By Seb Jenkins - January 29, 2025
September 5, 1972, was the first time a terrorist attack was broadcast live to a global audience - Tim Fehlbaum shines a light on the journalists behind the coverage.
In 1972, at the Munich Olympics, 11 members of the Israeli team were taken hostage by terrorists. Black September – the group behind the attack – had one demand, the release of 236 Palestinian prisoners. Failure to comply would result in the death of one hostage per hour. With no news team on the ground in Munich, ABC’s sports journalists took centre stage in one of the defining media moments of the 20th century. September 5 is a retelling of those events, told from the perspective of the crew behind the cameras.
In the modern world, information is digestible at the click of a button or the swipe of a screen. News is broadcast to our fingertips and inaccessibility is a notion of the past. If it can be seen, it can be filmed. And if it can be filmed, it can be shared. But information can also be gluttonous and misinformation spreads far easier in plain sight. In 1972, journalists did not have the luxury of limitless accessibility, and nor did the team covering the Munich Olympic disaster have any kind of precedent to prop themselves against. Without precedent, you must set precedent – and with that comes ground to break and mistakes to make.
When wet-behind-the-ears Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) steps into the control room to cover volleyball and boxing on September 5, 1972, little does he know, he is about to make broadcast history. Tasked with routine problems like changing cables, guzzling down coffee, and translating interviews, everything changes with the sound of gunshots in the distance. Unable to turn on the news for instant updates, Mason and his sports team come to a sudden realisation – they are the news.
With producer Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) and ABC Sports President Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) over his shoulder, Mason and his team are forced to transition from volleyball vox-pops to broadcasting a terrorist event to a global audience for the first time in history. In that lies the good and the bad for ABC – they may be first to the punch, but this has quite literally never been done before.
Leonie Benesch gives a particularly memorable performance as a German translator wrestling with the guilt of his country’s perceived failure so soon after the events of the Second World War. Ironically, she is the only fictionalised member of the core cast, but certainly a worthy inclusion to highlight the inadequacies of Munich security and the competing emotions of the German public.
Wrestling with the race to be right vs the fight to be first, Mason and Co find themselves treading the line between reporting the story and inserting themselves into it. Remember, when live reporting, even the terrorists can see everything you film…
Although the Munich Olympic disaster went on for over 23 hours, September 5 creates the feeling of real-time viewing. We follow Mason, Bader, and Arledge every step of the way through the smoky 70s corridors as they wrestle with the politics of media. Which news organisation has control over the feed? Can you broadcast a hostage murder live on
television with their families watching at home? Should a source be double-checked even in the pursuit of a scoop? Despite retelling a famous incident 50 years later, Tim Fehlbaum keeps things on a knife-edge throughout the 94-minute runtime, showcasing historical events that shaped the way we report to this day.
What we are left with is a gripping, fast-paced, thriller of a historic retelling that not online shines a light on horrors of the past, but also inadequacies that remain in the present day. While it never lingers or judges with the power of hindsight, September 5 leaves plenty of room to analyse the Munich Olympic Disaster’s legacy on modern day. Perhaps the biggest question it raises is this: Just because we can, does that mean we should?
Coming to cinemas February 6
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