6. Massacre At The Munich Games
Among the earliest entries on this list, live television was not as easily done before the 1980s outside of a studio. Held in Munich, Germany during the 1972 Munich Games, a terrorist group known as Black September, held hostage and killed Israeli soldiers. Representing the interests of Palestine, the group had initially hoped to have a number of prisoners freed but things quickly went south. One of the earliest examples of a live broadcast of a hostage crisis, the way that the news reporters framed their coverage gave up far too much information to the hostage-takers, who used their own television broadcast in the hotel room where they were to better understand police strategies. Unlike some of these broadcasts where you don’t see much, through the hotel windows camera people were able to capture some disturbing images, including men being hit in heads with AK-47s. The attempts to free the Israelis went badly in part due to the hostage-takers being well informed and due to errors on part of the rescuers. All eleven athletes were murdered.
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