How TV news doomed the rescue operation at Munich Olympics

Cori Dauber reminds us of how bad TV news can be. The new head of CBS News is the son of ABC Sports announcer, Jim McKay. He talked about how impressed he was with the coverage of the Israeli athlete hostage-taking by Palestinian terrorists. Cori writes about the revelations of a documentary she saw recently:

I didn't have but vague memories of Munich, so what I saw on this documentary about Munich just stunned me.

It's made pretty clear that ABC wasn't alone, but ABC:

-- announced that within a half an hour German police dressed as athletes would be storming the apartments in the athlete's village where the hostages were being held

-- showed the police in their staging area preparing, then moving towards the apartments and then, worst of all

-- showed the police moving into their various positions above and around the apartment balconies and windows.

In interviews for the documentary one of the policemen who had been up on that roof getting into position, then waiting for the word (which never came) to storm the apartment, now retired, explained that they couldn't understand why the word never came. They didn't realize they were being televised live, and they didn't realize that at the last minute their superiors found out (thank God, just in time) that every room in the athlete's village had a TV set. It would have been a suicide mission.

And that was this guy's introduction to the wonders and power of television news.

Things that make you say, "hmmm."