Waco Turns Into a Media Hot Spot

The David Koresh cult story, stated a TV reporter near Waco, Tex., “has settled into a siege.” And that was just the media coverage.

Newspapers . . . radio . . . television. You half-expected to turn on ABC at 7 a.m. and hear the estimated 100-plus occupants of the cult’s central Texas compound shout, “GOOD MORNING AMERICA!” The only way television would have had a bigger heyday with this story was if Koresh had known Amy Fisher.

Like a whale slaughtered by Eskimos, every inch of the story has been utilized this week, to the extent that it has provided something for just about everyone:

* Gun-control advocates. Much of the Koresh cult’s heaviest weaponry reportedly was bought legally, giving new ammunition to those calling for passage of the Brady Bill and even stricter regulations on the purchase of firearms. Thus, from CNN’s “Crossfire” to NBC’s “Today,” the gun-control wars were again being fought on TV this week.

* TV tabloids and talk shows. Such programs as “A Current Affair” have already weighed in on Koresh with a flourish, and one can only imagine the segments being planned by the “Geraldo”/”Sally Jessy Raphael”/”Donahue”/”Oprah”/”Montel Williams” crowd. Time to drag out those old shows on cults and polygamy, and Geraldo’s old interviews with ranting Charles Manson are a must. And bring on the transvestites. Surely there must be some closet cross-dressers among Koresh’s followers. Wasn’t Koresh himself said to have worn “flowing robes”?

* Hollywood. TV producers are probably already sweating and salivating over potential rights deals, including one with Koresh himself. Then there’s his grandmother, who’s already gotten a lot of TV time. Equally significant are the stories of federal agents and local police involved in the operation.

If Amy Fisher got three TV movies, you figure Koresh is worth maybe half a dozen. Let the alliterative titles--”Wacko From Waco”--begin.

* The music industry. As a guitarist-vocalist who proclaims himself the son of God, Koresh is possibly the world’s first singing Savior. Using old footage, for example, “A Current Affair” gave him a quasi-concert this week, and you know, he wasn’t bad at all. Is there a recording deal in this guy’s future or what? A Grammy or two? He wouldn’t be the first guy with a disreputable past to make it big in music.

Yet of all the benefactors from the bloody Koresh cult affair, none looms larger than the legitimate media, given how the story has led newscast after newscast this week--with Los Angeles reporters reporting from the Waco area that there’s nothing new to report--and has topped the front pages of the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers.

Television has explored virtually every crevice of this story by bringing on those specialized cottage industries--the cult experts, the hostage experts, the military experts, the legal experts--all of them weighing in from afar. KCAL-TV Channel 9 even had Los Angeles speech therapist Dr. Morton Cooper give us the scoop on the ramifications of Koresh’s tubes.

“He’s a forceful person and his voice is a weapon,” Cooper said. “He is simply beyond himself, and his voice says he is out of control.”

Coming next, perhaps, a Koresh wardrobe check by Mr. Blackwell.

There was always the possibility that Koresh and his followers were watching their own story on national TV, and that the medium could play a positive role in resolving the conflict peacefully.

In response to a question from Joan Lunden on “Good Morning America,” for example, Koresh’s former lawyer urged him to surrender to authorities. And during an interview with Katie Couric on “Today,” the daughter of a Koresh follower holed up inside the compound spoke directly to her mother: “Mom, I love you very much, and I want you to be home with us.”

Yet if Koresh and his followers were watching “Today,” what must they have thought when Couric interviewed Patricia Ryan, head of the Cult Awareness Network and daughter of Rep. Leo Ryan, whose murder by Jim Jones’ followers at Jonestown preceded a mass suicide by Jones and his followers there?

Ryan ticked off the similarities between Jonestown and what was happening this week at the besieged Koresh compound. Couric: “You think the possibility of mass suicide is very high?”

Meanwhile, local TV was jumping on the Koresh spinoffs, including a story about a man arrested by police after allegedly breaking windows in a Los Angeles neighborhood while declaring himself the Savior and shouting, “Take me to Waco.”

Take me to another story.