Shooting a Story That Shoots Back : How TV news covers the urban gangs: Are the stories balanced? Are they racist?

She was warned that this particular assignment was going to be dangerous, and Sheila Hamilton wasn’t about to take any chances.

Before she set out on the assignment, Hamilton, a television news reporter for KTVX, an ABC network affiliate in Salt Lake City, tried to rent a flak jacket. When that didn’t work out, she borrowed a bullet-proof vest from a friend. She thought that feeling protected would help her concentrate on getting the story.

But later, when Hamilton found herself face down in a gutter on a cool October night, trying to keep from being hit by an unseen sniper, other considerations besides getting the story became more important--like saving her own life.

“All I could think of was the line in that Talking Heads song where the guy sings, ‘Well, how did I get here?’ ” she recalled.

“Here” was not a guerrilla zone in Central America or the war-torn Middle East. Sheila Hamilton was in the middle of South-Central Los Angeles--an area scarred by street drug sales and, more importantly, street gang crime.

Hamilton, along with her cameraman, Dennis Kurumada, had come to Los Angeles to get footage for a special on the growth of gangs in Utah. Just as other news crews from across the country who had made the pilgrimage before them, Hamilton and Kurumada wanted to show how bad it could get when gangs terrorize a community. And they figured there was no better place to do that than in Los Angeles, the land of the Crips and the Bloods.

The reported invasion of Los Angeles gangs into tranquil regions of Colorado, Missouri and Utah in the past two years has put a national spotlight on the L.A. gangs. News crews from those states and others have brought their cameras and microphones to Los Angeles during the past several months to show the gangs on their home turf.

Interest in L.A. gangs was heightened with the release of “Colors,” the 1988 hit film that put the gangs on movie screens across America and made more than a few politicians and law enforcement agencies worry about the ramifications of the vivid portrayals.

When an innocent young woman was cut down after she got caught in a gang dispute while on a dinner date in Westwood last year, televison news rushed furiously to get the lowdown on a phenomena that it had ignored for years.

But in its zest to cover gang sweeps and drive-by shootings, television has promoted racism and distorted the gang issue, some media watchers and gang experts maintain. Some say gangs have been publicized and glamorized. And news crews that try to cover the story without adequate preparation or background are putting themselves into a life-theatening situation, they say.

Although frightened by the sudden gunfire, Hamilton and Kurumada were not hurt in the incident. The sniper was apparently aiming at a LAPD gang detail supervisor who was escorting the news crew into gang territory. The shot buzzed past Sgt. Paul Hernandez’s head as he stood on 25th and Wall streets and questioned two gang members about an earlier drive-by shooting.

The incident points out the increasing risks that news crews are encountering as they attempt to cover an elusive story in a hostile urban environment, and how the story can become a bit too real for outsiders whose only job is to report the news.

As the coverage increases, so does the tension between the affected inner-city communities and television news crews that are chasing down leads and contacting gang members.

In recent months, a television crew was threatened and surrounded with gunfire as it roamed around a housing project populated with gang members. A news producer narrowly escaped being assaulted when he ventured into a confrontation between rival gangs. KCBS-TV Channel 2, which has aired several special reports on gangs during newscasts, once received a bomb threat for its gang coverage. Station officials said they took the threat “very seriously” but still broadcast the stories.

“When you go down there, it’s like you’re crossing over into a foreign country which is not even part of Los Angeles or anywhere else,” said one news producer. “The people who live there feel cut off from the rest of the country, so they resent it when outsiders come in to try and find out how they feel.”

So do some viewers.

“The kind of stories and the events that are shown just help to perpetuate a negative image of the whole black community,” said Alvin Poussaint, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and one of the most prominent black psychiatrists in the country.

“It’s dangerous for every black male in this country,” he added. “There is just not enough balanced reporting. It makes it look like every black kid in these areas belongs to a gang. The more that whites and middle-class blacks see this kind of thing, the more they want to stay away from it.”

Some of the critics say that the coverage has failed to show that gangs are not found only in poor neighborhoods inhabited by minorities.

“The gang shows and the newscasts have not focused attention on the entire spectrum,” said LAPD deputy chief Glenn Levant.

“There are white gangs, there are skin heads, there are gangs made up of older people. How come you never see them? Because they’re not as obvious, that’s why. There are 92 languages in this city, and every one of the groups has a criminal element.”

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department two months ago hosted a conference for the Radio and Television News Assn. of Southern California, instructing the media how to--and how not to--cover gangs.

“They told us we had to be on our guard, and not to go there with our news trucks, put up our antennas and set up shop,” said KTLA news director Jeff Wald, the president of the association.

Wald said the group was warned that interviewing one gang could bring reprecussions from another gang. “I think the media largely went down there like the Red Cross, just reporting the facts and staying neutral,” Wald said. “We were told we had to be extremely careful in what we do and what we show.”

Network and local television news executives admit that television news in general has been somewhat exploitative in covering the gang problem.

Young men in colored rags talking about the joys of “gangbanging,” shooting and killing for drugs, turf or revenge make good TV, they said.

“When it comes to gangs, there is a lot of ‘quick and dirty’ journalism,” said KCBS news director Michael Singer. “There’s just not that much investigative or enterprise reporting on the issue. Television has a responsibility to cover it more seriously. Drive-by shootings are not the whole story.”

Another LAPD deputy chief, William Rathburn, said he had mixed emotions about the television media’s coverage of gangs.

“It’s definitely detrimental to blacks as a race, and to Los Angeles as a city,” he said. “It’s raised the level of fear to an unwarranted level in a lot of communities.

“But at the same time, there has been significant government and law enforcement response to the problem because of it. It’s helped place the wiping out of gangs higher on the priority list.”

Officials for KCBS and KNBC Channel 7 say they have tried to downplay scenes of gang bravado and gunplay in news stories.

KNBC news director Tom Capra said names of gangs aren’t used in that station’s stories about drive-by shootings or neighborhood turf wars. KCBS news producers say their focus is geared more towards exploring the “roots” of gangs--the failures of government agencies to provide alternatives to young people in impoverished communities, and the infiltration of drugs into those areas.

News executives also explained why most of the gang coverage is centered on black and, to a lesser extent, Latino gangs.

“Black and Latino communities are the ones in danger, and that’s just a cold, hard fact,” Singer said. “We continually try to bring sensitivity to the issue. But the gang problem is not centered equally throughout economic groups.”

Singer denied that the coverage promoted racism. “The people in those areas have already encountered racism, which is a large reason why this problem exists in the first place,” he said.

At KTTV Channel 11, reporter Jane Wells, who has done stories on gangs, said she did not feel the story was being sensationalized.

“A couple of weeks ago, eight people were killed in gang shootings, and we did nothing with it at all,” she said.

Even some anti-gang proponents defended the coverage. “I do feel a lot of it is accurate,” said Patrice Patrick, the head of Mothers Against Gangs in the Community (MAGIC), one of the most visible organizations battling the gang problem. Patrick has been featured on several news programs dealing with gangs.

“I think there’s been a lot of effort and care put into how this situation is portrayed,” she said. But Patrick added that television crews tended to go only to certain areas. “They only go to Watts or Nickerson Gardens. The problem is everywhere--in San Pedro, in Downey, in Norwalk,” she said.

Still, the criticism continues.

Several community leaders and police officials said L.A. gangs became a big media story after the February, 1988, shooting of Karen Toshima, a 27-year-old graphic artist who was killed on a crowded Westwood street when she got caught in rival gang cross-fire.

Following Toshima’s death, Los Angeles police beefed up patrols in the popular tourist area. The crackdown brought cries of indignation from African-American leaders who said gang violence had erupted almost daily in the inner city without any such response from police.

Local television news executives contend that they had regarded the gang problem in impoverished areas as a major story long before the Toshima shooting.

Capra said the station had covered the story for several years, but the infiltration of drugs into the community over the past three or four years had made it a more prominent issue.

“It’s certainly not a new problem to South-Central L.A.,” Capra said. “So when the Karen Toshima thing happened, we focused on the reaction to the police reaction--how the community said, ‘Hey, what about us?’ ”

Producers Dan Leighton and Ken Mate of KCBS said they had been working on a proposal for a major gang story long before Toshima was shot. “We had sources in law enforcement that were telling us that this was something we better keep an eye on because there was a phenomena occuring,” Mate said.

Scenes of drive-by shootings and their ramifications--the funerals, the grieving parents, the neighborhood anti-drug rallies--have become almost a fixture on local news broadcasts in recent months. Gang sweeps are mentioned and shown regularly on weekend newscasts.

Specials and documentaries with the standard footage of police bursting into homes with their guns drawn and young men bragging about dying for their “colors” are aired regularly, spiced with visual and audio images of graffiti-marred walls, barred windows and rap music.

In the last two years, “48 Hours” and “West 57th” have done major segments on gangs. Syndicated specials such as “City Under Siege” and “Gangs--Not My Kid” have aired on independent stations.

An ABC-TV news crew from St. Louis came to Los Angeles to film a syndicated gang special, “Young Guns” that aired on Channel 7 here. That crew is filming another special that is focusing on L.A. gangs infiltrating other American cities such as Omaha, Neb. and Kansas City, Mo.

Some of the programs are accompanied by “town hall” discussions where community leaders, former gang members and law enforcement officials debate the origin of gangs, and what can be done to stop them.

Some media watchers who accuse television of distorting the gang issue and casting a negative light on the black community in general point to a two-part NBC special, “Gangs, Cops & Drugs,” that was broadcast in August and was hosted by anchor Tom Brokaw.

The first portion of the special showed how police, sheriffs and counselors deal with gangs. It was followed by a discussion that took place on a set that resembled a run-down schoolyard, complete with chain-link fences and graffiti-decorated walls. A studio audience sat on bleachers while several monitors in one of the walls showed officials from other cities who participated in the program via satellite.

At one point during the discussion, national drug czar William Bennett said that gangs were not a result of social conditions such as poverty and joblessness, but were a self-perpetuating nuisance that had to be crushed by force. As blacks in the audience shook their heads and whispered to each others, Bennett said the gang problem would not be solved by “cleansing all of society somehow, but by attacking the problem right where it is, where bad people are being predators on good people in the inner cities of this country.”

An exchange between Bennett and a former gang member seemed to further raise tensions in the audience. In a soft, controlled tone, the ex-gang member, Wes Cutler, implored Bennett not to regard gang members as ruthless criminals. “They are people, too, and . . . they’ll come to that level as long as they are respected at that level,” he said.

Bennett shot back that before gang members could be treated as people, they would have to act as people. When Cutler shook his head and flashed a grin at the response, Bennett snapped, “Yeah, I know you’re looking that way and you don’t believe it, but you’re not in a position in this society where you can make victims of innocent people.”

Poussaint said that Bennett’s statements and tone echoed the sentiments of middle- and upper middle-class whites and blacks who are bombarded with television accounts of gang violence.

“Folks just think these kids are animals, not civilized, and that they have to be wiped out,” he said. “And maybe some of the gang members are animals. But once there’s that kind of mentality among whites and blacks who are outside the community, they feel that the whole community is like that, and they become more indiscriminate towards blacks in general.”

Herb Giron Jr., a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy who escorted Brokaw through gang-dominated areas of Lennox for the special, also denounced Bennett’s demeanor.

“If I built up hatred against these folks like he has, I wouldn’t get anything done,” Giron said. “I try to see them as human beings.”

But Giron added that he understood how Bennett felt. “When a seven-year-old kid is killed in rival gang cross-fire, it’s hard to have compassion for gangs,” he said.

Even so, Giron has been critical of how the television media covers gangs. He was reluctant to become involved with the Brokaw special, saying that news crews he had previously worked with and escorted through gang turfs had only been interested in sensationalism.

“All they wanted to do was get people screaming, flashing their signs, blood and gore, and I was tired of seeing that,” Giron said. “When Channel 4 said they wanted to get away from that and show the other side--how good people in the community deal with the gang problem--I was enthused.”

Wayne Ewing, an independent news producer who put together the documentary portion of “Gangs, Cops & Drugs,” said he wanted to go beyond the standard gang-terrorizing-community story.

“We wanted to focus on the community rather than the gangs, but it was not easy,” Ewing said. “It’s a tough story to do. Lot of crews say they won’t even go down in that area any more.”

Doing research and getting the community to trust reporters carrying microphones and cameras is a key, he said. One segment of the special featured two counselors who walk in and around housing projects trying to persuade youngsters and gang members to stay in school and out of gangs.

Ewing said he and a crew spent four days in the area without cameras, accompanying the pair as they walked around and talked to kids. When they started shooting, people in the community had gotten used to them and trusted them, he said.

Before starting work on a “48 Hours” special dealing with the gang situation that was broadcast last year, KCBS producers Leighton and Mate said they spent three months in the community “just making friends.” Even so, they still encountered danger.

Part of that process involved driving the “right” car around.

“At first, I came down there in my 1969 Saab,” Leighton said. “I had this contact who was a drug dealer, and he kept telling me what a stupid car it was. He said no one would come talk to me because they would think I was a cop. I would have no credibility. He said people in that area aren’t impressed by who you are, but what they see.”

So Leighton rented a white Cadillac. “And it worked,” he said. “This guy was with me, and we were just picking people off the street. It was easy to get people to come over to us and talk to us awhile. It was very fun.”

But one incident didn’t turn out to be such fun.

Leighton said he once found himself in the middle of a drug transaction between gangs with another dealer that apparently wasn’t going down too well. Leighton said the dealer who was riding around with him got into an argument with another gang, and tensions flared as gang members began eyeing Leighton’s car suspiciously.

One person approached Leighton and threatened to beat him up. He said the producer would have to pay to leave the neighborhood alive. Someone started hitting the car with a cane. A group pulled the dealer out of the car. “They started beating him up, and he told me to get the hell out of there,” he recalled. “So I just hit the gas and got the hell out of there as as fast as I could.”

A KTTV news crew also ran into trouble when gathering footage for a half-hour special, “City Under Siege” which was broadcast in June.

Jane Wells and cameraman Steve Thorp ventured into the Imperial Courts housing project to find out how residents deal with the daily presence of gangs. They befriended one family, and in the evening, a 14-year-old boy of the family escorted them around the area.

But when the youth took them around the project that night, a gang watched nearby. Thorp had his camera lights off, but was shooting in the darkness. Suddenly, rapid gunfire exploded in the night. Someone ran towards the news crew armed with a gun. The boy told the gunman in gang lingo that the crew was OK, and they were left alone.

On the tape of the incident that aired during the special, Thorp says in the darkness, “Let’s get out of here immediately.”

Recalling the incident, Wells said, “People raise their children in that every day. We were only in there for one night.”

Thorp said he would not enter a similar situation without police protection. “I feel sorry for the people who have to live with that,” he said. “I would not want to live there.”

News officials for KNBC and KCBS said they are working on special news reports on gangs in the near future, although nothing is planned on the caliber of the specials that have aired recently.

News executives won’t say exactly what the upcoming projects are, although Channel 4 will focus on the “politics” behind the escalation of gang activity and Channel 2 will focus on the continuing gang obsession with selling drugs.

Both news series will probably air on the regular news shows before the end of the year.

“All we can do is keep covering the story in the way it should be covered,” Capra said. “It’s a recurring tragedy that needs to be reported, not ignored.”