Risk at NBC : Integrity of Newscast vs. a Man’s Life

When a man walked up to KNBC-TV broadcaster David Horowitz during a live newscast Wednesday, nudged him with what looked like a real gun and demanded that he read a statement, news director Tom Capra had to make an extraordinary ethical choice.

From where he sat in the safety of the studio control booth, Capra had to decide what was more important: risking the integrity of the station’s newscast by allowing a gunman to take it over or risking Horowitz’s life by refusing to comply with the gunman’s demand.

It was a high-stakes, no-win situation that few people in television have had to deal with but many have contemplated.

“We are vulnerable, just like airliners are vulnerable to hijacking,” said Jeffrey Marks, chairman of the ethics committee of the Radio and Television News Directors Assn. and a television news director in Portland, Me.

Rambling Statement

Capra took less than 30 seconds to make up his mind.

He chose the station’s newscast.

He took the news show off the air even though the gunman, who had threatened to kill Horowitz unless his statement was read to viewers, could see clearly on in-studio monitors that what was being broadcast was only the NBC logo.

For nearly eight minutes, Horowitz, with the gun pressed to his back, read the man’s rambling statement about the CIA, clones and UFOs.

When Horowitz finished, the gunman, Gary Stollman, son of former KNBC pharmaceutical reporter Max Stollman, laid down his pistol, a realistic toy, and was led off by police.

KNBC resumed broadcasting, explaining what had happened to startled viewers, who had seen a gun pointed at Horowitz before programming was interrupted.

At a news conference after the ordeal, Horowitz said he felt lucky to be alive.

Overriding Point

Capra said he was glad the station’s integrity was intact.

As the shaken consumer reporter was saying he hoped that the incident would not inspire copycats, Capra stepped in to make what he clearly believed was the overriding point.

“It won’t,” he said emphatically, “because this guy didn’t get on the air. I mean he may have held you hostage, but when you say he held the television station hostage, he did not.”

“But the point is I could have been killed,” Horowitz said.

“Well, yeah, you could have been killed,” Capra acknowledged, “but the television station wasn’t held hostage.”

“I know the television station wasn’t held hostage,” an incredulous Horowitz continued, “but I could have died because the television station wasn’t held hostage.”

“You can always get out of the business,” Capra said.

Television news is a rough-and-tumble business, but not all news directors and television experts interviewed Thursday think it is worth making it quite that rough.

“I would put the human life first and the television station second,” said KTLA news director Jeff Wald.

“It’s a damn tough call,” he acknowledged.

Wald recalled that he was widely criticized by colleagues last year when, as he saw it, he offered to risk his station’s integrity briefly in an effort to save some lives.

That occurred when a gunman who had taken hostages during an aborted robbery of the Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry store in Beverly Hills repeatedly called KTLA to ask that a news crew be sent in to the store to broadcast a statement he wanted to make.

Wald told sheriff’s deputies that they could borrow his equipment and get into the store by impersonating his news crew.

Ordinarily, news organizations go to great lengths to make it clear to readers and viewers that they are not an arm of government. Wald decided that a life-and-death situation was an exception.

‘Well Worth It’

“We did not want to literally have any blood on our hands,” he said. “And to me the sacrifice of our equipment and perhaps our integrity for that afternoon was well worth it if we were able to save one human life.”

As things turned out, the Sheriff’s Department rejected KTLA’s offer. After a long siege, the gunman killed two hostages in the store and a third was mistakenly shot to death by a Sheriff’s Department marksman.

When people try to commandeer broadcast facilities--as they have on a couple of occasions in recent years in the United States--fundamental decisions have to be made under extreme pressure.

There are no rule books.

In Phoenix in 1982, a man with a real .38-caliber pistol took over a studio at KOOL-TV just before the evening news was to air. He also wanted a statement read.

After a stand-off of nearly five hours, station authorities decided to try to trick him. A newsman read his statement but its broadcast was restricted to a closed circuit.

The man had his own portable TV, however, and became furious.

‘Wasn’t Much Choice’

Finally his 20-minute statement went out on the air, and he laid down his gun and surrendered.

Station owner Tom Chauncey told reporters at the time that he was concerned that putting the man on the air would encourage similar acts of blackmail, “but there wasn’t much choice. My concern was for the lives of the people in the room.”

Capra defended his choice in an interview Thursday.

“It wasn’t a tough call at all,” he said.

Capra said he had thought in advance about what he would do.

He said that in 1979, he had been present in a Washington, D.C., television studio when Howard K. Smith was broadcasting a segment of the ABC network news and some Irish Republican Army loyalists appeared, demanding to be heard. The director stopped the broadcast, he said.

Capra said he has also participated in seminars about how to deal with hostage situations. He said he has concluded that one cannot let hostage-takers win.

To do so, he said, would be to give “an open invitation to any terrorist in the country to give them their own TV station.”

“I feel very strongly about it, and of course David feels very strongly about it, because the gun was pointed at him,” Capra said.

He said he is not certain that Horowitz “ever will” understand his position, but that it would have been the same “no matter who the victim is.” NBC’s executive vice president for corporate communications, M. S. Rukeyser Jr., backed Capra.

“It’s a tough call to make. . . . I’m quite sure we don’t (have any policies on terrorists in studios). I think this is one of those times that a human being has to make a decision under a lot of pressure and that the rule book is going to be of very little assistance at a time like that.”

Rukeyser said Capra “would almost have had to (have) thought about (what he would do in such a situation) in advance, because I think all the instincts would have been to stay on. You’re on live and here’s a live incident. . . . All of the normal instincts would have been to keep the cameras on (to report the hostage-taking as news.) I think what he did was good, sensible.”

“I wouldn’t have gone off the air,” said Joe Saltzman, chairman of broadcasting at the USC School of Journalism. “I think this business of holding a station hostage is almost an arrogant position. There isn’t anyone at home watching who would think that. They would realize what was going on.”

Saltzman added, however: “I don’t really fault Capra for going to a station slide and saying there’s a problem. This is a very gray area. I can understand how a news director acting under the pressure of that situation might elect to go off the air. For example, what if the guy pulls the trigger and you’ve got David Horowitz splattered all over the screen? There are arguments not to show that.”

Some See Risk

Some police specialists in hostage negotiations think Capra took a big gamble.

Martin Reiser, a hostage negotiator for 19 years and chief psychologist of the Los Angeles Police Department, was hesitant to criticize Capra’s decision but said that “under certain conditions, I would imagine the decision could have been dangerous” to Horowitz and others in the studio.

Usually, Reiser said, Police Department hostage negotiators allow gunmen their say “unless someone has been killed or is being killed. . . . Short of that basic strategy, (we) take as much time needed to let things cool down.

“If I were there in an advisory capacity as part of a hostage negotiation team, as I frequently am, the chances are we would have suggested that this message be allowed to be broadcast and then explained later,” Reiser said.

He noted that in most hostage situations, gunmen do not act rashly.

“But it does occur, and you have to judge each situation individually at the time to assess the potential for danger,” he said.

2 Felony Charges

Stollman, 34, a former mental patient, was placed under psychiatric observation at Los Angeles County Jail and charged Thursday with two felonies, false imprisonment and burglary. The latter charge, said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Bernardi, “is not the common notion of burglary. He entered the building with this crime planned in advance. Entering a commercial building with intent of committing a felony is a burglary.”

Arraignment was set for today.

Meanwhile, security was beefed up at television studios in Los Angeles.

“Even I had a hard time getting in here today,” said Erik Sorenson, Capra’s counterpart at KCBS.

Times staff writer David Freed contributed to this story.