Aspects of Elian

By: Jennie D'Amato AND HOW THEY PLAYED

On April 22, only an hour after Associated Press free-lance photographer Alan Diaz captured an image of the screaming 6-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez being removed by armed federal agents from his great-uncle's Miami home, the picture was splashed across the media and being held aloft by protesters. Eight hours later, a very different picture of a smiling Elian, reunited with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, was being circulated.
"I knew I was hostage to both images when they came through," said Joe Elbert, director of photography at The Washington Post. "I saw them as propaganda." The second image was taken by a U.S. government agent with an instant camera, and distributed by Juan-Miguel Gonzalez's attorney, Gregory B. Craig. "We ran both images equally as large," Elbert continued. "The reader needs to [be allowed to] make up his or her own mind. These are two very different tellings of the story in eight hours."
Managing Editor Steve Coll adds that the paper believes giving equal play to the two photos "expressed both ends of the narrative."
Which image to run became an ethical headache for photo editors meeting their deadlines across the country. The Boston Globe and The New York Post chose to run Diaz's removal picture on Page One, while The New York Times and New York's Daily News led with the picture of the reunion. The Miami Herald ran both -- with the seizure of the child as the dominant image.
Besides The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times appears to be the only other large metro daily to run the images at equal sizes. "The first picture was arguably out of context and needed to be balanced," said Steve Stroud, deputy director of photography at the L.A. Times. "Clearly the picture with the agent is more dramatic, but it is only a small part of the story that unfolded that day." Stroud praises The New York Times for running the removal image inside the paper and leading with the reunion picture, as well as for pulling together a sidebar of media criticism about how the dailies handled which image to run. "I don't know anyone who doesn't have an opinion, and it's important that the news media maintain their objectivity -- to clearly identify both sides of the issue," he said.
No journalists recorded the reunion of father and son, as access to Andrews Air Force Base was denied them, said Hyung won Kang, administrative photo editor of the AP's Washington bureau. "It's typical for us not to be allowed in there without a 'reason to enter,'" Kang said.
The fact that the snapshot at the base was taken by a government agent raised questions about whether the emotions expressed by Elian were coerced. By contrast, Diaz's image of an agent reaching for a terrified Elian in the arms of Donato Dalrymple, the fisherman who rescued him from the ocean five months earlier, is clearly spontaneous.
Nevertheless, some editors believed the father-and-son reunion photograph offered the final outcome of the long, emotional day. "I felt the story was about the family reunion at the end of the conflict," said Edward Kosner, editor in chief of the New York Daily News, which used a cropped version of the photograph as a front and back page wraparound as its sole cover art on April 23. "There was a freshness about it."
How did Diaz, a 43-year-old of Cuban descent who has been described by his peers as "in the backyard since Day One," manage to get so close to the family?
"Alan Diaz is beyond tenacious, he is true paparazzi -- and I mean that in the best possible sense -- in that he made this his story," said Roman Lyskowski, deputy director of photography at The Miami Herald. Diaz camped outside the Gonzalez's home, day and night, to the incredulity of other photographers, said Lyskowski. Eventually, he was invited inside. While some might have resented Diaz's proximity, no one has accused him of coloring his images with any bias. The only incident that caused eyebrows to be raised in newsrooms, said Lyskowski, was when Diaz went on the record to reporters, that he had heard Elian say he didn't want to go back to Cuba. "That was a little too close, ethically," said Lyskowski.
Diaz managed to secure such high levels of trust in -- and therefore access to -- the Gonzalez family, that it became apparent that many of his images needed to be circulated through a pool system. "The Gonzalez family agreed to the pool situation," said Bob Pearson, chief photographer for AFP/North America. "Diaz was tight with the family, so they asked that he be the pool photographer. We agreed." But an AP public-relations person refutes that comment. "Pool photographers were rotated through AP, Reuters, and AFP," she said.
Diaz, who is described as a likable guy, downplays his intimacy with the family and said he was treated the same as other members of the press -- notably, on the eve of the arrival of federal agents.
"At 11 or 12 p.m., or 1 a.m., Lazaro [Elian's great uncle] came out and said to [all of] us, 'If something happens, I wish you would come in,'" said Diaz in a telephone interview from his home in Miami. "No, I didn't have a tip, but I had a hunch. An instinct. I'd been following this for five months. I hadn't slept in days. I couldn't sleep that night. I was on it, on it. My guts told me that night I'd have to be ready. I was tuned in. I changed my strobes, cleaned every lens. I was ready for this. Something told me this was going to happen."
Near dawn, Diaz said, he heard a sound, "like horses stampeding over grass. 'It's going down,' I said to the guy next to me. I turned on my camera, my flash, set my shutter, and jumped over the fence and went through the front door. An NBC cameraman got in also. It all happened very, very fast. Two family members were screaming, 'They're here!' I asked, 'Where's the kid?' 'He's in there,' they said, pushing me to the bedroom. The NBC guy, Tony Zumbado, was on the floor in the living room. I lost him in that minute. I went to the bedroom, but they were not there. I went to the other bedroom. I banged on the door and Lazaro's wife [Angela] opened it. Elian was in the closet in Donato's arms. No, Donato wasn't tipped off to be there to protect Elian. He was just there. I stood behind them, and I waited. I had no fear. Not at all. Then there was chaos."
According to Diaz, agents broke down the bedroom door and burst into the room with their guns raised. Diaz said the agents told him to "back off," but he stood, his back against the wall, shooting photographs as agents grabbed the boy. As the agents left the room, Diaz said he started to follow. "'Back off!'" an agent screamed. I stopped," he recalled.
When the agents drove off, Diaz walked to the back of the house. "Not the front, because it was over," he said. As he walked, he started to smell the tear gas that floated in from the street. "It nearly killed me."
Minutes after taking the picture, Diaz said, he sent the disc to the AP. Of the protesters who got ahold of his image within the hour, displaying it on the streets of Little Havana, he said: "The only way people could have gotten that image is off the Internet." Senior AP National Photo Editor Jodie Steck in New York confirms that. "Once that disc left Alan's hands, the image was no longer in his possession. That image was on the air and on the Internet within the hour. The photograph's -- and the photographer's -- integrity stands."
AP distributed the images to AFP and Reuters as pool pictures. AFP and Reuters say that Vin Alabiso, AP executive photo editor, then tried to renege on the pool deal. "He called and said as far as he was concerned, he didn't consider the raid photos to be pool pictures," said Maria Mann, photo director of AFP North America. According to an AP representative, the agreement it had with Reuters and AFP was to pool Diaz's images, if there was to be a pre-determined transfer of Elian. These pictures, however, were exclusive to Diaz and the AP, but mistakenly labeled "pool" by an AP photo editor.
"The agreement was that anything Diaz shot inside the house would be a pool photo," said Mann. The AP representative refutes that. "Alan got there first, was first into the house based on his instincts and his own initiative. There were no pool rights on this one."
In any case, AFP and Reuters say they refused to stop distributing the images. AP said Reuters and AFP could keep Diaz's images, as the mistake had been on the part of an AP editor. "I basically thanked Vinnie for honoring the pool arrangement," said Pat Benic, picture editor for Reuters/America.
By terms of his contract with AP, Diaz does not own the rights to these final images. However, Diaz said the AP paid him handsomely for the pictures, which virtually every media outlet quickly purchased. "I was working for the AP," he said. "They have the rights to the film. But they've taken care of me. I have no complaints. I'm really happy."
Once he has recovered from the ordeal that he said has drained him, Diaz is thinking about traveling north, to continue taking pictures of Elian. "I'd love to take more pictures of him," he said. "Elian knows me. He'd feel comfortable with me. He's seen me lots of times."

D'Amato is news editor of PDN Online (http://www.pdn-pix.com), the Web site operated by "Photo District News," a New York-based magazine. Joe Strupp contributed to the reporting of this story.

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(copyright: Editor & Publisher May 1, 2000)