For TV Networks, News of Anthrax Really Hits Home

With anthrax discovered at NBC, infecting one staffer, and an ABC producer’s child now also confirmed to have the bacteria, TV news cameras have had to turn inward. NBC employees showed up on the news as they lined up to be tested for the disease. An ABC reporter stood outside ABC News on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on Tuesday trying to buttonhole colleagues into talking on camera.

NBC anchor Tom Brokaw could have spent Tuesday giving interviews to all the reporters from other news organizations wanting to talk to him about the anthrax-laced letter he received, which infected his assistant.

Instead, he was interviewing new Homeland Security chief Thomas J. Ridge. But on Friday, the day the anthrax at NBC was confirmed, Brokaw opened and closed his newscast with personal statements, then went on to do an interview for NBC’s “Dateline” newsmagazine. He was back on Monday’s “Today” show and again on “NBC Nightly News,” where he held up a bottle of antibiotics and closed the show declaring, “In Cipro we trust.”

For news organizations, the anthrax-in-their-midst has been distracting. Mail distribution has been disrupted. Both “Nightly News” and ABC’s “World News Tonight” are operating from temporary offices; ABC had to wrap up its planning session early Tuesday to allow extra time for such things as photocopying with just one machine, said Paul Slavin, executive producer.

There’s a worry factor too: ABC still didn’t know the source of the infection Tuesday, and ABC staffers had to be interviewed by health investigators before getting down to work. Steve Capus, executive producer of “NBC Nightly News,” described Monday’s editorial meeting as half “briefing on news of the day” and half “Anthrax 101,” as employees raised health concerns. “Then all of a sudden this reassurance set in, and everybody went back to work,” he said.

The well-being of employees has occasionally taken precedence over news. ABC could have had a major scoop about itself on its East Coast airing of “World News Tonight” on Monday, when ABC News President David Westin got word of the positive anthrax test from New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani about an hour before the broadcast. But executives went straight to a meeting with officials to make sure they had all the facts correct and then sent out an e-mail to staff, “because we thought it was very important that they learn it first from us and not from any other source,” said a spokesman. The news did get reported on the West Coast newscast.

Whether to try for an interview with the producer whose baby is sick was another question. Slavin said concerns for his employee and her family mixed with “whether I press a [camera] crew in that direction or not.” He decided not to. “I had the information I needed. . . . and I asked her if she was interested and she said no.” And, he said, “we don’t do ambush interviews.”

News judgments had to be double-checked as well. “What’s newsworthy inside NBC is weighted on an equal basis along with other stories out there,” Capus said. Likewise, Slavin said ABC executives wanted to make sure they didn’t “play this story beyond what it is” simply because ABC was involved, but felt comfortable putting it front and center because of related developments in the Senate.

And there were discussions about whether the story was getting too much emphasis simply because it had pictures--and the bombing in Afghanistan largely doesn’t. But, Slavin said, “even if the story in Afghanistan was more television-friendly . . . this story would overwhelm it. We’re not following this story because it’s near and dear and close to our hearts; we’re following this because it is the story of the day.”