War Dead Brought Home in Broadcast

Long after ABC News’ controversial “Nightline” broadcast had ended late Friday night, new acquaintances Jen Kelly and Abby Gold stood amid the swirl of Times Square, still bustling after midnight, and talked about Iraq.

Kelly, 27, an artist, had come from her nearby studio just to watch the “Nightline” solemn roll call of American troops who had died in Iraq -- more than 700 names and faces scrolling by for 40 minutes on ABC’s giant TV screen above the square.

“I wanted to pay respect,” she said. “I thought it was pretty disrespectful to try to make it a political thing not to broadcast it.”

Gold, 40, who was on her way to go dancing, had stopped to ask Kelly what the fuss was about.

Her verdict on Iraq and why “Nightline” had become a flashpoint in the debate: “It’s like a bad relationship. Everyone’s hot to react to anything.”

Earlier Friday, the debate over what “Nightline” called a tribute to the fallen U.S. servicemen and women had reached a fever pitch, as Sen. John McCain, a longtime prisoner of war in Vietnam, protested the decision by conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. to pull the program from seven ABC stations it owns, calling the move “deeply offensive” and “unpatriotic.”

Mark Hyman, a Sinclair vice president and captain in the Naval Reserve, countered that “standing on principle can sometimes be a lonely endeavor.... We have a principled view that we don’t want to see the memories [of those who have given their lives] tarnished” by a program Sinclair called an antiwar political statement.

Sinclair’s Maryland phone lines were jammed as liberal groups such as MoveOn.org urged members to protest. Meanwhile, ABC was able to line up alternative outlets in six of the seven cities where Sinclair declined to show the program.

Koppel, in closing Friday’s broadcast, said that the “reading tonight of those 721 names was neither intended to provoke opposition to the war nor was it meant as an endorsement. Some of you doubt that. You are convinced that I am opposed to the war. I’m not, but that’s beside the point. I am opposed to sustaining the illusion that war can be waged by the sacrifice of a few, without burdening the rest of us in any way.”

Of the power that simple pictures had taken on, Kelly said: “That’s how everyone understands things today. We’re such a visual society.” Times Square, she said, seemed a particularly appropriate place to absorb those images.

On a traffic island just below the ABC broadcast was another competing TV screen, that of the Armed Forces Recruiting Station, for decades a powerful symbol of American military might.

The faces of the Iraq war dead flashed silently by in odd counterpoint to dozens of other brightly lighted advertising signs also vying for the attention: the Toyota sign above, the Wrigley’s gum sign to the right.

Instead of Koppel’s solemn voice, Times Square viewers heard the usual chaos of sirens, raucous shouts of groups of teenagers and city workers erecting barricades for a charity run the following day.

A young woman distractedly watched the photos of men and women, most in uniform, while listening to her cellphone, before moving on. A few people stopped but quickly left, saying they didn’t want to cast a pall over their night on the town.

Rich Knox, a 42-year-old artist from Manhattan, sat on a curb, smoking, and watched the broadcast because, he said, “it seemed like something to do.” Others had come specifically to make a statement, including a woman with a votive candle, which she obligingly relighted for a TV crew that wanted to interview her.

Keith Duley, a 32-year-old carpenter from the Bronx, and his fiancee, Madelyn Peralta, 24, stood silently in front of the restaurant Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., eyes fixed on the screen.

As the faces flashed by, Duley, who said he was against the war, said that although he didn’t know anyone fighting in Iraq, “I still feel for them.” He was particularly taken by the ages of those whose pictures were being shown. “So many people have not even hit 30 yet,” he said. “And we still can’t get any answers about why we’re over there fighting.”

Kelly, the artist who lives near the square, said she didn’t think the country should have gone into Iraq, “but we can’t pull out.”

Showing the pictures of the dead, she said, can get people talking about what otherwise might seem “an abstract idea in a faraway place. And when people talk about things, that’s when solutions are arrived at. This needs to be out in the open.”

As the broadcast ended, the crowd dispersed.

Kelly and Gold kept talking.