TV News -- Apollo-11 'One Small Step' Shown Right/Wrong??

Tonight on the news programs -- everybody please watch to see who uses the
'One small step' audio correctly with proper video clip, and who flubs it as
described below.

Apollo-11 TV Documentary Misrepresentations


James Oberg // submitted manuscript // July 31, 1994
Published in edited form in Aug 8, 1994, Wall Street Journal



The recent blizzard of Apollo-11 anniversary programs was a fine tribute to
that historical achievement of the American space program. The events of a
quarter century ago came back to life in the dramatic portrayal seen on
millions of television screens. But at the same time, many of the programs
also displayed the sloppy errors, distortions and revisionist dramatizations
which have come to characterize much of television journalism.



To put the shortcomings of many of these programs into perspective, imagine
the following practices for other historical documentaries or news, and ask
whether they would ever be considered acceptable.



A Civil War film discusses Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but since there is
no photograph of Lincoln actually giving the speech, a photograph of him at
his 1865 inauguration is shown instead.



A program on the loss of the Lusitania in 1915 needs dramatic video of an
ocean liner sinking, so with a voice-over describing the Lusitania, news
film is shown instead of the Andrea Doria going down.



A sportscast of the World Cup is in progress, but since video difficulties
prevented receipt of the views of the Colombia-Rumania game which was the
subject of the report, an already-used clip of a goal from the recent
Germany- Thailand game is shown instead.



Clearly, none of these hypothetical cases can be considered acceptable.
Anyone trying to do so would be considered irresponsible, even unethical.
And since there are legions of history buffs, ship buffs, and sports buffs
out there, any such attempts would be immediately recognized and widely
criticized.



But since spaceflight has always been an esoteric subject with a relatively
short "history" and usually only superficial news coverage, similar
misrepresentations are easier, even if by accident. Catching them and
complaining about them is harder. But an effort must be made both to
discourage future historical errors and to encourage those other programs
which took the extra effort and got it right.



There's no need to exaggerate the inevitable innocent "bloopers" that any
human effort is prone to. A national TV network had a newscast where the
announcer kept seeing "Apollo-11" on the teleprompter, misinterpreted it as
"Apollo-II", and pronounced it "Apollo Two". The N.Y. Times deserves minor
embarrassment for twice referring to the "Apollo-1 moon landing" in a book
review a few weeks ago. That's life.



In illustrating a Mercury splashdown, the TBS special 4-hour program "Moon
Shot" used views of a Gemini splashdown instead. The difference is that
Mercury capsules landed vertically beneath a parachute while Gemini capsules
were slung horizontally from two separate lines below the parachute. On July
20, CNN showed Apollo-11 graphics of a moon-walking astronaut whose
spacesuit had red leg stripes not introduced until Apollo-13. "Space buffs"
gleefully spotted the errors, but viewers were unlikely to be misled by
these minor slipups.



Such naive bloopers even struck the White House during the July 20 ceremony
honoring the Apollo-11 astronauts. In an otherwise fine speech, President
Clinton related in his folksy style how "on the third day" Armstrong and
Aldrin's Eagle lunar module descended toward a dangerous boulder field and
Armstrong had to take manual control. But since July 16 was the first day of
the flight, the landing on July 20 actually occurred on the fifth day. But
again, it was no big deal.



Some historical visual scenes are certainly "interchangeable" by even the
tightest standards, since no viewer is misled by showing one Gemini launch
for another, or one group of engineers in Mission Control for another
(unless, say, their actions are allegedly keyed to some event being
described), or one "out the window" Earth or moon view for another. The
criteria is clearly whether viewers will gain an authentic impression of the
event, or not.



The serious distortions of space history which characterized many -- but by
no means all -- of the anniversary documentaries went beyond this allowable
flexibility, and include outright historical falsifications such as the
following:



To compress events, Neil Armstrong's comments about making "One small step"
have often been matched with video of him dropping down from the Lunar
Module ladder. Actually, he landed on one of the vehicle's footpads, made
several comments, jumped back up on the ladder to make sure he could, jumped
down a second time, discussed his impressions of his surroundings, and only
after that did he make the "small step" onto the moondust. So the rearranged
video completely misrepresents what he meant by "one small step". [The same
inaccuracy occurred in Walter Cronkite's late-1990's television special on
his news career - ironically, he is widely esteemed for telling stories they
way they really were, but in his retrospective on Apollo-11, he got it
spectacularly wrong].



For similar time compression, the dozens of immediately post-landing words
from the Apollo-11 crew about their spacecraft status are usually edited
out, so that viewers get the false impression that "Tranquility Base here,
the Eagle has landed" were the FIRST words from the Moon. The first human
words from the Moon were actually Buzz Aldrin's: "Contact light."



To make use of a recently released Russian filmclip showing burning men
running from a rocket pad fire, Ted Turner's "Moon Shot" used the shocking
scenes to illustrate a 1969 Soviet moon rocket explosion, with a narrator
comment about reminders of the dangers of space flight. The horrible film
was actually from a military missile mishap in 1960 that killed 165 men, but
really had nothing to do with the Russian space exploration program. The
"Moon Shot" producers must have known this, yet evidently decided to
misrepresent it for dramatic effects (that is, to deceive their viewers),
even though nobody was killed in the actual 1969 Russian moon rocket
explosion which was the subject of the sequence.



To stress the "ordinary humanity" of excited space workers, they were often
falsely shown behaving unprofessionally. In the prize-winning film "For All
Mankind", right after the Apollo-11 landing, the Mission Control Center is
shown erupting in cheering, flag-waving, and cigar-smoking. The historical
truth is that the duty controllers stuck to their jobs, watched their data,
and followed their training. The filmclips which were used really show them
celebrating four days later, only after the successful splashdown of the
crew and the end of their official responsibility.



Also, for the sake of visual impact and dramatic effects, film has often
been misrepresented for what it was not. Viewers were told they were seeing
authentic footage of space events which were not actually on the screen.



Beginning with "For All Mankind", and copied by "Moon Shot", a striking view
of the reentry plasma trail behind a descending Gemini capsule was presented
as the rocket plume trail of an Apollo capsule heading for the Moon. The
film invokes a marvelous image of speed across Earth's surface, but the
Apollo's Saturn booster actually left no trail, and was never filmed since
there was no view in that direction.



To stress the dangers of early manned space shots, sequences of rocket
explosions are shown. Most of the explosions were identifiable as Jupiter
and Titan rockets which had no connection at all with the Mercury program.
But for colorful excitement and tension enhancers, they have been widely
presented as unsuccessful Mercury tests.



The most egregious misrepresentation in "Moon Shot" was during the treatment
of the Apollo-1 fire in 1967. As the narrator discusses the death of the
three astronauts inside their burning capsule, a video is running of flames
dancing behind a spacecraft window. TV critics who previewed the show called
the scene "wrenching", as indeed its producers had intended it to be. But
the video was actually a view from inside a Gemini capsule looking outward
during the flames of reentry from space, and it had nothing to do with the
Apollo fire. Instead, for emotional impact, the view was falsely described
and the viewers were deliberately deceived.



Some of these Apollo-11 historical video howlers have wider national
implications, beyond mere questions of TV documentary ethics and practices.
At the "Space Center Houston" museum developed for NASA by Disney
consultants and their contractors, the feature movie "On Human Destiny" uses
the false Gemini reentry plume for the Apollo lunar burn, then falsely
portrays the flight control team in an orgy of irresponsible celebration
immediately after the lunar touchdown, and then inaccurately overlays the
view of Armstrong's descent down the ladder with his later words about "one
small step". The film was reviewed and approved by NASA public affairs
officials, who evidently did not recognize the errors. But if this is the
level of Disney's historical reliability, it bodes ill for any similar
Disney history projects elsewhere.



Documentaries such as these shows have presented exciting views of the
dramatic historical events, but providing entertainment was clearly their
primary goal. Historical accuracy was repeatedly sacrificed to do so. These
measures certainly are acceptable when the goals are well understood, such
as in the delightfully entertaining Hollywood version of "The Right Stuff",
where all pretence of respecting the book's historical accuracy is
subordinated to clear-cut visual stereotypes and amusing
oversimplifications. And deadline-driven TV news programs often use stock
footage, not always carefully labeled as such, to "fill in" for unavailable
authentic scenes. But when TV programs pose as "true history" and are
presented as documentaries, a higher standard of authenticity should be
required.



The Apollo-11 anniversary programs showed again that such standards are not
universally met. Some programs, such as Discovery's "One Giant Leap", were
strikingly accurate, showing signs that some producers took the extra
trouble to "get it right", and knew how to do so. But the widespread
misrepresentations in other shows are more reminders that people should seek
truth where it can be found, and the TV screen, with its need for visual
excitement and compressed action, is not an environment always conducive to
historical accuracy.