Press: We'd Better Be Ready

As the hostage story broke, newshounds were straining

For days it was obvious that the two hero-size news stories were on a collision course. "What happens," worried an NBC news executive, "if the hostages are freed at the moment Reagan is taking his oath of office?" Several blocks away, at ABC's broadcasting studios, World News Tonight Executive Producer Jeff Gralnick, 41, was warning his harried news staff: "We'd better be ready! We'd better be damned ready!"

When the two stories converged within 28 minutes last Tuesday, the U.S. press was ready—perhaps too ready. ABC, CBS and NBC together spent an estimated $10 million to cover the interlocking dramas. Each fielded some 400 news reporters, producers and technicians worldwide to cover the stories, pulling many staffers off other assignments. Says Ernest Leiser, CBS vice president for special events and political coverage: "We had to cannibalize the rest of CBS news in order to do it." The Associated Press and United Press International had hundreds of reporters in Washington, Wiesbaden, Frankfurt and Algiers, as well as in dozens of American towns where relatives of the hostages awaited their release.

In Washington, reporters kept 24-hour vigils at the State Department and White House for the latest word on the progress of the hostage negotiations. The Los Angeles Times put all 27 of its Washington reporters and editors on the two stories, the first such concentration of coverage since the Nixon resignation in 1974. Says Bureau Chief Jack Nelson: "We brought in a lot of sandwiches."

Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 journalists gathered at the Air Force hospital in Wiesbaden and at nearby Rhein-Main airport in Frankfurt to await the captives. Each TV network had at least 50 people on hand, some from as far away as Bangkok and Johannesburg. Studios had been set up in the Frankfurt-Sheraton Hotel last October, when it looked as though the hostages would be freed. Said Thomas Cheatham, NBC'S Israel bureau chief, who had been standing by in West Germany for the past four months: "A minimum figure for the watch here alone would be well over a million dollars for each network, and at least another million for pool coverage." The payoff was meager, however, since the hostages were rarely available to the press. Said William Tuohy of the Los Angeles Times: "Too much press, too little information."