NO pictures, no story.
It’s an axiom that has long been true of television news. And in the case of Elian Gonzalez, it’s never been more true than right now.
Four days and several hundred news-hours after the infamous raid by federal agents on the Miami home of Lazaro Gonzalez, the shock value of the videotape and still photos of the predawn battle for Elian is wearing off.
And with no new compelling images to take their place, the Elian story will now begin to fade from TV, where reporters and anchors, interviewers and experts have been arguing about this story since early Saturday morning.
Spokespeople for such shows as “Nightline,” “Larry King Live,” “Today,” “Dateline,” “60 Minutes,” “Good Morning America” and “20/20” all said the interviews and discussion segments on Elian that have dominated the airwaves since Saturday are largely over for now, although news shows will continue to report new developments in the story as they happen.
At the all-news cable channels, it was harder to arrive at a consensus. Yesterday, MSNBC had noticably begun to cut back its conversation segments on Elian, while the story continued to take centerstage on afternoon talk shows on CNN and Fox News Channel.
A lowering of the volume on Elian should come as good news to those people who e-mail and telephone the call-in shows on TV and radio whenever a big story is happening to complain that the media is going overboard with wall-to-wall coverage.
It comes as bad news to the all-news cable channels, whose ratings soared last weekend with the outbreak of the hostilities in Little Havana. Now, with little Elian and his father sequestered away from the prying eyes of the media and Elian’s Miami relatives, the story lacks the kind of pictures TV craves.
In fact, if the government had taken a milder approach on Saturday, the shelf life of this story would have been much shorter, say news executives.
“I think the raid and the photo [by the AP’s Alan Diaz of the federal agent confronting Elian and his protector, Donato Dalrymple] really raised the story to a new level,” says Dennis Murray, executive producer of daytime programming for Fox News Channel.
“If the government had taken him out in a more genteel manner, a less dramatic manner, the story wouldn’t be where it is now,” Murray says. “In other words, Saturday and Sunday it wouldn’t have been as strong. It’s having that raid and that photo that really brings it up to that new level. But now that you have the kid basically squirreled away somewhere, it’s hard to get much coverage.”
In addition to an absence of new images as emotionally combustible as the motherlode resulting from last Saturday’s assault, just about everyone who played a key role in the weekend’s drama has said their piece.
Following Attorney General Janet Reno’s appearances Monday on the “Today” show on NBC and later that day on ABC’s “Nightline,” just about the only person not yet heard from is the unidentified federal agent holding the gun on Elian and the fisherman in Diaz’s photo.
With his identity being held tightly under wraps by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for the man in the goggles and helmet to turn up on “Larry King Live” anytime soon.
