TV Tapes and Newspaper Photos of Riots Subpoenaed : Media: News organizations say they will draw line at providing material that was not broadcast or published.

The FBI and local law enforcement agencies are seeking television videotape, newspaper photographs and amateur video records of the recent Los Angeles riots, apparently to help identify and prosecute looters, arsonists and other offenders.

Several Los Angeles-area TV stations confirmed Monday that they have received federal subpoenas ordering them to deliver by Wednesday copies of their on-air coverage of the riots.

In addition, one television news executive said his station was told by an FBI agent to expect a subpoena for “outtakes”--videotape that was never broadcast--a move the executive vowed to resist. “I am going to fight it as much as I can and as long as I can,” said Warren Cereghino, news director at KTLA-TV.

The Los Angeles Times already has been subpoenaed to produce its photographs of criminal actions in the riots, including ones not published. “We hope the government will reconsider this demand for unpublished photographs and we will resist it if they persist,” said Times Editor Shelby Coffey III.

“We are in favor of a fair and full investigation of wrongdoing,” Coffey said. “But we have a deep concern for the safety of our photographers, several of whom were shot at or assaulted with rocks during the riots.

“We don’t want the press and its unpublished material to be regarded as an extension of law enforcement because we have a different function. And that difference is ingrained in the California state Constitution, which protects against the forced disclosure of unpublished material.”

In an indication of the scope of the effort to gather evidence on the civil unrest, an amateur photographer who videotaped early turmoil at a South Los Angeles intersection said a team of law enforcement officers searched his home at midnight Friday, looking for his original tapes.

Timothy Goldman, 32, said several dozen FBI agents, Los Angeles police officers and others served a search warrant at the home he shares with his mother, but only found a copy of one of three tapes made at Florence and Normandie avenues.

The FBI would not comment Monday, but a Los Angeles prosecutor said the federal agency probably will serve as a “clearinghouse” in creating a detailed videotape record of the riots to assist a variety of law enforcement agencies and prosecutors in building cases.

“One of the problems is compiling all the tapes out there . . . independents, networks, police (videotapes) themselves,” said John F. Lynch, who is coordinating riot prosecutions for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

The FBI, he said, has “the resources to make a master tape, to combine footage so you can search it out by incident. . . . If you wanted to look at the (looting of) a jewelry store at Santa Monica and Western,” the clearinghouse might be able to produce several views of it.

That evidence, in turn, “may be helpful to identify people who (did the looting) and to give the jury a flavor of what happened,” Lynch said.

In general, news organizations comply with subpoenas for copies of material that has been published or broadcast, but resist giving law enforcement officials material they have not made public themselves.

The New York Times said that a subpoena was issued Monday to a Los Angeles-based free-lance photographer who had assisted its coverage of the riots, and that the paper agreed to give the FBI copies of six photographs published last week. But the New York Times “traditionally has not turned over to authorities unpublished material” and would not have to in this case, spokesman William Adler said.

The city editor of the Santa Monica Outlook said the FBI simply requested, without a subpoena, its photo of the alleged attackers of truck driver Reginald O. Denny raising their fists in triumph. Officials of the newspaper said agents were given a copy under a standard policy of giving anyone published photos.

A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Daily News said it had not received a subpoena for photographs.

Executives at several television stations said that they are copying their extensive coverage of the riots for the FBI, as requested in subpoenas received last week, but that they probably will fight additional subpoenas for footage that was never aired.

“It puts us in a tough situation. . . . If any of that is used as prosecution material, it puts our crews at greater risk in the field than they are now. . . . We are then looked on as agents of the police,” said KTLA’s Cereghino, who is still angry at how Los Angeles County prosecutors last year seized--literally out of his hands--George Holliday’s original videotape showing the beating of Rodney G. King.

Police prefer the original of such tapes, whenever possible, to make better still photographs for use as evidence.

In the wake of the riots, Cereghino said, “I can’t keep track of the people who asked us for stuff. . . . Law enforcement in the form of the U.S. attorney’s office has laid a subpoena on us for all of the stuff that was aired. . . . Now they’re threatening another subpoena for the stuff that hasn’t aired.”

Jeff Wald, executive director of news programming at KCOP-TV, said his station similarly was “pleased to cooperate” with the request for broadcast material and will provide the FBI with about 90 hours’ worth. But he will not provide material that was not aired, Wald said, adding that there was not much in that category anyway.

“There really aren’t outtakes,” he said. “All of our material was live.”

KCOP scored a coup in riot coverage with live footage from a helicopter camera that showed Denny being brutally beaten after he was pulled from his truck.

Last week, Goldman surfaced with three videotapes that he and two others had filmed at the same corner. Parts showed Los Angeles police officers near the scene, then leaving--evidence that has helped set off a growing controversy over police response.

A USC student, Gregory Sandoval, later became the photographers’ agent and sold the videotape first to ABC News and then to other networks for undisclosed amounts.

Last Friday, according to Goldman, dozens of law enforcement personnel--including FBI agents, Los Angeles police officers and district attorney’s investigators--descended on the South Los Angeles house he shares with his mother, Alice Holston, and others. Goldman said he was not there but his mother and his 6-year-old son were ordered outside the home, along with several other children and adults, while it was searched.

Goldman said the search warrant sought not only the videotapes, but also “excessive amounts of alcohol.”

A Los Angeles police spokesman, Lt. John Dunkin, said vice officers had received information “that liquor was being sold out of that place” after it was allegedly taken from a neighborhood store during the looting. “That’s what they seized,” although no one was arrested, Dunkin said.

“As a matter of course, they had included videotapes on (the search warrant),” he said.

Goldman denied that looted liquor was being sold at the house. “My mother is totally against that,” he said.

The photographer said police seized a copy of one of three videotapes he and others made at the intersection, but not the original, which is in the possession of ABC.

“I’m outraged. . . . They’re my videos. I know what they want them for but I feel I have constitutional rights,” he said.

Goldman said he had “not volunteered any tapes over to law enforcement” because he wanted them to be used only to document the inaction of police--not to identify looters.