When Terrorism First Went Live: The Munich Olympics That Changed Broadcasting Forever
The boom of social media over the past two decades has democratized journalism to the point wherein a profession once lofted and lauded and dominated by individuals fearlessly committed to the dogged pursuit of truth has devolved into a faux subspecialty of online influencers who go from hocking lip gloss to declaring themselves experts on hot button subjects ranging from Middle East geopolitics to epidemiology. All within the span of a millisecond. Today, everything has become fair game for public consumption. But in 1972, Roone Arledge, then-president of ABC Sports, was left to contend with a conundrum never before experienced: should real-time footage of the 1972 Munich massacre, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team, be made available to viewers global-wide?September 5, writer-director Tim Fehlbaum's Oscar-nominated historical drama, functions as a chronicle of this tragedy as seen through the perspective of the ABC Sports network broadcasting team, with Peter Sarsgaard as Arledge, John Magaro as Emmy Award-winning production executive Geoffrey Mason and Ben Chaplin as legendary sportscaster Marvin Bader. But the film is also a throwback to a bygone era in journalism in which career reporters contended with newsroom ethics while covering the latest breaking news.'It was the first time the Olympics were broadcast live globally,' says John Ira Palmer, who produced September 5 alongside partners Sean Penn and John Wildermuth, with whom Palmer formed Projected Picture Works in 2021. 'We had almost a billion people over the course of the Olympics watching these things unfold. What happened that day in Munich from that ABC Sports team forever changed the way that news is told.'
Palmer, a film instructor at USC School of Cinematic Arts and AFI Conservatory and whose previous credits include Penn's 2021 film Flag Day and Asphalt City, has always been interested in society's consumption of media.'We're now in this new moment, with AI and social media — and I think our ethics haven't really caught up with our technology,' says Palmer. 'The larger existential quandaries remain when you walk out of the newsroom: we're doing our job, we're telling the truth and reporting on things that happened to the broad population as quickly and as accurately as possible. But is that the right thing to do? It's something journalists still have to grapple with every day.'
Fehlbaum, the Switzerland-born director and co-writer of the horror-cum-sci-fi flicks Hell and The Colony, structured September 5 around the perspective of the ABC Sports news crew following a 'research conversation' with Mason.'As a 28-year-old at the time, [Mason] experienced firsthand in the TV control room how the team transitioned from sports reporting to crisis coverage,' says Fehlbaum. 'His vivid recollections of that intense 22-hour marathon of live reporting were so compelling that we decided to tell the story entirely from his perspective. The subject of media influence on global political events felt especially pertinent, particularly in today's context.'Sparse in violent imagery, September 5 — filmed over a 32-day period in Munich for less than $10 million — is a testament to how powerful cinema can be when it's about what's not on screen even more so than what is. The Paramount Pictures movie hits theaters widely Jan. 17.'Watching a film away from any social media discourse, I hope we can have good conversations,' says Palmer, 'and, hopefully, become better as a society — together.'
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