press to cover for
several reasons. First, Iraq is anything but an open society.
Second, the Defense Department displayed the same kind of
stuff-the-press attitude it had shown during the invasions of
Grenada and Panama. On the grounds -- false, as it turned out
-- that the Saudis were reluctant to admit  American reporters,
Defense officials were slow to activate the Pentagon press
pool, which meant that there was no media coverage at all when
the first U.S. military units landed.

    Complained Michael Getler, the foreign-news editor of the
Washington Post: "This Administration doesn't think much of the
press, and they don't include it in their planning." By week's
end TIME managed to get three reporters into Saudi Arabia,
including national-security correspondent Bruce van Voorst, who
flew into Riyadh with U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

    The limitations on access were particularly tough on the
networks, where wars and even rumors of wars send anchors
packing their bags to report the story firsthand. During the
early days of the crisis, nightly newscasts made do with
familiar tricks: stock footage of Iraqi tanks maneuvering and
Saddam grimacing, troops in camouflage uniforms on tarmacs of
southern U.S. bases, grave-faced reporters standing outside the
White House or in front of unimaginative maps.

    Meanwhile, both network and print reporters set up shop on
the periphery of the main event. John Kifner of the New York
Times and Bill McLaughlin of CBS, among others, opted for Cairo
as a listening post, because of its good communications and the
quality of its diplomatic sources. At times, though, video
footage from the Egyptian capital seemed curiously remote from
the action -- notably one segment in which Harry Smith of CBS
sailed down the Nile in a felucca, chatting about the city's
history. Easily surpassing CBS in irrelevancy, NBC later ran
an interview with Egypt's aging sex symbol (and bridge expert),
Omar Sharif -- complete with clips from Lawrence of Arabia.

    Other journalists opted for Bahrain or one of the United
Arab Emirates. Under an unwritten rule imposed by their
skittish hosts, reporters based there usually gave their
stories the vague dateline "In the Persian Gulf." Among the
advantages offered by the Emirates, in addition to sleek
airports and well-run hotels, was the availability of planes
and helicopters for hire.

    Usually the most impulsive of network Bigfoots, Dan Rather
interrupted a brief European vacation to anchor the CBS nightly
newscasts from Amman, Jordan. Frequently clad in a spiffy
trench coat, Rather understandably gave perhaps too much
emphasis to the role that King Hussein hoped to play as an
intermediary. As for Koppel, he began negotiating for a visa
to Iraq while covering the Arab summit in Cairo, and later
pressed his case during a three-hour dinner with King Hussein.
After Foreign Minister Aziz agreed to a one-on-one interview,
Koppel and a 10-member ABC crew flew from Amman to Baghdad on
a commercial flight. On Thursday, however, Koppel was bluntly
"invited" to leave the country. Rather stayed, hoping for an
even bigger coup: an interview with Saddam.

    In Saudi Arabia members of the Pentagon's late-starting pool
chafed against arbitrary restrictions on their coverage. For
example, reporters were not to disclose the pool's location,
discuss weapons and operational plans or quote G.I.s by name.
By contrast, noted Frank Aukofer of the Milwaukee Journal, the
supposedly press-wary Saudis allowed pool members inside secret
air-defense posts and made commanders available for interviews.

    The silent center of the crisis was occupied Kuwait --
silent, that is, to virtually all but the Washington Post,
which printed several stories from the city by its Middle East
correspondent, Caryle Murphy. Based in Cairo, Murphy had been
sent to Kuwait late last month as Iraqi threats mounted, and
she was there when the invasion took place. One of her most
vivid reports, a firsthand account of life under the
occupation, appeared in the paper last week without a byline.
Editors will not say how Murphy smuggled out the story or
where she is now. No wonder. Full disclosure, and Iraqi
soldiers would come calling.


By John Elson. Reported by Nancy Traver/Washington and Leslie
Whitaker/New York.