Mike Conway - Contested Ground: The Tunnel and the Struggle Over Television News in Cold War America

A V OLUME IN THE S ERIES

Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond

E DITED BY

Edwin A. Martini and Scott Ladermen

Mike Conway

University of Massachusetts Press

Amherst & Boston

Copyright 2019 by University of Massachusetts Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-61376-695-8 (ebook)

Cover design by Dr. Danielle Kilgo

Cover photos: (foreground) Luigi Spina crawls through the tunnel as the diggers get close to finishing the project in September 1962, from The Tunnel documentary. NBCUniversal Archives; (background) Berlin Wall, courtesy of the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Conway, Mike, 1961 author.

Title: Contested ground : The tunnel and the struggle over television news

in Cold War America / Mike Conway.

Description: Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 2019. | Includes

bibliographical references and index. | Summary: In 1962, an innovative

documentary on a Berlin Wall tunnel escape brought condemnation from

both sides of the Iron Curtain during one of the most volatile periods

of the Cold War. The Tunnel, produced by NBCs Reuven Frank, clocked in

at ninety minutes and prompted a range of strong reactions. While the

television industry ultimately awarded the program three Emmys, the U.S.

Department of State pressured NBC to cancel the program, and print

journalists criticized the network for what they considered to be a

blatant disregard of journalistic ethics. It was not just The Tunnels

subject matter that sparked controversy, but the medium itself. The

surprisingly fast ascendance of television news as the countrys top

choice for information threatened the self-defined supremacy of print

journalism and the de facto cooperation of government officials and

reporters on Cold War issues. In Contested Ground, Mike Conway argues

that the production and reception of television news and documentaries

during this period reveals a major upheaval in American news

communications Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019019886 | ISBN 9781625344502 (hardcover) | ISBN

9781625344519 (paperback) | ISBN 9781613766958 (ebook) | ISBN

9781613766941 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany, 19611989. |

EscapesGermanyBerlinHistory20th century. | EscapesGermany

(East) History. | Tunnel (Television program) | Documentary television

programsUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Television

broadcasting of newsPolitical aspectsUnited States. | National

Broadcasting CompanyHistory20th century.

Classification: LCC DD900 .C66 2019 | DDC 070.1/95097309045dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019019886

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Captured on Film

A Daring Escape from a Divided Berlin

Parallel Paths

Television, the Cold War, and Reuven Frank

The Transmission of Experience

Journalist vs. Filmmaker

The Tunnel and the Elusive Definition of Documentary Films

Adventurous Laymen

Print vs. Broadcast in Journalism Boundary Work

The Necessary Restraints of National Security

The Tunnel is a journalism documentary produced by NBCs Reuven Frank that tells the story of an elaborate five-month escape project under the Berlin Wall, broadcast on American network television during one of the most volatile periods of the Cold War.

The above sentence appears to be fairly straightforward. This project is an attempt to show why it is also complicated, contested, and controversial, revealing the competing visions for American journalism and television in the early 1960s, during a critical juncture in American media history. The sentence contains the keys to understanding why an NBC documentary and its producer earned both high praise and intense criticism for months in 1962, with most of the strongest reactions occurring before the program even ran.

The pivotal words to unlock the weight of the project and the volatility of reaction include journalism, documentary, television, story, and Cold War. The meanings and implications of each of these words had, and still have, strong constituencies that protect their history and acquired knowledge, forcing The Tunnel project through their specific prism of acceptability and opinions. The story of the passionate West Berlin students who risked their lives to help their friends trapped in East Berlin is so compelling that it has been retold numerous times through different media during the subsequent half-century. The producers insistence on the importance of employing techniques from fiction writing to tell a true story ran him afoul of print journalists who found the story approach unsettling. The Tunnel as journalism brought NBC in front of the presss court of opinion, dominated by print practitioners, who focused on decisions the network made to secure the project and even questioned the mediums competence to handle sensitive Cold War issues.

Television as a medium not only came under attack by print journalists, but also by elites in American society who shunned the format as it diffused to become the most popular mass communication platform in the United States. The producers vision on how to combine visuals with sound and words was even beyond the grasp of many who worked in television news, most of whom learned their craft in print or radio.

As a documentary, The Tunnel joined more than a half-century history of a specific type of nonfiction film and the generations of documentarians and scholars that have followed. Even though the producer employed many of the same techniques popular in celebrated American documentaries of the early 1960s, the broadcast is rarely acknowledged for reasons both within and beyond his control.

The Cold War hangs over and permeates everything. The Tunnel is itself a look at a herculean effort to help East Germans escape oppressive communism to begin a new life in the West. Cold War ideology affected all aspects of this project and reaction, from the telling of the story on television, the reaction of the United States and foreign governments, to journalists who often worked in tandem with the government to control what topics should be covered and what should be kept from the public.

Finally, the producer. Reuven Frank was one of the most influential people in the early development of television news in the United States. He was a mid-twentieth-century visionary with regard to how to utilize the sight and sound medium to convey important issues and events to the largest simultaneous audience in history. The Tunnel was one of Franks most cherished accomplishments in a career filled with significant achievements. The project helped solidify his views on television as a communication source, views that influenced not just documentaries, but nightly newscasts and weekly public affairs programs. The documentary proved to be a major influence on a groundbreaking memo Frank wrote during the following months, positioning a specific form of television news as a key journalistic platform.

The original impetus for this project began more than fifteen years ago when I conducted oral history interviews with Reuven Frank a few years before he died. It was obvious to me that Frank had a vision for what television news could be at a time when most journalists were still focused on words, either on paper or through the airwaves. I had embraced the idea of video storytelling during my television news career, so his ideas on the effective use of television to convey an experience resonated strongly with me.