COMMENTARY / HOWARD ROSENBERG : TV Was Hooked on Searing Images

There were 30 survivors of Monday’s blaze that leveled the Branch Davidian sect’s besieged compound near Waco, Tex.

No, make that 20 survivors. Wait, five survivors. Uh, nine survivors.

You could take your pick of the above depending on when you tuned in to television’s extended live coverage of the wind-blown holocaust that killed scores of cult members. Although TV news anchors and reporters were merely echoing what they had been told by authorities, the disparity in death figures underscored the perils of covering a breaking big story featuring strong pictures and weak information.

CNN and at least eight Los Angeles stations were on live at various times during the morning, filling the screen with an orange inferno at once spectacular and horrifying. Thus were viewers given an eyeful of the burning compound that the FBI hours earlier had rammed with military vehicles and bombarded with tear gas in hopes of flushing out cult leader David Koresh and his followers.

“The fire went through (the compound) like kindling,” ABC’s Charles Murphy reported. “In about 10, 15 minutes it was done.”

At times, the wind appeared to be fanning the coverage as well as the flames, and the arrival of fire units raised hopes that they would be able to hose down the media as well as the compound.

By late morning, local stations were scrambling to interview cult members and their relatives in Los Angeles, terrorism and cult experts were weighing in, NBC’s Tom Brokaw was quoting the book of Revelations, that CBS Texan Dan Rather was waxing nostalgic about roaming buffalo, KNBC-Channel 4 had titled its coverage “Showdown at Waco” and CNN had aired a commercial for a Statler Brothers religious medley that included “Rock of Ages” and “This Old House.”

And seamlessly shifting from one live story to another shortly before noon, KCBS-Channel 2 exchanged the smoldering ruins of Koresh’s compound for its own chopper coverage of a youth being rescued from a creek in Porter Ranch.

KCOP-Channel 13 was the first local station to drop coverage of the blaze for regular programming. And a wise decision it was, not because the Waco tragedy was not a loudly resonating major story--it surely was--but because by 11 a.m. there was nothing solid left to report.

It’s hard to ignore such a story, and just as hard, it seems, to get off the air when nothing remains but ashes. Inevitably when this happens, anchors and reporters are called on to fill the wide gulf between pictures and information with knee-jerk, premature speculation and other babble.

Monday morning was no exception. Channel 2’s Pat Lalama, who was in Waco for the early days of the 51-day standoff, was fairly representative. “I don’t want to speculate,” said Lalama, proceeding to speculate.

In addition to showing indelible pictures, TV on Monday charted the likely course this story would take in coming days.

Questions were raised on the air about the FBI strategy to ram the compound and lob in tear gas, as well as questions about the cause of the fire that the FBI insisted was started by cult members themselves. There was also second-guessing about the belated arrival of fire units, and questions about whether President Clinton or Atty. Gen. Janet Reno would bear ultimate responsibility for what happened.

And how will all of this affect “In the Line of Duty: Shootout at Waco,” the coming NBC movie about events leading to the raid at the compound that left four federal agents and six cult members dead?

“Our movie was always going to end on Feb. 28, the day of the raid,” executive producer Ken Kaufman said by phone from Tulsa, Okla., where the story is halfway through production. “So all we’ll do is change the crawl at the end.”

Kaufman said he learned of Monday’s fire while driving to a replica of the Koresh compound that was erected for the movie. “When I got there, it was an unbelievable experience,” he said. “We were doing a scene in the chapel with David Koresh preaching, and as I watched the faces of the actors playing the children, I wondered about the children who were really there.”

Now the wondering is over. According to Monday’s reports, none of the children survived, an ending that can’t be changed.