Shots Seen ‘Round World via Phone Line

With video transmissions from Beijing banned, the networks have had to resort to Vietnam-era methods of covering the violence there, with news footage flown by courier to outside satellite points for relay here.

But this time, the networks can also do what the wire services routinely did from Saigon even at the bloody height of the 1968 Communist Tet Offensive--transmit still pictures of the carnage, bravery and brief moments of peace.

Such pictures, including ABC’s dramatic shot Monday morning of a lone Chinese civilian boldly stopping a line of tanks in Tian An Men Square, have become American viewers’ first glimpse of the stories that network correspondents are describing live by phone from Beijing.

The pictures are aired well before videotape footage makes the five- to seven-hour trip from Beijing to Tokyo and Hong Kong for satellite relay to the networks and subsequent broadcasts in the United States.

According to network officials, the still pictures are taken from the videotape footage and transmitted from Beijing via phone lines by image-scanning “pixelator” devices--pixel is shorthand for “picture elements”--that are similar in operation to a fax machine, digitally transforming the picture into information bits and reassembling them at the other end of the line.

ABC sent its dramatic man-against-tank still picture (Associated Press also had a similar shot from one of its photographers) via a Sony-developed PromaVica that the network sent to Beijing only last Friday, said Robert Seigenthaler, ABC technical operations president.

It was promptly put in use to send still shots of the army crushing the long demonstration of students and others in Beijing over the weekend, with the video footage aired several hours later.

A similar image-scanning device used by CBS is a Quickpix machine, jointly developed by CBS and Kodak, and has been used by Beijing staffers for about a month, CBS News vice president Don DeCesare said Tuesday.

The technology is about two or three years old, network officials said. Some broadcasters also are using an electronic still camera that records images on video tape rather than film.

Wire services such as Associated Press also still are able to transmit black-and-white and color photographs via phone lines from Beijing. The networks use some of those photos as part of their coverage.

But not many, DeCesare said. Since the CBS machine “is working so well and we get such high-quality, high-resolution photos that are our own, we obviously tend to use our own pictures.”

During the Vietnam war, there was no satellite transmission facility in Saigon and the networks, which then used film, not tape, shipped their news footage to Hong Kong or Tokyo for satellite relay. There are satellite facilities in Beijing, but save for a one-day respite on May 22, Chinese authorities have banned all video transmissions from them since martial law was declared May 20.

The Chinese, however, haven’t cut off phone communications that allow broadcast and written reports and still pictures to reach the outside world.

Network executives are both puzzled and relieved that that last electronic plug hasn’t been pulled. All are keeping their fingers crossed that, whatever happens this week in Beijing, Chinese authorities won’t cut off phone lines to the outside world.

As John Chancellor, who covered China’s bloody cultural revolution years ago, put it Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show, “we may never have this access again if they decide to shut it down.”