To view a portion of the ABC Nightly News footage of Michael E. Bongart's 1968 rescue while serving in Vietnam, visit www.real.com/ to download the required software. Then visit http://realcontent. vanderbilt.edu/ramgen/media/register/bongart.rm to download a brief clip of a bandaged and disoriented Bongart in a medical evacuation helicopter.


by Jessica Howard
It took Michael E. Bongart 34 years to see the ABC Nightly News broadcast of his dramatic rescue from a downed helicopter. The Vietnam vet might have never seen it if wasn’t for the 37,700 broadcast tapes — the world’s most extensive collection of network news — that exists within Vanderbilt’s TV News Archive.

Unbeknownst to the wounded and disoriented soldier, a cameraman rode along on a medical evacuation helicopter that eluded enemy fire to save Bongart and others wounded Oct. 4, 1968. The extraordinary footage was seen in homes across America four days later. Bongart soon met another soldier in an army hospital who was rescued with him. That soldier’s mother had seen her son on television, and subsequently was how Bongart became aware of the footage.

He left the army four years later and called the network, but the tedious search to locate the footage proved to be cost-prohibitive. Bongart gave up his quest until last year. While at his 10th reunion at Princeton Theological Seminary, he learned of Vanderbilt’s TV News Archive through a conversation with one of the attendees.

This summer Bongart went online, located the segment within minutes and was soon sent a copy of the tape on loan from Vanderbilt.

He finally was able to confirm that indeed the footage showed him — in obvious pain — with a bobbing, bandaged head for about 10 seconds. Part of the grainy black-and- white footage also showed Bongart’s downed chopper sitting upright in a rice field, and the wounded soldiers being drug to safety. The only noise heard in the four-minute long segment was the sound of rotating helicopter blades.

“The news is sort of a shared history among the American people,” John Lynch, director of the TV News Archive said. “Every news item has personal significance for someone.”

Since 1968, daily news broadcasts from each of the three major networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — have been recorded, indexed and preserved for future review, research and study by the TV News Archives. Since 1989, CNN and ABC’s Nightline have also been recorded. And since 1995, the staff at the archive began producing detailed abstracts for each segment, including the names of each identified source.

The archive’s Web site [http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/] was launched in 1994 and underwent a major revision earlier this year. The site allows one to search from very general to extremely specific, typically retrieving matches in a matter of seconds.

For example, one could easily find all references to Osama bin Laden prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by simply searching his name. From 899 items found bearing his name, the earliest reference to bin Laden was found Oct. 24, 1996, and the last reference before the attacks was found Aug. 30, 2001.

“The original site was, by today’s standards, a primitive engine,” said Marshall Breeding, library technical officer and the site’s creator. “Now we’ve put everything in a single, searchable database that makes for the kind of search environment people expect on the Web these days.”

Anyone can use the search engine, although each is required to register to use the site, and tapes are loaned through a sliding scale fee, depending upon the user. Members of the Vanderbilt community may order half-hour tapes for $25, or $12 per news segment. Tapes may be viewed by the Vanderbilt community for no charge at the TV News Archive office in 704 Baker Building.

Not including use by the Vanderbilt community, Lynch speculates that the archive averages approximately 500 tape requests each year, which is comprised largely of scholars doing academic research. Up until the Sept. 11 attacks, the most requested recent broadcast was of former President Bill Clinton denying he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, said Lynch.

Breeding hopes that through a recent $100,000 grant by the National Science Foundation and the anticipated acceptance of a $365,000 National Endowment of the Humanities grant proposal, the entire collection will one day be digitized and viewable via the Internet through streaming video.

“That is the vision we have for the archive,” he said.

The Library of Congress has recognized the archive’s value, and has been purchasing copies of select news broadcasts since 1986. The archive’s collection — a function of Vanderbilt’s library — is so extensive that sometimes the networks themselves call upon the archive to request early footage that even they don’t have, said Lynch.

“The networks almost have a split personality when the archives are concerned,” said Lynch. “They appreciate what we are doing, but the existence of our tapes are also seen as a possible threat. They worry about people misusing the tapes.”

Under the fair use copyright law, Vanderbilt’s news archivists can legally tape broadcasts and lend copies out for research, but cannot give users permission to do anything beyond viewing a copy.

CBS unsuccessfully challenged the archive’s taping of news broadcast in a 1973 lawsuit. In 1976, the Copyright Act was passed, known to those familiar with the case as the “Vanderbilt Clause.” The clause allows nonprofits like the library to legally tape broadcasts if they are opened up to a wide, scholarly audience or to the general public.

Bongart wrote a letter to the archive staff this summer thanking them for their service, and enclosed, along with a modest donation, a copy of an article from his home newspaper in Ohio that detailed his journey to find the footage of his rescue.

Posted on 10/29/02 at 10 a.m.