Broadcasting a crisis for the world to see

ON SEPT. 5, 1972, A 32-YEAR-OLD PRODUCER NAMED Geoffrey S. Mason was working in a control room for ABC Sports in Munich while 12 hostages, including several members of the Israeli Olympic delegation, were being held in a building nearby.

- OLIVIA B. WAXMAN

As Mason's team was in the midst of covering the breaking news-having pivoted from their regularly scheduled athletic programming-the doors suddenly burst open and Mason found himself staring through the cigarette haze at German police machine guns pointed straight at his face. The Germans were upset that one of the network's cameras was showing that German sharpshooters had taken positions on the roof above the hostages, threatening to thwart a rescue effort.

The camera was quickly turned off, but Mason's indelible memory of that confrontation lives on, not only in his mind but also in the new movie September 5, in limited theaters Dec. 13. Directed by Tim Fehlbaum, the drama recounts how journalists broadcast the act of terror live to millions.

It's the second feature film released this century about the Munich massacre, following Steven Spielberg's Oscarnominated 2005 historical epic Munich. And the 1999 film One Day in September won the Oscar for best documentary feature. But unlike those films, September 5 is, like Spotlight, The Post, and She Said in recent years, a journalism movie at heart. And its arrival is timely, given the prominent role of hostages in Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza.

The movie is constructed around the ABC Sports team's about-face from athletics to terrorism, centering the perspective of the broadcasters who sneaked cameras into the Olympic Village to film the frenetic scene. Mason, one of the producers calling the shots that day, played in the movie by Past Lives actor John Magaro, consulted on the script co-written by Fehlbaum, Moritz Binder, and Alex David. As he recalls, "I remember thinking, good Lord: We're supposed to be watching Mark Spitz go for seven gold medals and Olga Korbut-the new face of Russian gymnastics-and I'm now watching people crawl across a roof getting ready to stage a military assault on terrorists."