Integrity of Newscast vs

When a man walked up to KNBC TV broadcaster David Horowitz during a live newscast Wednesday, nudged him with what looked like a real gun and demanded that he read a statement, news director Tom Capra had to make an extraordinary ethical choice.

From where he sat in the safety of cheap hermes bag the studio control booth, Capra had to decide what was more important: risking the integrity of the station's newscast by allowing a gunman to take it over or risking Horowitz's life by refusing to comply with the gunman's demand.

"We are vulnerable, just like airliners are vulnerable to hijacking," said Jeffrey Marks, chairman of the ethics committee of the Radio and Television News Directors Assn.

He chose the station's newscast.

He took the news show off the air even though the gunman, who had threatened to kill Horowitz unless his statement was read to viewers, could see clearly on in studio monitors that what was being broadcast was only the NBC logo.

For nearly eight minutes, Horowitz, with the gun pressed to his back, read the man's rambling statement about the CIA, clones and UFOs.

When Horowitz finished, the gunman, Gary Stollman, son of former KNBC pharmaceutical reporter Max Stollman, laid down his pistol, a realistic toy, and was led off by police.

KNBC resumed broadcasting, explaining what had happened to startled viewers, who had seen a gun pointed at Horowitz before programming was interrupted.

As the shaken consumer reporter was saying he hoped that the incident would not inspire hermes bags replicas copycats, Capra stepped in to make what he clearly believed was the overriding point.

"It won't," he said emphatically, "because this guy didn't get on the air. I mean he fake hermes handbags may have held you hostage, but when you say he held the television station hostage, he did not."

"But the point is I could have been killed," Horowitz said.

"Well, yeah, you could have been killed," Capra acknowledged, "but the television station wasn't held hostage."

"I know the television station wasn't held hostage," an incredulous Horowitz continued, "but I could have died because the television station wasn't held hostage."

"You can always get out of the business," Capra said.

Television news is a rough and tumble business, but not all news directors and television experts interviewed Thursday think it is worth making it quite that rough.

"I would put the human life first and the television station second," said KTLA news director Jeff Wald.

"It's a damn tough call," he acknowledged.

Wald recalled that he was widely criticized by colleagues last year when, as he saw it, he offered to risk his station's integrity briefly in an effort to save some lives.

That occurred when a hermes handbags cheap gunman who had taken hostages during an aborted robbery of the Van Cleef Arpels jewelry store in Beverly Hills repeatedly called KTLA to ask that a news crew be sent in to the store to broadcast a statement he wanted to make.

Wald told sheriff's deputies that they could borrow his equipment and get into the store by impersonating his news crew.

Ordinarily, news organizations go to great lengths to make it clear to readers and viewers that they are not an arm of government. Wald decided that a life and death situation was an exception.

'Well Worth It'

"We did not want to literally have any blood on our hands," he said. "And to me the sacrifice of our equipment and perhaps our integrity for that afternoon was well worth it if we were able to save one human life."

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