KTLA, Wilson Say They Don’t Relish Roles in Police Drama

KLTA-TV Channel 5 reporter Warren Wilson pointed Friday to his image of “trust and fairness within the local black community” as the reason that four black murder suspects have surrendered to him in the last six years.

“All of them were afraid that they would be mistreated or beat up by police if they turned themselves in directly,” Wilson said the day after arranging the arrest of a man who had been sought in connection with the killing of a Los Angeles policeman.

“But they felt confident in turning themselves over to me because they knew that I would surrender them to authorities under the supervision of the district attorney. In this case (Thursday), I told (the suspect) that the police had assured me that nothing would happen to him while he was in custody.”

Wilson, who has been a television reporter in Los Angeles since 1972--first at KNBC-TV Channel 4, then moving to KTLA three years ago--participated in the capture of murder suspects twice while reporting for Channel 4 and again last April when the suspect in the killing of an Inglewood police officer asked for his help.

Late Wednesday, Wilson said, he received a phone call from the distraught mother of Kirkton Moore, whom police believed was involved in the Sept. 3 shooting of Los Angeles Police Officer Daniel Pratt. Moore’s mother told Wilson that her son was in Las Vegas and wanted to turn himself in.

Wilson notified police, flew to Las Vegas with a KTLA camera crew, met Moore and returned with him to the KTLA newsroom just before 5 a.m. Thursday. Police met them there and arrested Moore as the Channel 5 cameras recorded the event.

Jeff Wald, KTLA’s news director, said that while the television station enjoys the notoriety that such a news event brings, it does not relish such opportunities to participate directly in the capture of a fugitive because of the danger and liability involved.

But Wilson said he was responding to the “quivering” pleas for help from a terribly upset mother, and he insisted that he did not violate any unwritten code of journalistic conduct by entering into the story while he reported it.

“I presented the story as a series of chronological events exactly as I would have if somebody had sat down and told me what had happened,” Wilson said. “I only provided a vehicle for the person to surrender himself. I don’t think I was involved in the story.”

Wilson was featured prominently, however, in a front-page photograph in The Times Friday that showed him arriving with the suspect in the KTLA parking lot. Wald said that he had called the photographer and tipped him on the story as a favor to the photographer.

Wilson said he had not asked for any publicity himself and participated in a news conference Thursday only because the police asked him to be there.

He said that he does not find it odd that he is, as far as he knows, the only television reporter in town who had ever been involved in such an incident.

“This is not a typical situation simply because other reporters have not been approached,” Wilson continued. “But I don’t know of any other reporter who wouldn’t want to have a scoop on a major story like that one.”

Erik Sorenson, news director at KCBS-TV Channel 2, backed Wilson up Friday, saying that he didn’t “see anything inherently wrong with a journalist getting involved in a real-life situation. It’s uncomfortable for a reporter to become part of a story and most reporters instinctively back away from those situations. But sometimes you can’t help it. It seemed to me that Warren handled it as best he could.”

Channel 5 did not air its account of the story until its one daily newscast at 10 p.m. Thursday. But the station did distribute a tape of the arrest to other local television stations with “Channel 5 Exclusive” emblazoned on the video. Channels 2, 4 and 7 aired the tape on their afternoon newscasts.

Wald insisted that he hadn’t used Wilson’s involvement in the story to promote his news department. But Sorenson nonetheless criticized Channel 5 for turning its newscast into what he called “a gigantic commercial.”

KTLA spent about 18 minutes at the top of its broadcast on its exclusive report, including Wilson’s footage of the arrest and anchorman Hal Fishman asking questions of Wilson about his involvement in the story.

Ratings for the newscast were no different than usual.