A Movie on How ABC Covered the Massacre of Israeli Athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics

As I was considering what to focus on in this month’s column, I decided it should not be on President Trump’s newest list of inanities, foreign and domestic, or on his plainly unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment. Rather, I though of writing about a media movie I recently saw, September 5, about how ABC covered the terrorist hostage-taking and then murders of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Given the outpouring of words about Trump’s actions in the last month, I wasn’t sure I could add anything valuable or new. And though I don’t at all subscribe to James Carville’s latest advice, that Democrats should follow Muhammad Ali’s “rope-a-dope” strategy (against George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle”), letting Trump punch himself out so that ultimately he’ll be so worn down with his flailing he won’t actually do anything that terrible, there was something inviting about ignoring him this month.

Though I don’t see many movies, writing about September 5 seemed tempting. It raises questions I have struggled with a lot lately, about the value of docudramas; it presents many journalistic ethical questions which perhaps first played out in this dramatic 1972 situation, but have recurred often since then; and, perhaps most important in these depressing times where the media has been beaten down by everyone from the President to voices of public opinion, it makes journalists look good, if not actually heroic.

So this month I will move on from Trump – not write about his pardoning the Jan 6 rioters, a despicable political act which will go down in history as the most heinous act by an American President; will not carry on about his threats not to obey court orders, undermining his oath of office, the doctrine of separation of powers and the very basis of our constitutional system; and will ignore the most blatant violation of the First Amendment imaginable, in the scope of things, not the biggest deal, but still an outrageous attack on First Amendment principles, his banning AP from White House briefings because they didn’t comply with his – the Government’s – bizarre nomenclature in renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

Played against the background of the first Olympics in Germany since the 1936 Hitler-run Games in Berlin, and Germany’s attempt to show that it had repented and moved well beyond the Holocaust and the horrors of the Second World War, September 5 is equally dramatic and focuses on another critical slice of history. But of keen interest to us, it doesn’t really focus on the political or newsworthy aspects of Black September’s attack on the Israeli Olympic Village apartment and the tragic deadly ending of the assault, but rather on the way ABC, the broadcaster of the Olympics to the American audience, reported on the drama.

There are quite a few takeaways: First, the producers worked really hard at recreating the equipment and setting of the ABC broadcast complex in Munich. There are no digital equipment or iphones. Instead the reporters in the field communicate with the producers in the control room with walkie-talkies. To get on the air in the States, the ABC producers have to negotiate for time on the satellite – and the other networks aren’t easily giving away their scheduled slots. The painstaking care obviously given to the set adds to the aura of reality of the entire enterprise.

In line with that, the filmmakers made every effort to convey the actual facts. Sure there were actors playing the roles of the journalists, and certainly the conversations were not word-for-word as they were spoken in Munich, but this is not a sensationalized or fictionalized version of history. It is the real thing. You don’t leave the movie with that awful feeling of having no idea as to whether the scenes you just saw were fact or fiction; this was the event as it played out 53 years ago. Although the woman translator in the studio who plays a critical role was apparently a composite, most of the actors portray real people doing what they did on that fateful day.

The movie’s treatment of the famous sportscaster Howard Cosell is telling in that regard. They never show Howard, and they don’t try to imitate his iconic voice. Rather, they give him a normal voice, so as to minimize the effect of the would-be imitation. (I can’t help but include one personal, but totally unrelated, Cosell story. In college I was in charge of inviting speakers to campus, and had invited him to speak in May, 1970. However, days after Kent State my school went on strike, classes ended and all regular activities were terminated. So it fell upon me to call him to cancel the invitation. I used the conversation to question him about the Knicks, who were in the playoffs and on their way to their first NBA championship. He parried my questions and just wanted to hear from me about the politics, anti-war activities and mood on campus.)

The movie also raised and handled some of the ethical questions which arose in broadcasting a live hostage situation, questions which recurred in similar news events in the succeeding years. For example, should ABC have broadcast the names and pictures of the Israeli hostages, a question made more difficult if it would have been before their parents and families learned of their captivity. Seems to me the newsworthiness of the situation outweighs the privacy concerns, but I am sure others may differ. A more challenging and significant question was raised by ABC’s filming the moves of the German authorities as they prepared to attack the hostage site. ABC broadcast this rather routinely, but when they were told the terrorists were watching television, and could learn of the police’s moves from the broadcast, the ante was upped, and I believe ABC stopped broadcasting the police activity. The strangest ethical issue came when a decision was made not to show film of one or two of the terrorists, fully masked, on the terrace of the apartment. Beyond the fact that these were the bad guys, they were fully masked and unidentifiable, so it is hard to see the privacy interest being protected.

The movie’s narrative was helped along by showing the archival footage of anchorman Jim McKay announcing the events as they happened. Part of the drama within ABC was the fight between the Sports Department, which obviously was on the scene covering fencing competitions and Mark Spitz, and the News Department, mainly back in New York, as to who was going to cover this news event. Although the Sports Department was alleged to be over its head, it was led by the redoubtable Roone Arledge, who refused to give the story up. The fact that the news correspondent, later evening news anchor, Peter Jennings, was in Munich yearning to lead the coverage didn’t matter. As it turned out McKay, known at that time mainly for covering ABC’s Wide World of Sports (“the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”) did a terrific job anchoring the coverage on his day off for 14 hours without a break. He had the perfect touch and tone, and his culminating words at the news that the 11 hostages had all been murdered reverborates in broadcast history : “They’re all gone.” (Not in the movie, McKay later said his proudest moment came the day after the massacre when he received a telegram from Walter Cronkite praising his work.)

But above all, the movie showed hard-working, diligent, responsible journalists doing their jobs as best they could amidst unrelenting pressure. In a way, they are portrayed similarly to the dogged yet sensitive reporters and editors of the Boston Globe in Spotlight investigating sexual abuse and cover-up by the clergy leadership, except that the ABC team was in far more difficult circumstances because the whole event was playing out live as the reporting was being done. And good faith mistakes were made: relying on a German state radio broadcast, ABC at one point reported the hostages had escaped and were safe, a totally false report, as it turned out. But overall, the reporting by the sports team was quite exemplary. It might seem antiquated given all the bigger problems the media face today, from intentional disinformation to its financial survival, but at a time when journalists are held in such bad standing, a movie like this, albeit its tragic background, provides a much-needed dose of positivity.