“5. September” reports on ABC’s dramatic coverage of the 1972 Olympics massacre: NPR

For the filming of his film, director Tim Fehlbaum’s team sourced television sets from the 1970s from collectors, museums and television studio storage rooms September 5th.

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The 1972 Munich Olympics began under the banner of hope and peace, hosted by a country looking to start a new chapter nearly three decades after the fall of the Nazi regime.

Instead, these Summer Games were marred by tragedy when armed militants from the Palestinian organization Black September took members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage. When it all ended, eleven Israelis, five Palestinians and a West German officer were dead.

ABC Sports was already on site, covering the sporting events from its own production complex outside the Olympic Village. As the situation developed, the department made the dramatic decision to broadcast the developments live.

These events are recounted in director Tim Fehlbaum’s new Golden Globe-nominated film September 5th. Set almost entirely in the ABC Sports control room, the film focuses on the real-time challenges faced by the broadcasters as they improvised to bring audiences as close to the story as possible.

“It was this group of sports reporters that had to make this change,” Fehlbaum told NPR’s A Martínez. “They had this almost innocent perspective. They had no training or experience in crisis reporting. And so they made all of these decisions on the spot.”

ABC Sports was then led by President Roone Arledge, played in the film by Peter Sarsgaard. Arledge fought vigorously to have his department lead the story and refused to give in to pressure from ABC News to take over reporting from areas thousands of miles away in the United States

Among the team’s biggest challenges was ensuring that live reporting did not inadvertently communicate law enforcement actions to armed extremists – through television screens accessible to the hostage takers – and potentially broadcast hostage killings around the world.

Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) was a young producer at ABC Sports when he played a crucial role in deciding what to show the world about the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. September 5th Director Tim Felhbaum consulted with Mason, a 26-time Emmy Award winner, for his film.

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This groundbreaking moment changed the way media reported breaking news in real time, as journalists grappled with how evolving technologies might impact the subjects of coverage and the audiences consuming media coverage. The show was also an early example of news becoming infotainment.

Arledge, who created primetime Monday Night Football broadcasts, won an Emmy Award for his coverage of the 1972 Munich Games and was inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame. He produced a total of 10 Olympic Games.

As part of his research for the film, Fehlbaum interviewed Geoffrey Mason, one of the few surviving members of the ABC Sports team that covered the events. At that time, he was hired as coordinating producer of ABC Sports’ 24-hour coverage.

“Everything they did was against the ticking clock. Correct. That’s basically the essence of live reporting, that you’re constantly working against the ticking clock,” said Fehlbaum, recalling one of his exchanges with Mason.

Actress Leonie Benesch plays the sociable German interpreter Marianne Gebhard – a composite character September 5th. As an interpreter for ABC Sports, she broke the news to the team as it developed.

Jürgen Olczyk

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Jürgen Olczyk

Fehlbaum’s team obtained plans of the ABC Sports control room and images from the period so that the images on the screen were “100% accurate.” All of the equipment shown in the film is vintage technology from the period, acquired from collectors and museums, and the actors were trained to use it.

The Swiss-based director recalled how production buyer Johannes Pfaller once told him that all of the early 1970s technology that still existed in Europe was now in the film studio in Munich.

“I wanted these devices to work because I wanted the actors to be able to interact with this technology,” Fehlbaum explained. “So if John Magaro gave direction to the monitor wall, it could actually have an effect on the wall. Those phones would really ring. And I wanted everything that comes from outside to the actors in front of the camera to really happen.”

Roone Arledge (played by Peter Sarsgaard), the leftist, almost single-handedly revolutionized television news, introducing the equivalent of live streaming when ABC Sports covered the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Jürgen Olczyk

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September 5th makes extensive use of original ABC footage. Securing access to the footage initially resulted in the film being released in English and supported by an international production team supported by Sean Penn and his partners John Ira Palmer and John Wildermuth.

Combined with a precisely written script, the footage conveys a sense of urgency and dramatic tension, all packed into a small space.

It is also what sets it apart September 5th from previous cinematic treatments such as that of Steven Spielberg Munich (2005), which focuses on the aftermath, or Kevin Macdonald’s documentary A day in September (1999).

Cameraman Markus Förderer, behind the camera, and director Tim Fehlbaum, to his right, on the set of Paramount Pictures’ September 5th.

Kenneth MacDonald

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Kenneth MacDonald

“I thought the media aspect was an interesting story or aspect of that tragic day that today’s audience could learn more about. And we wanted to offer today’s audience an opportunity to think about our complex media environment from that historical perspective,” Fehlbaum said.

“The moral and ethical issues are still the same and are discussed every day. For example, can we show violence on television or how quickly do we let something out just to be first? Or how many verified sources do we need?”

The broadcast version of this story was produced by Barry Gordemer. The digital version was edited by Obed Manuel.