Word: grenada
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...evade the U.S. military's ban on all reporters during the first days of fighting, ABC-TV Correspondent Steve Shepard and Producer Tim Ross spent $5,000 to hire a fishing boat that would carry them the 160 miles from Barbados to Grenada. "It was awful," said Ross. "We spent 30 hours on a 35-ft. boat in 15-ft. seas." As they neared Carriacou, a small island just north of Grenada, the Navy forced them back...
Since only a small handful of journalists, including TIME Correspondent Bernard Diederich, had managed to get onto Grenada as the Marines landed, the vacuum caused by the censorship was quickly filled by amateurs telling their stories over ham radios to eager ears in the U.S. Notable among these was Mark Barettella, 22, of Ridgefield, N.J., a student at St. George's University medical school. While U.S. military communiques were reporting relatively light resistance, Barettella throughout the first two days of the operation broadcast vivid accounts of combat around his room at the school; he included descriptions of heavy firing...
There was little danger of that. When the swarm finally landed in Grenada's capital of St. George's, the cadres of Cuban guerrilla fighters, rumored to be in the hills, were nowhere to be found. Grenadians, who cheerfully underwent interview after interview, all seemed to think the invasion had been a splendid show, or that liberation from Marxist rule was a good thing. Each of the networks had a dozen or more staffers on the scene, and more than 150 news organizations had at least one, but there were no scoops to be had. Even if there...
...liberal Washington Post denounced the restrictions as "inexcusable." The conservative Chicago Tribune was hardly less angry: "Freedom was badly served by banning journalists from Grenada during those crucial days...
Such protests won support gress. Michigan's Democratic Donald Riegle formally proposed, and the full Senate agreed by a vote of 53 to 18, that "restrictions imposed upon the press in Grenada shall cease." At a House com mittee hearing, NBC Commentator John Chancellor said that the censorship was not based on military need but "got into the area of politics...