News Crews in War Zones Risk Their Lives Too : Media: When the Panama attack began, Noriega forces snatched five newsmen--even U.S. troops held three. The total number of war correspondents dead this year is 41.

The U.S. invasion of Panama had barely begun. And soldiers from embattled Gen. Manuel Noriega’s super-loyal “dignity battalion” knew just where to go. They headed for the Cesar Park Marriott, the hotel where Americans--many of them journalists--tend to stay in Panama City.

Armed with AK-47 attack rifles, the uniformed men chased ABC television producer Robert Campos, CBS producer Jon Meyersohn and others through the hotel, finally cornering them as they emerged from an elevator.

“We were threatened constantly,” Campos said later on his network’s “Nightline” program. “We were told that many Panamanians were dying because of this invasion and that we would pay.”

After several hours, Campos was released. Meyersohn was still missing on Friday.

In all, three television journalists and two print reporters were snatched by Panamanian troops. Three more journalists, including a New York Times reporter, were detained by U.S. troops.

Juan Antonio Rodriguez, a photographer for Spain’s El Pais newspaper, was killed when caught in the cross fire of U.S. troops mistakenly shooting at each other in the Marriott parking lot. Two other journalists were wounded in the same incident.

As many as 41 journalists have been killed so far this year on assignment in war zones, 17 of them television and radio reporters, and four were photojournalists.

All told, about 90 journalists were assaulted in the line of duty last year, and more than 250 arrested, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog group. About half of those worked in television and radio.

Their fates have renewed an old debate about war reporting. How close to the battle or trouble spot should a journalist go? Should he/she get out into the thick of it, even to the point of arguing with the guards of a dictator, or is it better to stay in the hotel, where at least there’s a telephone from which to file reports?

The problem is exacerbated in television, and to a lesser extent radio, where crews must get close to the action to get pictures and sound. Because of their bulky equipment, television reporters are particularly visible--and vulnerable.

“We travel with something on our shoulder that a nervous soldier could easily mistake for a weapon,” said Richard Wald, senior vice president of ABC News. “We travel with lights and we’re very obvious.”

Wald said that ABC--like the other networks--sends reporters to war zones on a volunteer basis.

Once there, however, the mandate is to get the news.

“You’re in this business to report the news and to report changes in the world and the things that really impact on people’s lives,” said John Blackstone, who has covered Beirut and South Africa for CBS. “And unfortunately conflict is a big part of that.”

In Beirut, Blackstone was sitting in a car writing the stand-up for his story, when a man sneaked up beside him with a gun. “He pointed it at my head and said in Arabic, ‘Americans have just killed my family, and this is my chance to kill an American,’ ” Blackstone said.

Passers-by pulled the man away.

Perhaps the most gruesome example of danger to a television crew occurred during the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. The dictator’s soldiers forced ABC reporter Bill Stewart to lie on the ground and, with his crew watching and cameras rolling, shot him in the head with automatic weapons.

“Is it worth risking your life? Probably not,” said Steve Futterman, who covered the Tian An Men Square massacre for NBC/Mutual Radio.

When the fighting got really bad, Futterman said, he usually retreated to a building or hotel where he could watch the action in relative safety.

In Panama this week, even the hotel was dangerous--that’s where Noriega supporters went to grab Americans.

But where is the line between caution and failure to get the news out?

Andrew Stern, head of the television department at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, said some reporters and crews have a tendency to stay too far away. He cited an example from the Vietnam War.

“The Hotel Caravelle in Saigon was where we all stayed when we went, and everybody exchanged gossip in the bar at the Caravelle,” Stern said. “You went out sometimes to get pictures, but basically you did all your work at the bar.”

That scenario is played out even more today, Stern said, because networks have cut back on foreign beats and tend to whisk reporters in to cover a breaking story and whisk them out again in a few days.

“You arrive at some place,” Stern said. “You check in to whatever the designated press hotel is. You talk to the AP guy or whoever has been around for a long time. You pick up some tips, then you read the local press and then you file.”

The reporters who do get out of the hotel are motivated in part by an exhilaration that goes along with danger.

In El Salvador a few years ago, a little convoy bounced through the countryside, drawing nearer to the gunfire with every mile. Shots grew louder and closer, and one by one the journalists piloting the cars and jeeps turned back.

Just one vehicle, with an adrenaline-high rookie U.S. radio correspondent and two Salvadorans, kept going. The Salvadorans were going to rescue family, free-lance radio reporter T. J. Western was in it for the rush.

The high--which came from an awareness of danger combined with a (false) sense of invincibility--sustained him through the battle, Western said in an interview. It also pulled him through when a pair of drunk Salvadoran military policemen threw him in jail and confiscated his pictures and tapes.

ABC’s Wald said that “hotel reporting,” as its been called, is a problem, but he insisted that more crews err on the side of risk than caution.

“By and large the good reporters tend to go out and see for themselves,” Wald said. “That’s what made them reporters in the first place. They are curious people. And curious people don’t stay in hotel rooms.”