Media `Nomads' Transform Coast
SOURCE: NewsDay / By Ken Moritsugu and Sidney C. Schaer
Staff Writers
July 29, 1996
Moriches Island Road winds through saltwater marshes to the sea. Snowy egrets poke among the reeds, and telephone poles lean in the mushy earth. Only the occasional chirp of a bird flying low over the marsh grass breaks the tranquility.
There is no welcome sign for what lies around the bend: Sat City -- Satellite City -- the instant headquarters of hundreds of journalists who trampled pristine flora and ran cables this way and that to transform a remote nature preserve into a temporary broadcasting center for the crash of TWA Flight 800.
``What you see here is evocative of every global story,'' said Bob O'Brien, a reporter with the local Fox affiliate. ``The satellite trucks make us into a group of modern nomads, but instead of selling pots and pans, our wares are images and pictures sent up to the sky and then brought down and retransmitted to the world.''
Like a futuristic campsite rising out of nowhere, a caravan of Winnebagoes, vans and satellite trucks, their rooftop dishes pointed skyward, have jammed into a small, gravel parking lot that was originally built for the occasional fisherman. NYNEX has set up two banks of pay phones and wired in private lines for newspapers and TV stations. There is a constant hum of diesel generators in the background.
It's a scene that has been repeated at tragedy after tragedy, from the genocidal warfare in Rwanda to the ValuJet crash in the Everglades. For the FBI standoff with a religious cult outside of Waco, Texas, it was in a ditch along a lonely strip of highway, miles from the nearest town. In Oklahoma City, it was in two parking lots several blocks from the blown-up federal building.
``It was like this in Rwanda two years ago,'' said Phillipe Gassol, a French television correspondent. ``You hear the diesels all day. But there is not as much misery here.''
Like Gassol, who also covered the ValuJet story, many of the reporters are veterans of disaster. Several did Oklahoma City, and a few had only recently returned home after doing Hurricane Bertha duty in North Carolina. With a change of clothes, a laptop computer, a cellular phone and spare battery packs at their sides, they are ready for action at a moment's notice. For the TWA crash, they are stationed at no fewer than three hastily erected media command posts: one in East Moriches; another 60 miles west at the Ramada Plaza at Kennedy Airport, where relatives of the victims are staying; and the third at the Smithtown Sheraton, where federal officials often brief reporters.
Each site has its contingent of satellite or microwave trucks, photographers and camera operators staking out the scene, and reporters banging away on laptop computers or pacing about with cellular phones pressed to their faces.
At the Ramada, reporters are barred from going into even the lobby, to try to shield relatives from them. Any relative who emerges is greeted by a pack of 20 to 30 journalists with tape recorders and cameras rolling, seeking a comment. For reporters, it's one of the toughest assignments in the business.
Lisa Meyer, a New York-based correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, feels a twinge of dread as she returns to the Ramada every morning to once again ask relatives to talk about their pain. ``It's rough,'' she said. ``You're preying on these people, and you feel like a vulture.''
A New York Post reporter was caught pretending to be a family member to gain access to the motel, but most reporters seemed to play by the rules.
For Terence Samuel, the New York bureau chief for The Philadelphia Inquirer, covering the families has been a reminder of how he treasures those close to him. His immediate reaction was to start calling his girlfriend and his mother more often.
``Ultimately, it's a story about pain, and those are always the same -- hard to do,'' he said. ``You do it and hope that it ends at some point because the more tired you get, the more difficult it is to talk to people, to chase information.''
As fatigue set in, tempers flared. Jostling for position at a news conference, one reporter slapped another in the leg in anger, and an expletive-laced shouting match ensued.
And after one relative did a live interview with CNN, the rest of the pack closed in so quickly that the CNN crew had trouble getting back a tiny microphone pinned to the relative's lapel. ``Let him breathe, and let us get our microphones back,'' shouted an exasperated CNN staffer.
In East Moriches, the media initially swept in with a fury, chartering boats at a reported $1,000 a trip and helicopters for $800 an hour to try to get to the scene. But between choppy waters, flight restrictions and the fact that most of the activity was in the darkened depths of the Atlantic, those efforts bore little fruit.
So the journalists settled into Sat City, lining the shoreline with temporary canopies to shelter extensive camera set-ups for those live correspondent reports against a backdrop of sand, sea oats and a vast expanse of water and sky. A nearby marina with the best view of the Coast Guard station charged crews $250 a day for a position on its property. Unable to see the search itself, journalists spent much of their time waiting for official briefings.
``Think of us in a big fish tank, and every once in a while, someone taps on the glass and drops some fish flakes in,'' said O'Brien, the Fox reporter. ``. . . Well, that's what you see as we all scramble when someone comes down to do a briefing, fish swimming towards tiny scraps of news.''
Newspaper reporters, who don't need as much equipment, made do with what they could find. Michael Matza, a Boston correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer, placed his laptop on top of a red recycling can and typed away on deadline, wolfing down a roll of chocolate chip cookies that he kept in his shoulder bag.
Sitting on a chair among the reeds and staring through a tripod-mounted camera, New York Post photographer Mike Norcia could have been taken for a bird watcher. His telephoto lens, though, was zeroed in on the distant Coast Guard station, in the faint hope that he might catch a body bag being unloaded. ``It's kind of boring,'' he said.
Sat City is so remote that anyone unaware of its existence would be unlikely to stumble across it. But local deli workers and hotel employees for miles around are well aware of the media presence; they've been working overtime to keep journalists fed and sheltered.
CNN contracted with an East Moriches deli to supply lunch and dinner for 45 staffers daily, and other delis reported nonstop sandwich production.
And competition for lodging was stiff, with a combination of the summer high season and journalists, federal investigators and Red Cross relief teams streaming in at once. Some news organizations rented out private homes.
Patricio Espinoza was not so lucky. The San Antonio, Texas-based correspondent for NBC's Spanish-language news broadcast stayed in three motels in his first week -- one night, the only room he could find came with a jacuzzi and heart-shaped mirrors. In his first days, he spent every spare moment on the cellular phone looking for a bed. ``That is a major priority, because at the end of the day, you want a place to sleep,'' he said.
As the waiting dragged on, the media crews slowly began to dissipate last week.
John Steiger, 70, who lives on Moriches Island Road, rented out some of his rooms to journalists and watched all of them come and go.
It reminded him of a time 51 years ago, when as a teenager he landed on Okinawa ahead of a Marine Corps contingent. ``Have you ever watched a military beachhead being organized?'' he said. ``. . . Chaos and noise but it gets done somehow. That has been the feeling I've gotten here.
``From the very beginning it had that feeling of a staging area for a war,'' he said. ``The intensity, the sounds of trucks constantly rumbling by and helicopters overhead, and then it gets organized, but it's also strange too because you also know very shortly it will be gone; it will disappear, as they move onto the next battle.''
-- Ching-Ching Ni contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.
But this was no ordinary broadcast... A privilege only allowed in the past to multi-million dollar broadcasters and hundreds of thousands worth of equipment plus an FCC license... NOW comes to you through a Laptop, two cameras and the relentless efforts of three local San Antonio journalists exercising what is fast becoming "web civic journalism" 
