Storm Coverage -- "Bearing Witness" Or Overdone Stunt?

(From The Philadelphia Inquirer -- By Gail Shister)

Reporters flying from flagpoles during hurricanes have become a cliche, says NBC's BRIAN WILLIAMS.

"There's a danger that all these images start to look alike to viewers," Williams said Monday via cell phone from NEW ORLEANS' SUPERDOME, his base of operations for HURRICANE KATRINA COVERAGE.

"It's an accepted TV news style that can fall into a pattern. I'd like to avoid it. We've all done shots like that. But it's still the best way to tell another human being, 'This is what 80 miles an hour feels like.'"

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS' Williams is the only A-LIST BROADCAST ANCHOR reporting from THE GULF COAST. CBS EVENING NEWS interim BOB SCHIEFFER and CHARLES GIBSON, ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT'S principal fill-in, stayed in NEW YORK.

Williams' presence "speaks to everything in the network landscape having been churned up," says NBC NEWS Senior Vice President STEVE CAPUS, a WARMINSTER NATIVE and TEMPLE GRAD. "Nothing is normal, except over here."

Capus labels wind-blown reporters as "stupid human tricks" that put the journalists in harm's way and make viewers anxious.

"At some point, it looks kind of silly if you go overboard. You don't need to sit in the middle of the ocean to know how powerful the TSUNAMI is. It's reckless to put yourself in 150-mile-per-hour winds."

Williams did live reports on TODAY and MSNBC Monday from outside a partially protected area of the dome. He later went inside, joining about 9,000 storm refugees.

"It would have been very easy to put Brian in some area that would appear to be the end of the world, and he was one gust from being blown away," Capus says. "We're not in the business of SHOWBOATING."

Does that mean that CBS's high-flying DAN RATHER, who never met a hurricane he didn't like, was A SHOWBOAT?

"I don't think Mr. Rather was reckless," Capus says.

Says Williams, "Just as they broke the mold when they made him in TEXAS, I think they broke the mold for his type of hurricane coverage when Dan retired."

CNN's ANDERSON COOPER, who fought the elements Monday in BATON ROUGE before driving parallel to the storm, to JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI, used to make fun of flagpole-fliers. "I thought, 'Why don't they just go indoors?' It's common sense."

Once Cooper began covering hurricanes, however, he did a 180. "I believe in being on the front lines of stories, whether it's BAGHDAD or NIGER or HURRICANES.

"There's a value to bearing witness to what hundreds of thousands of people are going through. I see nothing wrong with a reporter going through it with them. I've never pretended to grab onto something. The audience knows when something's real and when it's not."

After NBC's charter to NEW ORLEANS was diverted to BATON ROUGE Sunday, Williams and his crew managed to drive to THE BIG EASY in time to report -- by phone -- for NIGHTLY NEWS and MSNBC.

Williams says he and NBC's braintrust had decided Saturday night to set up at THE SUPERDOME "because I knew this would be the shelter of last resort in this city. I thought it would be a fascinating angle to see how this many people came together."

By the "quirk" of that decision, Williams says, he "stumbled upon one of the stories of this day," when KATRINA blew off pieces of THE SUPERDOME ROOF.

"We were listening to horrible noises. Pieces of the roof were banging against each other, but there was never any fear for safety or fear about the structure."

Fear's a funny thing, CNN's Cooper says. "Anyone who says they're not afraid at the time of a hurricane is either a fool or a liar, or a little bit of both."

KATRINA turned out to be a lucky move for new FOX NEWS CHANNEL hire BILL HEMMER. He debuted a day early, coanchoring the 8 pm hour Sunday.

When Hemmer tossed to SHEPARD SMITH in NEW ORLEANS, Shep welcomed the CNN exile and told him he had "impeccable timing."

Hemmer anchored four hours of coverage Monday.