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Waco: God's Gift to Television?
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10640 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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7 / 1993 |
1,527 Words |
| Author
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Tim Graham
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research
Center, a press-watch institute based in Alexandria, Virginia. |
The fiery and dramatic deaths of David Koresh and his Branch Davidian followers may not have been a storybook ending for them, but it was a perfect fit for the demands of television. A story with a dramatic beginning (a shootout with federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) had a dramatic ending to match. It not only made for riveting network news, but made perfect grist for an NBC-TV movie scheduled for the May "sweeps" period, when the Nielsen ratings meters are especially important to the networks' bottom line.
Just weeks after the standoff began, NBC announced it had a TV movie in the works about Waco as well as the World Trade Center bombing. This disturbing trend really took hold when ABC's and NBC's movies on New York teen assassin Amy Fisher drew big ratings, eventually ranking sixth and seventh for TV movies aired during the 1992-93 season. But producers of the movie about Waco announced the gripping inferno would be only a footnote at the end of its movie, demonstrating just how far ahead the network had put its cart in front of the horse.
Television news coverage had the same riveting appeal, often appearing like a TV movie airing live before Hollywood could steal its thunder or caricature its authenticity. The networks swallowed the controversy whole, airing hundreds of news stories during the 51-day ordeal.
Why? No critic could charge that the standoff wasn't newsworthy, a gripping story: first a shootout and then a tense standoff with federal agents, the potential violence from the group's illegal firepower, and most importantly, the strange story of David Koresh himself.
Koresh came to lead the Branch Davidians by sleeping with cult leader Lois Roden, then 67. Once in charge, Koresh demanded the women of the cult become his "wives," sleeping with girls as young as 10. Koresh seemed to consider himself so holy that no act of sin could possibly degrade him. This heady mix of prurient sexual detail and hypocritical religious megalomania lit the eyes of the media, ever hungry for a compelling human-interest story with an audience-grabbing hook.
Overcoverage
No critic can question the obvious incentive for news companies to stay with a story that's popular with the public. The Washington-based Times Mirror Center for People and the Press discovered that the Waco story, along with the retrial of four Los
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