The Elian Photo Op: Where TV News Met Street-Corner Politics

"Don't provoke!" An elderly man, among those enraged that six-year-old Elian Gonzalez had been taken away in a surprise, predawn operation, directed his frustration at CNN.

At the time, we were standing quietly, waiting to be cued for our latest live report over the course of thirteen hours across the street from the home where Elian had been seized. Just after five o'clock that morning, CNN was on the air when federal agents barreled out of bulletproof-tired minivans. Jaws dropped. Within three minutes, Elian was gone. Hours later, outraged exiles remained. Some wandered through the street taking snapshots. Some struck up antigovernment chants. Others simply stared at the aftermath. The Miami police, who had maintained a strong presence at the house for several weeks, pulled out after the raid.

CNN, along with dozens of other media organizations, continued to report reaction to the seizure, reaction to the memorable AP photograph shot by Al Diaz, who dashed into the house at the family's invitation one step ahead of Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents, and reaction to subsequent reunion photographs of a smiling Elian with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. There was an ebb and flow to the scene. Now, as Saturday evening approached, the street in front of the home was coming alive again with demonstrators, some of whom appeared to have a sense that it was television's evening news hour.

"This is our time!" roared the same elderly man. A particularly angry group congregated in front of CNN's position along the tent-lined sidewalk. The entire area had come to be known among journalists as Camp Elian--media organizations standing shoulder to shoulder, tent to tent, cable lines snaking along a sidewalk down a block of neatly kept, modest homes. Across the street, the two-bedroom house where the boy's extended family had issued an ultimatum. Elian's great uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, had said on April 12 that the U.S. government "will have to take this child from me by force."

It did. The yelling in front of CNN's area was intensifying. A few minutes earlier, some tried but failed to pull down our tent. Cuban exile activist Ramon Saul Sanchez saw it happen. He made his way to the middle of the crowd directly in front of us, his head bandaged after being struck in the head by a rifle butt during the raid. Sanchez put his arms around the shoulders of fellow exiles who formed a huddle around him. Later, he said he had told them: "You can't do this. These people are just doing their job. Don't try to stop them like they would in Cuba." Then Sanchez left the group.

Moments later, the yelling resumed. It sounded more intense than before. One man emerged at the front of the police barricade separating journalists from the street. "You f--g b--h! F-- all of you!" He reached up, grabbed the canvas, and pulled. Pulled hard. The tent collapsed on top of us, knocking over equipment before the canvas was dragged across the street. Screams. Chaos. Some rocks and plastic water bottles thrown. No one hurt. But with equipment in temporary disarray, there would be no six o'clock live shot. Police were called. They arrived in riot gear. The trouble ended.

CNN is the only U.S.-based TV network to have been given approval to have a bureau in Havana, and over the years some anti-Castro Cubans have taken issue with some of the reports from there. On the day of the raid, some exiles phoned to complain about CNN's airing of part of a live speech by President Fidel Castro. Not much later that afternoon, the tent was pulled down.

Five months earlier, as the Elian story began to unfold on...