Should Television Be a Witness for the Execution? : Media review: Local coverage was admirably restrained at the end, but jumped on the sensational beforehand.

Long before Monday night, local coverage of the execution of convicted murderer Robert Alton Harris had assumed the atmosphere of a moon launch.

With ominous clarity, stories counted down the last hours of Harris’ life. As 12:01 Tuesday morning neared, stays issued by the courts were like holds from Mission Control, leaving the audience in suspended animation waiting for events to continue.

That a man’s life was about to be taken by the California judicial system inevitably gave reportage a ghoulish tone. As the night wore on, events began to resemble an episode of “Twilight Zone,” specifically the one in which Dennis Weaver plays a man perpetually dreaming he’s on the way to the electric chair.

With immediacy an essential for this San Diego story, local television became the key source of information. Newspapers fell victim to deadlines.

Although they showed admirable restraint on the night of the execution, local stations displayed a typical willingness to jump on the sensational aspects of the case in the days leading up to the event. No local station paved new ground, and their blow-by-blow coverage was remarkably similar.

A week before, newscasters were providing titillating minute-by-minute accounts of how Harris was expected to spend his last minutes. Desperate for visual images, Channel 39 even had an illustrator attempt to depict upcoming events, drawing a dejected-looking Harris slumped on a cot with a cigarette in one hand and a cup in the other.

Throughout this period, hyperbole flowed. It’s hard to talk about an execution without sounding like a script from a bad Vincent Price movie, and the local stations couldn’t handle it. There were gratuitous references to Harris’ “date with death” and his “last breath.” However, Channel 39’s Denise Yamada took the honor for worst metaphor, referring to events in the gas chamber as being “behind the green door.”

Most of the advance stories--from all of the media--focused on relentless interviews with relatives, retelling the tragic events of 14 years ago, pictures of demonstrators (for and against executing Harris) and the seemingly obligatory man-on-the-street interviews, highlighted by Channel 39’s Gene Cubbison concluding one segment by soliciting comments from street derelicts.

But, when the day of the execution arrived, the local stations pulled back on the sensational aspects and played the story straight. There was none of television’s usual need to package events, no tasteless graphic titles such as “Countdown to Death” or “To the Last Breath.”

The death of a man--even a murderer of teen-age boys--had enough drama without the buzzwords television loves, and even the local stations seemed to understand that.

From a television perspective, the execution was both an easy and a difficult story to cover. Demonstrations by groups for and against the death penalty gave the stations plenty of visual fodder, as did the emotional roller-coaster rides experienced by the families of all involved.

But, by Monday, the interviews with anguished relatives had already become redundant and difficult to watch and read. After a certain point, the circus of reportage around each family member added little to the story.

The three network-affiliated local stations had representatives at the prison, but they were relegated to doing stand-ups, stilted comments from both inside and outside the prison, with a noticeable lack of interesting visual elements.

“What’s the mood there?” became the standard question. For the most part, the television reporters were simply reporting on “The Mood’ of the press area, with no real access to anything else.

Used in almost every newscast interview from the prison, “The Mood” became such an overused cliche that reporters on the scene often ignored it. At one point, Channel 8’s Mitch Duncan launched into a diatribe about the death penalty--”We have a death sentence, but no death penalty”--after San Diego-based anchorwoman Andrea Naversen asked: “What’s the mood there? Letdown, relief or what?”

Hurting for ways to break up the monotony of a studio-bound anchor interviewing the reporter at the scene, Channel 10 even took the unusual step of having its reporters team up with reporters from KCAL in Los Angeles. With few others to talk to, Channel 10 and KCAL reporters began interviewing each other.

The arrangement was necessitated in part because Channel 10 was sharing KCAL’s satellite truck, but it also allowed reporters to stay on the air while another reporter checked on breaking details, Channel 10 news director Paul Sands said.

Indeed, executions make for strange media bedfellows. Michael Tuck became a man of all stations. An employee of CBS-affiliate KCBS-TV, he was interviewed early in the evening on CBS affiliate Channel 8, but he also could be seen on Channel 10, for whom he still does commentaries.

Channel 10 had more than a few technical quirks, but it also managed to stand out. By interviewing Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Michaels during the 11 p.m. newscast, Channel 10 managed to clearly explain that the execution had to take place within 24 hours or be delayed for several weeks.

After the 11 p.m. newscasts, Channels 8, 10 and 39 began regular updates, but Channel 10 stayed with its midnight update longer than the competitors, catching live the news that a third stay had been issued.

KUSI-TV (Channel 51) was a noticeable non-participant in breaking events. It did updates up to its hourlong 10 p.m. news program, but management there appears to have no stomach for making the commitment to developing the station as a source for news. After the end of the 10 p.m. newscast, Channel 51 was nowhere to be seen, declining to offer even an update at midnight from its affiliate with CNN.

“At that point, they still had a stay pending, and there was no change in the situation,” Channel 51 news director Paul Beavers said Tuesday morning.

Channel 51 was off the air through most of the early-morning events, and the station decided not to go live after the execution took place early in the morning, out of sensitivity to children watching morning cartoons, Beavers said.

Most San Diegans learned of the early-morning drama at San Quentin not from their morning newspapers, which were hamstrung by press deadlines, but from television and radio.

The local stations used their morning news programs and updates during the national morning shows to tell people what happened, although they spent more time on gruesome details from witnesses than recapping the extraordinary legal events of the night.

On radio, KSDO-AM (1130) provided the most extensive coverage, devoting most of its early-morning programming to the case. KFMB-AM (760) went ahead with Hudson and Bauer’s inane bantering, while the other news station, KPBS-FM (89.5) relied primarily on National Public Radio.

The result was an extraordinary 24 hours of media coverage.