You might think, from watching tonight’s
“Frontline” (PBS, 10 p.m., check local listings) that the Hartford Courant is a religious place. Its reporters are seen standing for a moment of silence as tonight’s report begins.
It was the national moment of silence and bell ringing for the 26 victims of the Newtown killings — one that should have had 27 bells if you were to include the mother of the gunman (28 if you want to include him, though nobody does).
The Courant, where I spent 25 years, is a place religious about covering the big story. In fact, they throw all their resources at one story and keep it going as long as they can. The story in Newtown, a town they never routinely covered, warranted the attention for once. And I have to admit it’s nostalgic for me to see my old office and some of the people I worked with featured so prominently. (Also: That garish mural on the wall; the empty desks; Flower Street between the back entrance and the parking lot).
“Frontline” has been known to work in conjunction with print reporters before, usually figures from the Times or the Post. Rarely has it ever been like this, with cameras essentially following two Courant reporters as they go out on interviews, converse with editors or drive around talking to eachother.
Give the paper credit for being the only ones to go out of their way to get some information about Adam Lanza, his mother and their family, going up to her old New Hampshire stomping grounds to talk to old friends, borrow old home video footage, and read hundreds of emails that the amazingly cooperative interview subjects allow them access to.
In the end, we really don’t learn that much more about Adam Lanza, though we do see a lot more pictures of him growing up. Once more, his father is off the hook and out of sight altogether while his mother, Adam’s first shooting victim, takes whatever parental blame there is — mostly for having guns around the house as a hobby.
The two reporters are fun to watch. Alaine Griffin is methodical and thoughtful and Josh Kovner is this great, old-school, grey-haired reporter who scowls and has some follow up questions. He’s like Richard Belzer on “Law & Order: SVU.” If he was on a scripted show about hardbitten journalists, I’d watch every week.
The editors are a little stiff in the thing, though. And there’s no hint that the garishly painted newsroom is actually a backdrop for a local Fox affiliate also owned by the Tribune (and which seems to get most of the resources). If they were actually going out on stories like this (instead of working the phones as is more common), they’d have Fox61 cameras with them or have to shoot their own video to hand over to them when they return. And there’d be a lot more talks about graphics.
Either the “Frontline” people weren’t exposed to such things or they cut them out.
They do some interesting things occasionally in the footage, as when they mention Adam’s sixth birthday party of new friends in Newtown shortly after his family moved there and how many first graders were invited: 26. It’s told at just the moment a camera passes the memorial of angels representing the killed students and teachers — also 26.
The mixed diagnosis of Adam Lanza, from Asperger’s to something called sensory integration disorder, may not be as important as the policy question that isn’t tackled by this particular story: the hardware he so easily had on hand.
That may be addressed in the show that precedes it, “Guns in America” (PBS, 9 p.m., check local listings) or in part two of the “Frontline,” “Newtown Divided,” which presumably will deal with the gun lobbiest groups that had headquartered in that town.