Arthur Hailey: Evening News

By now it was a minute past the half hour and the first-feed National Evening News had begun. Reaching for a control beside his desk, LaSalle turned up the audio of an overhead monitor and heard Crawford Sloane doing the top-of-the-news tell story about DFW. On camera, a hand—it was a writer's slipped a paper in front of him. Clearly it contained the additional report LaSalle had just dictated and, glancing down and ad-libbing, Sloane incorporated it into his prepared text. It was the kind of thing the anchorman did superbly.

* * *

Upstairs at the Horseshoe since LaSalle's announcement, the mood had changed. Now, though pressure and urgency remained, there was cheerful optimism with the knowledge that the Dallas situation was well in hand and pictures and a fuller report would be forthcoming. Chuck Insen and others were huddled, watching monitors, arguing, making decisions, squeezing out seconds, doing still more cutting and rearranging to leave the needed space. It looked as if the report about the corrupt senator would fall by the way after all. There was a sense of everyone doing what they did best—coping in a time confined, exigency situation.

Swift exchanges, jargon—loaded, flowed back and forth.

”This piece is picture-poor.”

"Make that copy shorter, pithy.”

"Tape room: We're killing '16: Corruption.' But it may come back in if we don't get Dallas.”

"The last fifteen seconds of that piece is deadly. We'll be telling people what they already know.”

"The old lady in Omaha doesn't know.”

"Then she never will. Drop it.”

"First segment just finished. Have gone to commercial. We're forty seconds heavy.”

"What did the competition have from Dallas?”

"A tell story, same as us.”

"I need a bumper and cutline fast for 'Drug Bust.' "Take out that sequence. It does nothing.”

"What we're trying to do here is put twelve pounds of shit into a ten-pound bag.”

* * *

An observer unfamiliar with the scene might wonder: A re these people human? Don't they care? Have they no emotion, no feelings of involvement, not an ounce of grief? Have any of them spared a thought for the nearly three hundred terrified souls on that airplane approaching DFW who may shortly die? Isn't there anyone here to whom that matters?

And someone knowledgeable about news would answer: Y es, there are people here to whom it matters, and they will care, maybe right after the broadcast. Or, when some have reached home, the horror of it all will touch them, and depending on how it all turns out, a few may weep. At this moment, though, no one has the time. These are news people. Their job is to record the passing parade, the bad with the good, and to do it swiftly, efficiently, plainly so that—in a news phrase from an older time"he who runs may read.

”Therefore at 6:40 P.m., ten minutes into the National Evening News half hour, the key remaining question for those around the Horseshoe and others in the newsroom, studio and control room was: Will there or won't there be a story soon, with pictures, from DFW?

For the group of five journalists at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, the sequence of events had begun a couple of hours earlier and reached a high point at about 5:10 P.m., central daylight time.

The five were Harry Partridge, Rita Abrams, Minh Van Canh, Ken O'Hara, the CBA crew's sound man, and Graham Broderick, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. That same morning, in predawn darkness, they had left El Salvador and flown to Mexico City, then, after delay and a flight change, traveled onward to DFW. Now they were awaiting other flight connections, some to differing destinations.

All were weary, not just from today's long journey, but from two months or more of rough and dangerous living while reporting on several nasty wars in unpleasant parts of Latin America.

While waiting for their flights, they were in a bar in Terminal 2E, one of twenty-four busy bars in the airport. The bar's d6cor was modutilitarian. Surrounded by an imitation garden wall containing plants, it sported hanging fabric panels overhead in pale blue plaid, lit by concealed pink lighting. The Timesman said it reminded him of a whorehouse he had once been in in Mandalay.

From their table near a window they could see the aircraft ramp and Gate 20. It was from that gate Harry Partridge had expected to leave, a few minutes from now, on an American Airlines flight to Toronto. But this evening the flight was late and an hour's delay had just been announced.

Partridge, a tall and lanky figure, had an untidy shock of fair hair that had always made him look boyish and still did, despite his forty-odd years and the fact that the hair was graying. At this moment he was relaxed and not much caring about flight delays or anything else. He had ahead of him three weeks of R&R, and rest and relaxation were what he sorely needed.

Rita Abrams' connecting flight would be to MinneapolisSt. Paul, from where she was headed for a holiday on a friend's farm in Minnesota. She also had a weekend rendezvous planned there with a married senior CBA official, a piece of information she was keeping to herself. Minh Van Canh and Ken O'Hara were going home to New York. So was Graham Broderick.

The trio of Partridge, Rita and Minh was a frequent working combination. On their most recent trip, O'Hara had been with them, as sound recordist, for the first time. He was young, pale, pencil-thin, and spent most of his spare time absorbed in electronics magazines; be had one open now.

Broderick was the odd man out, though he and the TV-ers often covered the same assignments and mostly were on good terms. At this moment, however, the Timesman-rotund, dignified and slightly pompous—was being antagonistic.

Three of the group had had a little too much to drink. The exceptions were Van Canh, who drank only club soda, and the sound man, who had nursed a beer for a long time and declined more.

”Listen, you affluent son of a bitch,” Broderick said to Partridge, who had pulled a billfold from his pocket, "I said I'd pay for this round, and so I will.” He put two bills, a twenty and a five, on a waiter's tray on which three double scotches and a club soda had been delivered.”Just because you pull down twice as much as I do for half the work is no reason to hand the print press charity.”

"Oh, for chrissakes!”

Rita said.”Brod, why don't you throw away that old cracked record.”

Rita had spoken loudly, as she sometimes did. Two uniformed officers from the airport's Department of Public Safety force, which policed DFW, had been walking through the bar; they turned their heads curiously. Observing them, Rita smiled and waved a hand. The officers' eyes took in the group and, around them, the assortment of cameras and equipment on which the CBA logo was prominent. Both DPS men returned the smile and moved on.

Harry Partridge, who had been watching, thought: Rita was showing her age today. Even though she exuded a strong sexuality which had drawn many men to her, there were telltale lines on her face; also, the toughness which made her as demanding of herself as of those she worked with came through in imperious little mannerisms, not always attractively. There was recent reason, of course—the strain and heavy work load which she, Harry and the other two had shared through the past two months.

Rita was forty-three, and six years ago was still appearing on camera as a news correspondent, though far less often than when she was younger and more glamorous. Everyone knew it was a rotten, unfair system that allowed men to continue as correspondents, to keep on facing the camera even when their faces revealed them to be growing older, whereas women couldn't and were shunted aside like discarded concubines. A few women had tried to fight and beat the system—Christine Craft, a reporter and anchor-woman, pursued the issue through the courts, but had not succeeded.