REPORTING HOSTAGE CRISES: _____ WHO'S IN CHARGE OF TELEVISION? Edward M. Joyce ELEVisiON coverage of hostage crises has brought a new dimension to an old problem. Thanks to the technology of modern news reporting, a story unfolds hour by hour, day by day in full public view, bringing home to the American people as never before the helplessness and humiliation of their government in the face of apparently irrational, inhuman terrorist demands. Television seems such a ubiquitous feature of these episodes that the public has come to associate the attentions of the media apparatus to some degree with the motivation of the hostagetakers . Inevitably, allegations are made that television itself is a major contributor to the problem. It is claimed that television coverage of such incidents abets the terrorists' desires for publicity and manipulates the public's reactions. Many charge that, instead of being a mere observer, recorder, and disseminator of events around the world, television should more properly be considered an active participant in them and a shaping force in determining the political response to them. Any number of authoritative commentators have suggested that the role of television in hostage-taking incidents is less than salutary. After Hanafi Muslims took over the B'nai Brith headquarters in Washington in March 1977, setting off a clamor over television coverage of the siege, four psychiatrists told United Press International that "hostage-taking acts of terrorism feed on publicity and encourage similar events." According to an official at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Edward M. Joyce is senior vice president of the cbs Broadcast Group, in charge of cbs World Wide Enterprises. He served as president of cbs News from 1983 to 1985. 169 170 SAIS REVIEW Calvin Frederick, "Any kind of behavior that doesn't receive any reinforcement won't continue over time." Even Ronald Reagan, when he was a weekly newspaper columnist, talked about "cutting off the source of inspiration for an untold number of loose nuts who harbor crazy ideas." And Jody Powell, White House spokesman for president Carter, described the president as having "no desire to seek legislation," but said he hoped that "those who make news decisions will themselves determine the definable boundaries of legitimate coverage."1 Subsequent to this incident guidelines for coverage of terrorism and hostage-takings were drafted independently by a number of prominent news organizations, including upi, the Louisville Times and CourierJournal , The Chicago Sun-Times, and cbs News. The guidelines all attempt to shape responsible coverage while recognizing that there can be no specific self-executing rules for coverage of stories where the facts and circumstances will inevitably vary. In my view these guidelines have held up well under the difficult conditions of the past several years. In the aftermath of the twa Flight 847 hijacking in June 1985 we have seen a replay of the debate over the proper place of television coverage of such events. This time the public discussion was supplemented by a hearing before the subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. At this hearing Fred W. Friendly, professor emeritus at the Columbia University School of Journalism and former president of cbs News, described his former profession as having been "exploited" and told the legislators that in his "seventieth year" he had discovered that he was "a citizen first and a journalist second." Citizen Friendly went on to suggest to the subcommittee that government officials and media executives should "sit down in an organized way. . . and ask those hard, agonizing questions: What did we do right? What did we do wrong? How can we all do it better next time?"2 To some this sounded remarkably like the Media and Society Seminars directed by Professor Friendly, with one difference: Those seminars dealt with theoretical case studies. A meeting between officialdom and the fourth estate, however, conjures a vision of incipient information control. Mostjournalists see such a meeting as the top of a slippery slope leading to a system like the British "D Notices," in which government identifies areas of information important to security, formally notifies the press, and requests that the information be withheld from the public. 1...