No one can begrudge KTVX Channel 4's making promotional fodder out of its exclusive tape of Joshua Dennis' rescue from the Oquirrh's abandoned Hidden Treasure Mine.
The station's coverage yielded some of the most satisfying pictures ever to come out of a major news event here. I wept watching the rescue, and I'll bet most viewers did.Channel 4 got the shots by staying with the story for five days rather than essentially giving up on it after the first three. The exclusive pictures showed first a well but wan Joshua being lifted from the mine and being greeted by the rescuers. Then they showed scenes of the mine cavity where Joshua had holed up.
Channel 4 executive producer Ken Connaughton said he, reporter John Harrington and Warren Morningstar, producer of the 5:30 evening news, decided Monday that the station would stay right on top of the story until it was resolved, though the rescue efforts were winding down.
-"WE FIGURED THAT since no trace of Joshua had been found there was a good chance he was still in the mine."
Initially reporters Dan Breinholt and Brad Goode were assigned. For the last three days Harrington was on the scene with photographer John Waikart. Harrington was at the mine entrance when rescuers popped from the hole to announce that Joshua had been found alive. Waikart was only a few feet away.
Channel 4 cut in on several programs from about 4 p.m. until its 5:30 newscast with bulletins featuring the tape, microwaved from its truck in Stockton. It rented a helicopter to get Harrington down the canyon from the mine with the tape after the rescue at 2:45 p.m., that way avoiding all the rescue traffic on the road. First-class enterprise.
"This was a down story at times, but it had an upbeat ending. We were glad we were there for it," Connaughton says.
KSL Channel 5 recouped somewhat by airing some color still photos it bought from a photographer at the scene. But essentially the other stations had to play catchup. Their rescue footage was confined to reaction and to Joshua's being transported to Primary Children's Medical Center from Tooele Valley Medical Center. Those shots missed the genuine drama of both the action and sound when Joshua was lifted from the mine by the modest, strong, tired rescue force so visibly filled with pride and relief and gratitude.
Harrington, terribly moved, said the story was the greatest he had ever worked on.
It almost certainly will be rated as one of the top local stories of the year.
-THE NATIONAL MEDIA paid scant attention. None staffed the story. ABC News got tape from its affiliate Channel 4 for some exposure on "Good Morning America" and "World News Tonight," but the story quickly faded.
The relative indifference of the national media surprised me, since this story had all the emotional and heroic human interest ingredients: the strong vicarious pull for parents whenever a child is in mortal danger, plus bravery, suspense, victory over seemingly hopeless odds, the incredibly fortuitous decision to search one more time before the mine was closed, the pointed lesson of the senseless risks of invading Utah's 5,000 abandoned mines, the tragedy-in-waiting of the old dynamite cache.
-BY COMPARISON, the story of Vernon "Buck" Jones, the Lark miner rescued after eight days trapped underground in 1969, was almost tepid. The Jones story was rated the top local event that year.
For my money, the Joshua Dennis saga was a better story than any of the mine-well-cave rescues that have riveted the nation in the past. The rescue after 2 1/2 days of Jessica McClure, the toddler who fell into an abandoned water well in Midland, Texas, was the 10th leading story of 1987 as rated by both the major wire services, AP and UPI. The McClure story has even been filmed by ABC (though the parents wisely declined to sell their story to the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer).
The nation was similarly absorbed by the predicament of 3-year-old Kathy Fiscus, whose lifeless body was pulled from an abandoned well in San Marino, Calif., in 1949 after a massive 52-hour rescue attempt.
No underground rescue attempt has quite approached the Floyd Collins story of 1925 for national fixation. He was the Kentucky mountaineer trapped by a cave-in that covered him with rocks and mud to the hips while he was exploring a cavern. An enterprising newsman named Skeets Miller not only organized rescuers but was lowered by his heels to slither down a passage to interview and comfort and feed Collins.
For 17 days, the suspense of the Collins story became personal. According to one account, "The sound of the miner's boring was an audible throb" in millions of American households. Collins died, his body was never recovered and the cave was filled in. Miller won the Pulitzer Prize and the story became legend.
-I LIKED THE WAY the media closed the Joshua Dennis story, with his going back to school and then left the family alone. I like to think this was not simply because of the story fatigue but because the media respected the family's privacy.
Connaughton says that "the family got tired of the media attention, so we followed the story until Joshua went home, when the family made clear they wanted their privacy back." Channel 4 made the family a copy of the tape of the rescue.