Frank Beacham's Journal

A Christmas visit to Egypt, Christmas 1977...

Chicken Truck turned into ABC News edit van

It was on this day 104 years ago that Anwar Sadat, the third president of Egypt, was born. I remember him well from a 1977 Christmas visit I made to Egypt for ABC News in the continuing effort to find peace in the Middle East.

I was recently cataloguing some old photos from that trip 45 years ago and ran across a few memorable images. We were at Ismailia on the western bank of the Suez Canal. Sadat invited some of the media, including myself, to his vacation house.

There we were offered very strong hashish and a special variety of Egyptian bottled beer. At first, we were nervous about the hashish since there was a death penalty sentence for possessing it in Egypt at the time. But since it came from the president himself, we became comfortable with it (especially after we got very high).

The beer was excellent, until one of Sadat’s aides told us they had finally perfected putting the caps on the bottles without creating broken glass in the beer. Earlier attempts at bottling had put drinkers of the beer in the hospital. That comment stopped us cold!

Sadat was completely charming and welcomed us to his country royally. But viewing the images from that time, I realized it was also a very different age.

We had come with huge amounts of gear — so much that it boggles the mind today. At the time, it was less than three years into the ENG (electronic news gathering) revolution. The networks mainly abandoned 16mm film for electronic video in 1975 and back then most were still renting crews and electronic gear from freelancers like myself.

In those days, a video equipment package for network use was huge and cost more than $100,000 per camera system. And because the gear was so unreliable, backups and sometimes triplicates were needed for essential components.

This trip began in late November, 1977 at the time when Sadat invited Israeli Premier Menachem Begin to Egypt in their continuing efforts to find peace in the Middle East. The meetings were not held in Cairo, but at Ismailia. It was the middle of the desert and the television networks had to scramble to find facilities to get on the air.

ABC News rented an old chicken truck from a farmer and painted it blue on the outside, covering the rest with ABC stickers and wrapping material. It was be turned into our mobile edit bay for the peace talks.

Inside, the editing equipment came from my company, Television Matrix, based in Miami at the time. The edit controller was the world’s first Sony RM-440, delivered only the day before myself and the other crew members left on the flight for Egypt. I remember reading the manual to learn how to use that controller on the flight over — praying it would work. (It did!)

Note in the image inside the “edit van,” there’s a Microtime Time Base Corrector. It was a huge piece of rack-mountable gear back then. All time base correctors were so unreliable at the time that several units were always brought along to protect against failure, since time base correction was essential for feeding video from remote locations.

In later years, I learned why time base correctors were so unreliable. Microtime had no shaker table to test their gear at the factory. They built it to sit in racks, not for rough and tumble air travel like we were doing.

When they finally got a shaker table, they confirmed what networks crews around the world already knew. The units would fail every time. It was an “ah-ha” moment for the engineers building the gear. Today, time base correctors are forgotten, now reduced to a single chip costing pennies inside a camera.

Modern “one-man-band” video crews also find it astounding how much gear was once necessary for even a simple network-level video shoot. We always traveled with at least twenty Anvil cases and usually more, depending on the trip. In one photo, our gear was being taken to the airport in Cairo after the Begin-Sadat talks for the flight home.

In those days, airlines took pity on news crews. Rarely were we charged excess baggage for all these cases.

Crews always flew First Class and the networks purchased a second First Class seat for tube-based television cameras. The reason was to keep the tubes in registration so the camera would be ready to use when we hit the ground.

How times have changed!

Inside the chicken truck

Going home

Media mogul Ted Turner is 84 years ago today

“Pitching” Ted Turner

Media mogul Ted Turner is 84 years ago today. For better or worse, he founded CNN, the first 24-hour news channel, and created the superstation concept with WTBS. Turner is also a very funny man.

Turner has a penchant for controversial statements that earned him the nicknames "The Mouth of the South" and "Captain Outrageous.” When I had lunch with him one day after an interview, he lived up to that reputation with a continuing series of hilarious one liners.

However, the funniest moment came after lunch, when we both retired to the men’s room. Standing in front of adjoining urinals, I began to pitch Turner a movie project.

It’s a “pitch” trick I had learned earlier. When at a urinal, one cannot just walk away without creating a nasty situation. The “victim” is trapped until he finishes.

I will never forget the look of distress on Turner’s face at that moment. Then we both broke out in laughter, knowing I had one-upped “The Mouth” at his own game.

Above photo the day of the “pitch” by Frank Beacham

A personal story about the president of Nicaragua...

A personal story about the president of Nicaragua

Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua, is 77 years old today.

You may be wondering why I would feature a politician like Ortega on these pages.

It all goes back to a very unusual night in 1979 — when I and other reporters — ate rice and drank Johnnie Walker Red into the wee hours with Ortega in a dark bar without electricity at Managua’s InterContinental Hotel.

Earlier that day, July 17, Nicaragua's longtime leader, Gen. Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was overthrown after an insurrection led by the FSLN, the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Ortega was a leader of the Sandinistas.

Somoza left the country, flying to exile in Miami. Rebels were shooting in the air and the celebrations, though dangerous, were going on in the streets.

I had been eating cans of tuna fish seemingly for days — there was no food to be had — and had just returned from a tour of Gen. Somoza’s “safe house,” where cans of caviar were ripped open and tossed across the room.

In an earlier time, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, I had shared a couple of beers with General Somoza during an outdoor party for the astronauts at the Cocoa Beach Holiday Inn. He seemed like a pleasant enough guy, on his best behavior for a visit to the United States. In those days of my youth, I didn’t understand how dictators operated.

I was at the Intercontinental Hotel during the revolution for NBC News and walking down a stairwell when I ran into Ortega, an exuberant young 34-year-old leader of the rebellion. I had met Ortega earlier, while shooting video of the Sandinistas in the jungles as they approached Managua. The tension of the earlier days was missing — this time Ortega was relaxed and gleeful.

There may have been no food or electricity in the hotel, but the cheerful Ortega, who spoke perfect English, invited me and others members of the press to join him for some newly discovered booze and rice in the hotel bar. Now, he was a different man, one about to take hold of the reigns of power of his country.

That night he was everyone’s best friend. Born poor, his parents had been opposed to Somoza. His mother was imprisoned by his National Guard. Two of his brothers died in combat. He, himself, was arrested at age 15 for political activities, and became an early member of the FSLN.

During his imprisonment, Ortega was severely tortured. After his release, he was exiled to Cuba, where he received several months of guerrilla training. He later returned to Nicaragua secretly. That night, at least, Ortega told of the good things he would do for his long exploited people.

At the time, the things he said made me feel good. I saw hope for this poor country. He was a friendly, very articulate man, not someone I could comprehend to be a killer. But, in Latin America, I have since learned, nothing is as it seemed.

Ortega went on to be in a five-person Junta of National Reconstruction, the only member eventually from the FSLN. Soon, President Ronald Reagan accused the FSLN of joining Soviet-based Cuba in supporting Marxist revolutionary movements in Latin America.

Reagan and company authorized the CIA to begin financing and arming rebels, who were known as the Contras. Some of the Contras were former officers from Somoza's National Guard. This turned out to be one of the largest political scandals in U.S. history — the Iran Contra Affair — when Oliver North and several members of the Reagan administration defied an amendment to sell arms to Iran, and then used the proceeds to fund the Contras.

Between 1980 and 1989, over 30,000 Nicaraguans died in the conflict between the Sandinista government and the Contras. In the 1984 general election, Ortega won the presidency with 67 percent of the vote and took office on January 10, 1985. Now, at 72, Ortega has held the power of the presidency since 2007.

The New York Times reported that Ortega proved to be a shrewd political strategist. He adopted policies aimed at pleasing his base of poor and working-class Nicaraguans, including supplying them with government-donated food. At the same time, he actively reached out to independents and conservative business leaders with his free-market approach to the economy.

As I look back to that time, I have mixed feelings and one genuine souvenir. When I entered Nicaragua, my passport was stamped with General Somoza’s government insignia.

When I left a couple of weeks later, a line was crossed through the stamp and the letters FSLN were written with a magic marker. The new government hadn’t had time to make up new stamps yet.

My passport at the end of the trip

Walter Cronkite was born 106 years ago today.

Cronkite works in New York City in 1959

Photo by Dennis Stock

Walter Cronkite was born 106 years ago today.

Cronkite was the anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years, from 1962 to 1981. During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America," after being so named in an opinion poll.

Cronkite reported many events from 1937 to 1981, including bombings in World War II; the Nuremberg trials; combat in the Vietnam War; Watergate; the Iran Hostage Crisis and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King, Jr. and Beatle John Lennon.

He was also known for his extensive coverage of the U.S. space program, from Project Mercury to the Moon landings to the Space Shuttle.

Cronkite is well known for his departing catchphrase "And that's the way it is," followed by the date on which the appearance aired.

Cronkite conducts an interview in Huế, Vietnam, February, 1968

Eating Sushi with Walter Cronkite

In my 20s, working as an investigative reporter for Post-Newsweek, I quickly wrote news copy of a breaking story that Walter Cronkite read word-for-word on the CBS Evening News.

For a young reporter, this was a very big deal. Cronkite re-wrote virtually everything, but didn’t touch a thing in my copy.

In later years, when I first met Cronkite, I told him about the thrill I had that day.

His tart answer, “I’m sure it was, young man.”

Later, I met Cronkite at the Sony Club in Manhattan, when we were invited to screenings of new films at Sony Pictures. I ate with him and got to know him a little better. He was a friendly and unassuming man, but only after he got comfortable with you.

The last time I saw him, we ate sushi together at the Sony Club sushi bar. He was in a joyful mood, loving every morsel and chatting it up with the chef. He died soon after that. By the end, I had cracked his shell and he turned out to be a very friendly guy.

Katharine Graham, former publisher of the Washington Post, was born 105 years ago today

Katharine Graham, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, managing editor Howard Simons and executive editor Ben Bradlee at the Washington Post in 1973

Katharine Graham — A Personal Remembrance

Katharine Graham, former publisher of the Washington Post, was born 105 years ago today.

Publishers are normally not the creative people that I celebrate on these pages, but Graham was special and unique. In early 1974, I went to work as an investigative reporter for Post-Newsweek Television, which was owned by the Washington Post.

This was the period during the Watergate scandal, in which Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had an integral role in bringing about the resignation of President Richard Nixon that summer. Unlike newspapers and other news outlets today, Graham supported real, hard hitting reporting.

When Woodward and Bernstein brought the Watergate story to Post editor, Ben Bradlee, Graham supported their investigative reporting and Bradlee ran stories about Watergate when few other news outlets would touch the story. As a result, Graham was the subject of one of the best-known threats in American journalistic history.

It occurred in 1972, when Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, warned reporter Carl Bernstein about a forthcoming article: "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published." As an act of intimidation, the Nixon administration also set its Federal Communications Commission onto the Post’s broadcast properties. Graham was under severe pressure in those years and she rose to that pressure.

On my first day at work at the Post’s WJXT-TV in Jacksonville, Florida, I was surprised to get a personal phone call from Katherine Graham. She welcomed me and acknowledged the pressure we were under at the time.

But her real message was clear. “If you receive pressure from anyone — anyone at all — not to do your job, I want you to call me directly,” she said. “That’s very important.” She made me promise to call and gave me her direct number.

I never did call, though the next year at Post-Newsweek I was threatened, sued and publicly called every name in the book. The station defended every lawsuit and we won them all. We worked hard and got it right. It was the era of good, tough journalism — long gone today.

It was always comforting to know in those days that I was backed by the real iron lady, Katherine Graham.

Pierre Salinger was born 97 years ago today

Pierre Salinger: A Personal Remembrance

Pierre Salinger was born 97 years ago today. He was White House Press Secretary to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Also, Salinger served as a U.S. Senator in 1964 and was campaign manager for the Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign.

He later became known for his work as an ABC News correspondent, and in particular for his coverage of the American hostage crisis in Iran and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

It was at ABC News that I got to know and work with Salinger. In 1978, he was hired by the network as its Paris bureau chief. He became the network's chief European correspondent based in London in 1983. Under Salinger, I worked in Paris for about six weeks — doing a variety of stories.

Because Salinger was as much a French cultural ambassador as newsman, he was a lot of fun to be with. He was far more casual about news stories than his choice of food and drink, which he took very seriously. We ate at some amazing restaurants, where Salinger was always treated more like an important food critic than a VIP guest.

For a while in Paris, ABC booked me into the exclusive Hotel Saint Georges. After a period of working several days in a row with no time off, Salinger ordered a limo and put it at my disposal for an entire day to go anywhere I wanted. I was amazed by his generosity.

Such luxury is long gone from television news today, but in the era of Pierre Salinger it was still very much alive. He lived life to the fullest and made sure those around him enjoyed the fruits as well. Later, after leaving ABC, Salinger hosted a program in the early 1990s on the A&E cable network called Dining in France. No one was better qualified!

Salinger later made a permanent move to France, making good on his promise that, "If (George W.) Bush wins, I'm going to leave the country and spend the rest of my life in France."

Salinger died in October, 2004 of heart failure near his home, La Bastide Rose, in Le Thor, France at the age of 79.

Manuel Noriega: A Personal Remembrance

Manuel Noriega: A Personal Remembrance

Manuel Noriega died five years ago today in Panama City at the age of 83. He had been in intensive care after complications developed from surgery to remove a benign brain tumor. At the time, he was still in prison, but had been granted house arrest to prepare for the operation.

A remembrance of Noriega is permanently seared into my mind. I will never forget him.

On Panama’s Contadora Island in 1979, while covering the late Shah of Iran for NBC News, I was arrested by Noriega, then Panama’s chief of military intelligence. It was early morning, and I exited the shower to find Noriega in the bathroom pointing an Uzi submachine gun at me. He ordered me to get dressed and then drove me in a jeep to a government-owned house on the island.

He said I was using a walkie-talkie that interfered with his private frequency. The walkie-talkie, which I bought in a gift shop on the island, was being used to communicate with the rest of my crew.

I apologized, but Noriega was having none of it. He made me and the other crew members he had also arrested sit on a couch and look at his porno magazines, while hysterically laughing at us. It became clear quickly that Noriega was a real sicko.

Time dragged by as we quietly waited, having no idea of our fate with this madman. Later that day, he took us in his jeep to the island’s airstrip. Our bags, removed from our rooms and hastily packed by his forces, were waiting there for us. We were told to board the plane and were flown back to Miami.

After returning to NBC’s offices in Miami, the phone rang and it was the president of Panama, General Omar Torrijos calling. Torrijos profusely apologized for Noriega’s actions to Don Browne, NBC’s bureau chief, and invited us back to Contadora Island to complete coverage of the Shah’s vacation stay there.

He absolutely promised no more trouble. Anxious to make the money on this lucrative job, I agreed to return with my crew. (Yes, I was VERY stupid back in those days!)

But first, when we arrived back in Panama, we visited Gen. Torrijos, who warmly welcomed us back to his country. He asked if I could deliver a box of Cuban cigars to his friend, Sen. Edward Kennedy, who liked them.

Each cigar had a band that had the words General Torrijos printed on it — a personal gift from Fidel Castro. I promised to send the cigars — illegal in the United States — to Kennedy when we returned. (That was not without skimming off the top row for myself!)

The rest of our trip on Contadora Island was without incident and we returned home a week and a half later.

A footnote to this story: Gen. Torrijos died in a plane accident on July 31, 1981. Colonel Roberto Díaz Herrera, a former associate of Noriega, claimed that the actual cause for the accident was a bomb and that Noriega was behind the incident.

Somehow, I was never surprised by this. Noriega became the defacto leader of the country before his arrest.

Nellie Bly, the first female war correspondent from the United States, was born 158 years ago today

Nellie Bly, the first female war correspondent from the United States, was born 158 years ago today.

Born as Elizabeth Jane Cochran, her start in journalism came as a teenager, when she wrote an angry response to an article in her local Pittsburgh newspaper that said women weren’t worth much outside the home. She signed it “Little Orphan Girl.”

After learning her identity, an editor hired her and gave her the pen name, Nellie Bly. She went on to The New York World, where she became a star. She pretended to be a mental patient for an article, “10 Days in a Madhouse,” that led to reforms to a women’s mental institution. She earned acclaim for many other exposés.

In 1889, millions followed her travels as she tried to break the record of Phileas Fogg, the fictional hero of “Around the World in Eighty Days” (1872). She did it in 72 days, six hours and eleven minutes.

The capstone on Bly’s career came on the Russian and Serbian fronts in World War I. The New York Journal, which published her battlefield reports, called her “the best reporter in America.”

Bly died of pneumonia at St. Mark's Hospital in New York City in 1922 at age 57.

Photo by H.J. Myers

Thanks New York Times!

Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist who set a high standard for courage, integrity and accuracy, was born 114 years ago

Edward R. Murrow with actress Marilyn Monroe, 1955

Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist who set a high standard for courage, integrity and accuracy, was born 114 years ago.

Murrow first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States.

A pioneer of television news broadcasting, Murrow produced a series of TV news reports that helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Perhaps Murrow’s greatest moment came when he criticized McCarthyism and the Red Scare, contributing if not leading to the political downfall of McCarthy.

On March 9, 1954, Murrow and his news team produced a half-hour special entitled, "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy.” Murrow used excerpts from McCarthy's own speeches and proclamations to criticize the senator and point out episodes where he had contradicted himself.

Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly, paid for their own newspaper advertisement for the program. They were not allowed to use CBS's money for the publicity campaign or even use the CBS logo. Nevertheless, the broadcast contributed to a nationwide backlash against McCarthy and is seen as a turning point in the history of television.

It provoked tens of thousands of letters, telegrams and phone calls to CBS headquarters, running 15-to-1 in favor. Murrow's hard-hitting approach to the news, however, cost him influence in the world of television. He lost sponsors and Murrow's reporting brought him into repeated conflicts with CBS — especially its chairman, Bill Paley. Paley told Murrow that he did not want a constant stomach ache every time Murrow covered a controversial subject.

In October 15, 1958, in a speech before the Radio and Television News Directors Association in Chicago, Murrow blasted TV's emphasis on entertainment and commercialism at the expense of public interest in his “wires and lights” speech:

“During the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: Look now, pay later.”

A chain smoker throughout his life, Murrow was almost never seen without his trademark Camel cigarette. It was reported that he smoked between sixty and sixty-five cigarettes a day, equivalent to roughly three packs. See It Now was the first television program to have a report about the connection between smoking and cancer.

During the show, Murrow said that "I doubt I could spend a half hour without a cigarette with any comfort or ease." He developed lung cancer and lived for two years after an operation to remove his left lung.

Murrow died at his home in Pawling, New York, on April 27, 1965, two days after his 57th birthday. His colleague and friend, Eric Sevareid, said of him, "He was a shooting star; and we will live in his afterglow a very long time."

Edward R. Murrow did his famous "See It Now" broadcast on Sen. Joseph McCarthy 68 years ago today

Edward R. Murrow on the set of “See It Now” in New York, 1954

Good night, and good luck.

The journalist Edward R. Murrow often ended his reports with those words, but the signoff is usually remembered in connection to his CBS broadcast on this day in 1954 — 68 years ago.

Murrow dedicated the entire episode of his show, “See It Now,” to analyzing Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s hunt for Communists within America’s borders and the spectacle of his nationally televised hearings.

“And upon what meat doth Senator McCarthy feed?” Murrow asked. “Two of the staples of his diet are the investigation, protected by immunity, and the half-truth.”

One of Murrow’s more memorable quotes was, “We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.” The senator was condemned by his colleagues later that year.

The New York Times called the program “crusading journalism of high responsibility and genuine courage.”

The episode was depicted in a 2005 film, directed by George Clooney.

McCarthy responded to Murrow on his program a month later, calling him “the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual Communists and traitors.”

Sadly, reporters of the caliber of Edward R. Morrow no longer exist in today’s corporate-controlled media. If they did, charlatans like Donald Trump would never succeed.

Thanks New York Times!