In 1980 I moved in as a tenant into a house in San Jose, CA that had cable TV. In June 1980 CNN cable news became a new channel covering news 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This format had never been tried before.
On September 22, 1980 the Iran Iraq War started. CNN unlike the nightly news was eager to obtain film footage from the Persian Gulf. The way I recall it, on the 23rd or 24th, I was standing 5 feet in front of my TV watching reporting about this outbreak of war in the Persian Gulf, around 11 AM.
A reporter started showing a row of helicopters from right to left across a airstrip, with the video camera on the other side of this airstrip. This female reporter was saying “That Iraqi military aircraft were taking refuge on this airstrip in Oman” This brief report was probably only 30-to-60 seconds long. Now do to my last 6 years, on-and-off interest in newspaper articles on events like the fall of the Shaw of Iran, I new were Oman was located in the Persian Gulf. That Iraq was at the north end of the gulf, and Oman at the south end, nearly as close to Iran as Iraq. It did not make sense to me that helicopters would have travelled this distance, this location; it had been reporter that Jordan had allowed Iraqi military aircraft shelter when Iran started bombing Iraq airstrips.
This year I contacted CNN archives, filled out a request with the limited info listed above, at CNN archives application form. With a few emails back and forth I was told this video clip was probably in storage, that would not take much time to search that time period. However I was not ready to explain in what formats I would use this clip, and start the process of license fee with CNN for its use. Maybe if this blog gains interest on my printed articles sources, I will better understand the process and cost of obtaining this short video clip.
Next post will be about UPI short 4 paragraph article from October 6, 1980, published on page 3 of the San Jose Mercury News. It was this information that shed some knowledge on the story about that short CNN video clip from Oman.