A View From the Hotel: Reporting the Panama Conflict

ABC’s Peter Jennings called it “hotel reporting.”

We got it from China last June when many Western journalists, their freedom of movement severely restricted in Beijing, were forced to observe the crackdown of pro-reform dissidents from their hotel rooms overlooking Tian An Men Square.

And now, as Jennings noted Wednesday morning, it was happening again.

Just as journalists were trapped in their hotels during some of the violence in China, so were many initially forced to report by phone from their rooms in the besieged Marriott Hotel during the first hours of the upheaval in Panama as U.S. forces moved against Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega.

Whether it was NBC’s Ed Rabel, CBS’ Juan Vasquez or ABC’s Juan Quinones (who at one point reported hiding under his bed with his producer), these limited, but unique eyewitness accounts were, in effect, radio on television.

Although some journalists may have been able to leave the hotel Tuesday night, many stayed, fearing they’d be in even greater danger on the streets. But tension was also high inside the hotel.

Speaking from his room by phone to Dan Rather several times late Tuesday night, Vasquez obviously felt in peril. His speech was halting and barely above a whisper, and he seemed to want to get off the phone as soon as possible.

For emotion, however, nothing topped New York Times reporter Lindsey Gruson on the phone with Rather, his voice full of emotion as he described having a gun put to his head, and then to his teeth by threatening Panamanians who had taken him from his hotel room and held him hostage part of Tuesday night.

Not all of the hotel “reporters” were professional journalists.

On the line with NBC Wednesday morning and sounding very scared was Roger Sizemore, who was identified as a California businessman. He spoke from his room at the Marriott.

Sizemore asked Tom Brokaw and Bryant Gumbel if they knew if it was safe for him to go to the lobby. It was amazing--an American in Panama asking Americans in New York for information about Panama that could determine his fate. Gumbel told him that NBC reporter Rabel was able to leave the hotel safely Wednesday morning, but that he couldn’t say if Sizemore should try to leave.

Then Gumbel asked Sizemore if it was safe for him to go to the window and look out. “I’d rather not,” he said. He didn’t have to elaborate.

Twice Sizemore left the phone to respond to what he said was “someone at the door.” After the second time, he returned and said abruptly: “We gotta go.” Go where? And why? There was no more information, for the conversation had ended.

United States television is available in some Panama hotels, and NBC’s John Chancellor noted the strange irony: People trapped in their hotels in Panama were complaining about that to U.S. networks who possibly were being watched by the very Panamanians who were responsible for those people being trapped.

Although other news organizations also complained that the hotel was unprotected, it was NBC that seemed almost to be making the Marriott its cause Wednesday morning. Gumbel and his soon-to-be “Today” co-host Deborah Norville repeatedly asked why the hotel hadn’t been secured by the invading U.S. troops, given the number of Americans known to be staying there.

However, there were surely many other hotels in Panama housing Americans, and they probably were in danger, too. Hence the Marriott was singled out for special emphasis on TV, it seemed, only because so many of the American media were staying there. That put it under the TV spotlight.

“It’s about time we do get some protection,” ABC reporter Quinones said Wednesday morning. His frustration was understandable. Yet it seemed that through television, pressure was being put on U.S. forces to come to the rescue of a specific hotel.

Media first, others second?