Press: Getting into the Story

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Within hours after the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, ABC Correspondent Charles Glass received an urgent call from his network: Would he leave London immediately for Beirut? Glass, who was stationed in Beirut last year, quickly boarded a chartered jet and arrived there Saturday morning. On Monday, while filming in the city's teeming Shi'ite slums, he was suddenly caught in a storm of bullets. Only by surrendering his tape was Glass permitted to drive away. Two days later, however, came the scoop of the week: after persistent requests from ABC, Amal Leader Nabih Berri arranged for Glass to interview the crew still aboard the TWA jet.

Glass's experiences underscored the difficulties -- and opportunities -- in covering the most dramatic international crisis since the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Beirut ranks among the most hazardous assignments in the world, a bloody, berserk place where journalists often are kidnaping targets. Reliable information is elusive and often impossible to confirm. Even the most enterprising correspondents last week had to depend for news on the cooperation of those holding the hostages. Yet in their eager pursuit of the story, reporters risked being exploited by Amal. What began as a frenzied hijacking threatened to become a prolonged publicity showcase controlled by terrorists.

The danger of unrestrained journalistic zeal was evident at the hostages' press conference. Photographers surged around the prisoners, shutters clicking madly, while other cameramen jumped up on the table for a better angle. Angered by the chaos, an Amal spokesman abruptly ended the proceedings, which only triggered more shouting and shoving. Militiamen pounced on photographers and reporters, smashing cameras and seizing tape recorders. Fifteen minutes later, after the journalists promised to maintain calm, the session was resumed. In another incident, a Lebanese Shi'ite driver working for Newsweek reached the plane by passing himself off as a relative of the hijackers'. As the driver returned to the terminal, Amal militiamen discovered the ruse and angrily fired bullets over the heads of about 40 journalists.

Most news organizations withdrew their personnel from Beirut in March, after Associated Press Correspondent Terry Anderson was kidnaped. He is still missing. Last week, however, more than 100 Western correspondents poured into the Lebanese capital. The U.S. networks faced a special problem: because Beirut's satellite ground station was destroyed long ago, no live pictures could be transmitted. Instead, film had to be driven nearly 100 miles to Damascus on a road studded with checkpoints set up by warring militias. Drivers were shot at; tape was seized. CBS got its footage there only by sending several messengers, each carrying one copy, to the Syrian capital.