Where’s the videotape? The most-sought-after piece of TV in the world right now is the video taken with tiny cameras strapped to the helmets of the Navy SEALs team that killed Osama bin Laden Sunday.
The cameras allowed President Obama and his advisors to watch the raid live in the White House.
But will the American people ever get to see the tape?
“Every news organization in the world is asking for it right now and not one of them thinks it will ever see the light of day,” said one disappointed network news veteran yesterday.
“Everyone is asking that question, and we haven’t gotten a response,” said another network source.
So far, the only TV images that exist come from a grainy, amateur video shot inside the bin Laden death compound several hours after the operation ended and obtained by ABC News.
“We’ve been hunting this guy for a long time, and, especially in [New York], you want to see [the video],” CBS News president David Rhodes says of the raid video. “We have all these people working on it, but I wouldn’t want to predict when we’re going to see it.”
“We’ve certainly asked all government officials if the video is available,” said one cable news exec, “but we haven’t heard word one about it.”
Because of security concerns, the only image we will likely ever see is a still photo of bin Laden’s corpse.
Behind the scenes, network TV execs waited all day yesterday for White House officials to decide whether or not to release a picture to the public.
“On the one hand, they want to prove that he’s totally dead,” said one news source.
“But they don’t want to release a picture that increases the chances that it will inflame the situation any more.”
The closest US military officials have come to releasing a video of one of its raids was the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch, who was wounded and captured in Iraq in 2003.
Video of Lynch being loaded on a hospital plane was released to the media, but not the raid itself.