National Press Club screens documentary on CBS News coverage of Tiananmen Square student protests

Editors Note: While the author was not in Beijing on June 4, 1989, she returned to rescue her dog from her apartment building near the square and then later covered the aftermath.

For 84 minutes, a rapt National Press Club audience was taken back decades to hear the words of Beijing college students longing for political reform without fear of a central government that later crushed their dreams and killed untold numbers on the dark of night of June 4, 1989.

Their conversations and trust in both American journalists to tell their story and China’s authoritarian regime under Deng Xiaoping to do the right thing were brought to life in “Tiananmen Tonight.”  The documentary film was screened at the Club on May 13.

Directed by Bestor Cram and Michael Streissguth, the film opens with an inside look at network TV news as it evolved from valuing journalistic excellence in foreign reporting to maximizing profits in competitions for ratings. Broadcast journalist Dan Rather took over from Walter Cronkite as the face of CBS Evening News, bringing a swashbuckling Texas bravado to newscasts from foreign capital cities into American living rooms. 

Helping Rather shake up TV news were journalists Susan Zirinsky and Tom Bettag, who attended the film screening and played key roles on Rather’s team enabling CBS Evening News to cover the Chinese student protests on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. 

Also on hand at the Club was journalist Bob Woodruff, who morphed from an attorney teaching students in Beijing to a top journalist and ABC News correspondent after helping speak Chinese to students as a translator for the CBS team.

Zirinsky, Bettag and Woodruff feature prominently in the film recalling their roles in CBS's coverage of the protests. After the film they held a panel discussion moderated by Zach Cohen, a Bloomberg journalist and National Press Club secretary.

Answering Cohen’s questions, Zirinsky spoke of having no fear at the time in Beijing. “In China, this thing was so unbelievable,” she said. “I’m grateful to be a part of it. It was very exciting.”

Woodruff recalled how demonstrations evolved from initially public mourning of the death of Hu Yaobang, a Chinese official seen as pro-Democratic, into protests with demands from youth and later others for socialist reforms.

“The students were just talking more and more about it. I just couldn't believe the guts that they had because it wasn't the image that we had of Communist countries at the time. I never thought they'd be able to talk so freely like that and they just were not being stopped by anybody,” Woodruff said.

The film tracks how Chinese workers and others joined. Eventually, the Chinese government cracked down. Bette Bao Lord, wife of then-U.S. Ambassador Winston Lord, has a fleeting appearance trying to negotiate with government officials on behalf of CBS. Ultimately, CBS lost and Rather’s broadcasts from Beijing ended.

The network’s reporters continued covering Tiananmen Square and the violent suppression. Woodruff told the audience about seeing bodies brought into the university and placed on ice blocks.