Waco and the Perils of Instant History

It’s our companion, it’s our teacher, it’s our everything.

--Roseanne speaking about television

Given recent headlines, what a movie the FBI’s 1993 clash with David Koresh and his Branch Davidian cult would make.

There was one?

Oh, yes. “In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco” aired on NBC during a ratings sweeps, one of those critical-for-profit months in which the TV industry seeks to capture the attention of the multitudes by putting on and heavily promoting its most eye-catching programs.

When, exactly, did “Ambush in Waco” run? On May 23, 1993, just 33 days--that’s days, not weeks, fortnights or months--after the FBI’s April 19 tear-gas assault on the Davidian compound into which Atty. Gen. Janet Reno last week authorized an outside inquiry.

Seen in retrospect, “Ambush in Waco” is a powerful argument against quickie movies about complex topics ripped from the headlines, those written, filmed and presented as fact before the smoke has cleared.

Ratings are their first priority, objective or even subjective truth, when either is achieved, a bonus.

“Ambush in Waco” was the sixth in a series of “In the Line of Duty” TV dramas that depicted real events while being generally supportive of action taken by authorities. The Waco movie depicted the musical, religious and psychotic sides of Koresh, who saw himself as the Messiah, viewed the universe through the Book of Revelations and supposedly had instructed his “flock” that it was better to die than to surrender to the FBI.

It was not specifically about the April 19 siege, but focused mostly on events motivating an FBI storming of the same compound 51 days earlier that set the stage for the ensuing fiery conflict that would take the lives of Koresh and some 80 of his followers.

At the very least, the movie was premature, incomplete and, thus, misleading.

And by relentlessly demonizing Koresh--portraying him as someone of hair-trigger violence who amassed an illegal arsenal, physically abused children and planted his “seed” in young girls--the script seemed to rationalize not only the initial assault but also the more controversial one on April 19 that resulted in mass deaths. The one that today has touched off its own inferno of questions and controversy and put heat on Reno while giving talk radio and TV something to hash over endlessly following their in-depth discussions about Monica Lewinsky’s weight and New York apartment.

“You gotta do something soon,” a Koresh defector urged authorities in the movie. “If you don’t get those people outta there, someone’s gonna die.”

Perhaps that was true. Perhaps Koresh was the mercurial, tyrannical, Scripture-screaming tornado of rage and evil--whipping up his followers with forecasts that “the Babylonians are coming”--whom Tim Daly so convincingly played in the movie. Surely he was no angel. And perhaps the assault team was every bit as heroic as the movie portrayed it to be.

But who knew anything then? So what in the world was NBC doing airing a tailored-for-sweeps movie on this volatile topic before it had been resolved?

And now, based on recent news, we see that resolution hadn’t been even approached about the FBI’s actions on April 19, given explosive disclosures that it lied for six years about not firing pyrotechnic munitions at the Davidians’ concrete bunker, regardless of whether agents or Koresh’s group caused the fire that did most of the killing.

The Waco movie was hardly prime time’s only ambush of current events on behalf of ratings sweeps. Aired in February 1997, for example, the NBC docudrama “Love’s Deadly Triangle: The Texas Cadet Murder” showed 18-year-olds David Graham and Diane Zamora plotting and murdering another teenager, Adrianne Jones. There was one problem with that movie. Graham and Zamora had pleaded not guilty, and neither had been tried.

Yet talk about getting lucky when running a red light. Things turned out better for NBC than for the defendants when Graham and Zamora were convicted last year. But that didn’t excuse NBC forgetting the custom of allowing juries in courtrooms to deliver verdicts before TV docudramas do.

All of this reflects a much wider problem, a generally cavalier attitude by TV movie makers who stubbornly reject the mantle of historian when making docudramas that may come to be regarded as definitive accounts, either in the short or long run.

Just as much, though, instant history is a function of speed--at once TV’s great asset and its great peril. Just as newscasters are increasingly driven less by journalistic values than by “live” technology that delivers speed, so are entertainment programmers hooked on immediacy for its own sake.

And faster didn’t make better in the case of “Ambush in Waco.”

As this was written, Reno had not yet identified who would be heading the outside investigation of Waco. But a spokesman for her promised that person would be “qualified, respected and trustworthy.”

In other words, more competent, perhaps, than the next TV movie maker who will be telling the story.

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at calendar.letters@latimes.com