A still picture captures most dramatic moment of Gonzalez raid
By David Bauder, Associated Press, 04/23/00
NEW YORK -- In a video age, the most striking image of the raid to seize Elian Gonzalez was a still photograph that showed a federal agent in riot gear pointing an automatic rifle as the 6-year-old boy cowered in the arms of a friend.
The photo, one in a series transmitted worldwide by The Associated Press, was taken by free-lance photographer Alan Diaz in the bedroom where Elian was hiding in a closet with Donato Dalrymple, a fisherman who helped rescue him from sea in November.
Throughout the morning, the picture dominated the special live TV coverage on Saturday.
"This is an image that will endure in our memories," CNN's Miles O'Brien said at one point.
By midday, that photo was joined by pictures that depicted Elian in a smiling reunion with his father, stepmother and half-brother at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Those were supplied to the networks by the father's lawyer, Gregory Craig.
The three top broadcasters and three cable news stations had mostly continuous coverage of the story from before 6 a.m. until at least noon. The exception was ABC, which was more reluctant to break away from children's programming.
Diaz had hopped a chain-link fence when he heard a commotion at the Gonzalez house and was directed into the room where the boy was being held.
He and an NBC cameraman, Tony Zumbado, had been waiting on the lawn next door to the home of Elian's great-uncle when the raid began. The family had arranged with television networks to have cameras nearby to record any raid.
Zumbado said later he was kicked in the stomach during the commotion and his sound man was dragged away from the house by a federal agent.
Everything happened so quickly that he was unable to shoot any video from inside the house, Zumbado said. Cameras outside captured the oft-repeated image of a female agent carrying Elian to a white van, which drove away as onlookers threw chairs and bottles.
The quick action forced broadcasters into the unusual position of showing and extensively discussing a still photograph -- something the networks usually shun as a relic from the pre-TV age.
"That picture, seen from a lot of points of view, has disaster written all over it," said CBS's Dan Rather.
By 10:20 a.m., a demonstrator outside the Gonzalez house was holding a copy of the picture while standing behind CBS reporter Byron Pitts. It was emblazoned with the words, "federal child abuse."
Diaz's color picture was used on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times' early Sunday edition, under the headline, "Elian Seized." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also used the picture on its Sunday front page.
The photograph drew sharp reactions from visitors to The Associated Press' Web site. Some visitors said they felt the picture reflected the agents' actions too negatively and would be taken out of context by those who opposed the raid. Others praised the picture and the photographer.
ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC all reported the raid within a half hour after it took place. ABC didn't begin continuous coverage with Elizabeth Vargas until shortly before 7 a.m.
Unlike CBS and NBC, ABC doesn't have a Saturday morning network newscast. But spokeswoman Su-Lin Nichols said ABC decided to air only brief reports in the immediate aftermath so as not to inflame a tense situation.
Rather, who arrived at 6:50 a.m., was the only one of the top three network anchors on the air Saturday morning. Rather had interviewed Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Elian's father, last weekend.
Using views from helicopters, TV networks followed demonstrators as they milled around Miami streets during the day Saturday, capturing occasional skirmishes and small fires.
The Web sites of leading newspapers and other news operations carried the raid as their top story Saturday. Several offered video clips and Diaz's photos, and a few sites gave visitors the chance to take an unscientific poll on whether the government acted properly.
America Online, for example, said more 200,000 people weighed in. It said 58 percent of respondents to its instant poll approved of the federal action and 42 percent disapproved, and that 56 percent agreed the agents should have carried guns and 44 percent said no.
AOL said the response rate for an instant poll during the first eight hours of a news event surpassed that surrounding the Clinton impeachment and the deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Princess Diana.
The Miami Herald's home page, as the local newspaper, listed areas where officials had blocked traffic. The Herald newspaper did not put out a special edition. Instead, its reporters worked until an 8 a.m. deadline to report the raid in their regular early Sunday edition, which hit the streets Saturday afternoon. The newspaper devoted its front page and 18 inside pages to the story in a later Sunday edition.
The affiliated, Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald distributed 25,000 copies of an eight-page color special section at 3:30 p.m. El Nuevo devoted its front page and 12 inside pages in the Sunday paper to the story.
A few hours after the raid, Marisleysis Gonzalez took NBC reporter Kerry Sanders on a tour of her house. She said she was saving a helmet left behind by one of the federal agents as "evidence."
"They broke Elian's bed," she said, bursting into tears.
Elian Gonzalez, held by Donato Dalrymple, is taken by U.S. federal agents from his Miami relatives in a pre-dawn raid this morning. (AP Photo)
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