By Paul Farhi and Lisa De Moraes
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday , April 15, 2000 ; C04

The little boy is almost unnaturally commanding. Wagging his finger at the camera, he scolds: "You are saying that I want to go
to Cuba . . . but I'm telling you now that I don't want to go to Cuba."

By now, it's been replayed hundreds of times. In the home video shot by his Miami kin and released to Spanish-language
network Univision, Elian Gonzalez defied his father and asserted his intention to remain in Miami.

Despite its amateurish quality, the video was actually a slick piece of propaganda for Miami's anti-Castro community. It
presented Elian as somehow the master of his fate, speaking up for his desires. But it also raised questions about child
exploitation: Could any 6-year-old, cast into so tumultuous a situation, speak affirmatively about preferring a future without his
father unless he'd been manipulated off-camera?

For the media, that left a no-win choice: Put a hot piece of video on the air and be accused of abetting the victimization of a
child, or show restraint by declining to telecast it.

"There is an inevitability about it," said Tom Kunkel, the incoming dean of the University of Maryland College of Journalism and
a former Miami Herald editor. "It could bite you in the butt if you stand on principle [and decline to run the video] because it's
going to be in the other guy's paper or the other guy's station. . . . In the current environment, not all of the various media are
being operated by the most thoughtful individuals, and this stuff is going to be out there, one way or the other."

It's not clear whether the media actually gave the issue much thought. Univision was first to run the tape early Thursday
morning; the network got it directly from Elian's Miami custodians. ABC's "Good Morning America"--which weeks earlier had
brokered a deal with Elian's Miami relatives to run an exclusive interview with the lad--got tipped that Univision would be airing
the tape. "GMA" was therefore able to beat its morning news competitors when the tape became available, rushing it on the air
at 7 a.m., with Cuban-born news reader Antonio Mora providing on-the-spot translation.

By midmorning it was all over the cable news networks--MSNBC, Fox News Channel, CNN--not to mention countless Web
sites, including Washingtonpost.com via its relationship with MSNBC.com.

"When they [Elian's caretakers] made the decision to put this tape out, then we, I think, were entirely appropriate to run the
tape," said MSNBC's Steve Capus, executive producer of "The News With Brian Williams."

Asking Elian's father for permission to run the video was not an issue, Capus said, even though Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who is in
Washington trying to recover his son, has said repeatedly that no one but himself has the authority to allow Elian to be put in
front of a camera.

"I'm not sure that there is any reason to reach out to him," Capus said. "He has made his feelings known about the tape; he's
accused the family of doing harm to the boy. My feeling is that the decision to broadcast the tape is not harming the child. If
there is any question about harm, it is focused squarely on the family's decision and the way they handled this."

It could be argued that the tape was newsworthy because it showed the child in an entirely new light. Three weeks earlier, in
the carefully orchestrated "Good Morning America" interview, viewers saw Happy Elian, standing on his head with barefoot
Diane Sawyer; Sad Elian, painting pictures of a boat being washed over by waves and a little boy in an inner tube being
miraculously kept afloat by kind dolphins; Timid Elian, neatly dressed in a white dress shirt and blue slacks.

This time, however, viewers saw Bold Elian, decked out in a red T-shirt and striped shorts, his neck draped with gold chains,
telling his dad where to get off and glancing periodically at someone off-camera.

"It was not even a close call in this particular case," CBS News President Andrew Heyward said yesterday. "While we do have
standards, they are not blind rules to be followed without discussion and consideration. Here, the newsworthiness outweighs
the claim to privacy and any legal claim the father might have. And I don't believe that showing the tape adds measurably to the
damage that has been inflicted on the boy, not by the media, but by the situation."

But Kunkel sees it otherwise. "It's personally unconscionable to me--that's my opinion as a citizen and a parent. [But] as a
journalist, it's not as clear-cut an ethical question."

Meanwhile, some child-behavior experts have lent credence to media claims that the tape is news because it may show a child
being manipulated for political propaganda.

Robert Butterworth, a Los Angeles psychologist, called it "a hostage video" in a New York Daily News story.

"This is what's called the Stockholm syndrome," Butterworth said, a reference to situations in which hostages develop a bond
with their captors.

                                 © 2000 The Washington Post Company