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July 29, 1998 In his mystery novel Tourist Season, Carl Hiaasen creates an intriguing scenario. In the opening chapter a red Samsonite Tourister suitcase is found floating in Biscayne Bay. Inside are most of the remains of the missing Chamber of Commerce president. An autopsy reveals he didn’t die from dismemberment. He died from suffocation because a small, green toy rubber alligator was shoved down his throat. Tourist Season is macabre, cynical and hilarious. A bizarre series of murders against tourism officials and tourists drive the narrative. The novel also plays to a key element of working in newspapers in Florida - crime against tourism is international news. This is playing out in Orlando this month. A series of hotel break-ins has gained notice as the suspect keeps upping the ante. At first, he would target couples in the hotel rooms and simply rob them. Then he began making them strip and perform sex acts on each other. In the most recent attacks, he would also rape the woman. The voyeuristic strip show item made the CNN reports in the United States, but the most recent rape attack became international news when a British couple were involved. Central Florida and Walt Disney World are popular vacation destinations and more than 1 million British tourists visit here every year. The morning after the most recent attack was reported, our newspaper began getting calls from British newspapers. The journalists across the ocean wanted to get whatever photos we had. The requests were straightforward; Did we have photos of the suspect ? (nooooo, the police haven’t caught him yet.) Did we have photos of the victims? (no, it’s against the law in Florida to identify a rape victim). Did we have photos of the hotel? (huh?) The calls kept coming in. The photo editor got to the point he wouldn’t answer the phone; yet another British accent was bound to be on the other line, trying to work a deal for us to shot a picture for them, or to move to police artist composite drawing directly because they didn’t want to wait for the Associated Press service. Our editor said he was tempted to tell them that sure, he would just drop his regular work, putting out our newspaper to help them; they’d just have to pony up about $1,000. Our editor said that as a joke, but the truth is several of the British newspapers might have paid him well, if not a full grand. Some of the newest members of our staff were surprised at the persistence of the British press. They just won’t stop and they want everything. It is quite the clash in cultures when this kind of story goes global. I wasn’t as surprised and had, in fact, expected the calls to start coming in. We have dealt with other stories that the British press were interested in, including the time when Princess Diana brought the boys to Disney World. I also talked with some British photographers during an assignment in Europe a few years ago and it became apparent that their business is much different than ours. My traveling companions were amazed that my newspaper, with a Sunday circulation of close to 400,000, was considered a fairly large newspaper in the U.S. They worked for newspaper with circulations of over a million copies daily. And their newspapers were national publications - not regional papers like most in the U.S. This makes newspapers in Britain much more like our television networks. They compete against each other for a large, national audience. The newspaper prize exclusive stories and rely much more heavily on celebrity coverage and sensationalized crime and sex stories. One photo assignment these photographers told me about was called "door stepping." For this, they would wait in front of a the home of a newsworthy person - near the doorstep - and wait for them to come out. It could be a politician, an entertainer or an ordinary citizen caught in the story of the moment. Of course, I can’t cast stones at this practice since the U.S. media has developed a penchant for the "media circus" where hundreds of still and television photographers descend on the hot spot of the moment for a brief, intense bit of overkill. The only difference is that "door stepping" seemed to the standard way to cover any story in Great Britain. I must say that I do admire some of the determination shown by photographers working in Great Britain. One of my favorites is Harry Benson, who always seems to get an interesting photo from his assignments. I’ve also heard that you don’t want to be a photographer in competition with Benson because he’s been known to tip the scales in his favor. A suspect has been arrested in the rape case based on the British tourist’s identification from a police photo line-up. That identification was followed by another, real life line-up after the victim saw the suspect on television. She identified him again, but the suspect is free on bail since he has witnesses placing him in Atlanta the night of the attack. The couple has returned to England. A second man is in custody by another law enforcement agency. He resemlbes the first suspect and may be the rapist. The real story will take longer than a day or two to figure out. Tom Burton July 29, 1998
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Tom
Burton
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Contributor
since 1998
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Behind
the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism |
