A Producer’s Footnotes: The Making of “A QUESTION OF JUSTICE”
April 7, 2007
Chol Soo Lee Symposium, UCLA School of Law
By Sandra Gin
When I was invited to speak at this symposium, organizers asked that I bring a “cleaner”
version of my Emmy award-winning documentary “Perceptions: A Question of Justice”.
The quality of the original tape, which was produced in 1983, had deteriorated. To
preserve the program, I needed to have it digitally re-mastered to DVD. I decided during
this re-mastering process that my speech today would serve as the bonus feature of this
DVD package… a director’s cut or outtakes, if you will, of the lost details in making the
documentary.
The Chol Soo Lee case brought back a flood of memories. For those of us of the baby
boom generation, it was a time when our innocence was shattered and when our Asian
American consciousness was born. It was a time when we tested our resolve to stand up
to injustice and inequality, and for many of us, it became our defining moment.
I followed the case from my days as a UC Berkeley undergraduate, and throughout my
career as a television news reporter. The case was controversial. The legal battles were
complicated. Yet, there was one battle you probably didn’t hear much about. It was not
waged in the courtroom, but in the newsroom. I have never publicly discussed this
because compared to the life and death prospects facing Chol Soo Lee at that time, I
didn’t feel it was appropriate to divulge details of these behind the scenes broadcast
battles, which paled in comparison. But today, 25 years later, I feel it s important to shed
light on the problems and understand how mainstream media failed in its coverage of this
landmark case.
I was a young news reporter, who on her off time, produced and hosted a public affairs
program called “Perceptions”, a show that was the byproduct of public outcry. Back in
the late seventies, members of the Sacramento Asian American community demanded
more news coverage of issues pertaining to their lives. Like other local stations, KCRA-
TV was mandated by the Federal Communications Commission to carry programming
addressing community issues. So, the station complied by airing programs like
“Perceptions”. It was a programming obligation that did not include a budget, a
production staff, nor time allotted to produce it. The show relied on the good faith efforts
of a volunteer staff… me.
Getting the case on the evening newscast was a battle in and of itself. At first, my editors
were not convinced the early court battles in Stockton were worth the time or coverage.
It wasn’t a major news story at that point. When a photographer was dispatched to the
courthouse, very little footage was shot. I was compelled to take the Stockton bureau
reporter and photographer aside and persuaded them to get more footage as a “favor” to
me. While this went on, I was a cub reporter assigned to soft news stories on the
weekends like 100-year-old birthday parties and the latest attractions at the state fair.
In television news, if a story did not have a new angle or some visually compelling
elements, it did not make air. Court cases are not visually interesting and they’re
generally boring. It wasn’t until the Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee staged support
rallies at the San Joaquin County courthouse when t-v news stations finally took the case
more seriously and began treating it as a legitimate news story.
Before Chol Soo Lee left death row, I arranged for his final television interview behind
the walls of San Quentin Prison. The interview almost didn’t happen. My editors did not
want to give me the time to travel to the Bay Area for this pivotal interview. To justify
the trip, I offered the interview to the evening newscast, and would save the footage for
my public affairs show. “No deal”, said my editors, and then when I told them I worked
out a deal with another reporter to exchange schedules with me, they caved and allowed
me to go. So, after wheeling and dealing, I made my date behind bars with Chol Soo
Lee.
Chol had spent his last days in solitary confinement and suddenly found himself in front
of a camera crew and lights. He sat politely as he waited to start speaking to me, with a
prison guard sitting nearby. He allowed me to ask tough questions that made him visibly
uncomfortable. His sound bites were gems, such as “I was not an angel on the outside,
but I am not the devil, but whatever I was, it does not give police the right to frame a
person for a crime he didn’t commit.”
By March 1983, Chol was scheduled to walk out of prison for the first time in ten years.
This anticipated scene was what we call in the industry “the money shot”, the shot that I
had been waiting for since I started following the case in my college years. But, you
guessed it – it wasn’t going to come easily. An assignments editor did not feel Lee’s
release was a priority on that particularly busy news day. “If we get it, we get it,” he
said. Never mind that the most important piece of video that I had anticipated for the past
decade was slipping away from me, and I had no control over that. It didn’t mean much
to an indifferent news editor that I wasn’t going to have the final shot or the climactic
scene for what was going to be an Emmy-award winning documentary. As a news
journalist, how can I tell this story of triumph without showing the “triumphant”
moment?
I prayed the assignments editor would come to his senses. I wished he appreciated that I
had been piecing together this documentary, little by little, saving and hoarding tapes I
gathered over the years. I hated what the news department had put me through – the
constant struggles to cover this story and the cavalier attitude of mainstream media.
As it turned out, my prayers and anxieties were answered. A crew was dispatched to the
courthouse! What a joyous scene! Chol could not have been more gracious when
reporters asked him how he felt about being released. This was must-see t-v, the best
reality show you could have seen – real hugs, real tears, and heartfelt thank you’s all the
way around. His victory was ours. The video, priceless!
Fast forward: time to pull the show together. I faced marathon hours of logging and
editing endless reels of tape – shot by various crews with different shooting styles,
varying camera angles, inconsistent lighting treatments, you name it – it was a
hodgepodge of video I had amassed over the years – obtained by hook or by crook. I had
the formidable task of piecing together all these tapes into one cohesive and coherent
work of art. It was crunch time.
I begged my news executives for staff and production time. One exec said, “I’ll give you
5 days to produce brilliance”. What was behind that snide remark? I had already won
Emmy awards for two previous “Perceptions” programs, and by some accounts, a few of
my colleagues felt the winning streak was a fluke, or they were jealous that a upstart like
me was reaping awards. Despite an adversarial relationship with my news editors, I was
determined to assemble the best team and resources possible for this timely reflection of
Chol Soo Lee’s quest for freedom.
I asked my good friend and long time radio personality Tom Nakashima to pitch in as coproducer and writer, and staff writer Corinne Fat and videographer Michael Liang to
serve as reporters. It was hell week for the four of us. We were like college students
cramming for finals. At one point, I didn’t leave the building for a couple of days and
didn’t even know it. As Tom Nakashima put it, “We had no time to re-think, re-shoot,
re-edit, or reconsider anything.”
We slammed it together, and looking back on it now, it was the hardest show I had ever
given birth to. I can still feel the labor pains. I had done shows on Japanese American
redress, the hate killing of Vincent Chin, and even the toppling of the Marcos regime in
the Philippines. But the case of Chol Soo Lee was my toughest, yet most memorable
work.
The show aired one week after Chol’s release. In a rare opportunity, we invited Chol Soo
Lee and defense committee members including Jay Yoo, Dr. Luke and Grace Kim, K.W.
Lee, and Defense Attorney Stuart Hanlon, to the KCRA studios for a cast party to view
the premiere of the program as it aired on television. It was a great time of celebration,
reflection, and prayer. The group was a captive audience, and a producer’s dream: the
viewers reacted as they were expected – they booed police detective Frank Falzon, and
cheered Chol Soo Lee. From their reactions, I knew we had succeeded at telling a
complicated story in a provocative half-hour format.
When the Emmy awards were held a year later, the show was nominated and I really
wanted to win. It would have been vindication for all the hardships we had faced during
production. But we were not a shoo-in. We were competing against a very slick, big
budget production called “The Vatican with Vincent Price”. It was the most nominated
program of the awards competition that year. When our category was about to be
announced, I almost missed it. I made a longer than expected visit to the ladies room,
and no one knew where I was. My friends sent out a search party and delivered me back
to our table just in the nick of time. As the announcer named us as the winners, I
couldn’t hold it back any longer and broke down in tears. I was not composed enough to
give an acceptance speech, so I handed the microphone to Tom Nakashima. No one
except Tom knew the real reason behind the unexpected waterworks.
The Emmy silenced my critics in the newsroom for a while. The news director tried to
spin my victory to his benefit, and perhaps take a little credit for it. He made me the
newsroom example of an effective multi tasking team player. He told reporters that I
produced public affairs masterpieces that win awards, while doubling as a reporter for the
news department. I told him, “That show was not a masterpiece; it was a miracle.” I told
him his comments were not boosting morale in the newsroom and that he was creating
divisiveness among my fellow journalists. But, on a deeper level, I knew what he was
really implying. It was his back handed way of saying, “Keep up the good work, but
we’re not going to give you any more help than we did before.”
Today, in hindsight, I can put all of these broadcast battles into perspective. It was what
investigative reporter K.W. Lee said to me 25 years ago that helped put the struggles in
the proper light. On mainstream media’s failures, he said quote, “As a reporter, I am not
too proud of the American mass media’s role in the Chol Soo Lee case. If they paid just
casual attention in the early part of the case, I don’t think this (prosecution of the case)
would have ever happened.”
K.W. couldn’t understand how reporters and detectives failed to spot what he called the
cultural blind spots in the investigation. ”That’s why I called the case ‘Alice in
Chinatown’, he said. “Anyone who has a smattering of understanding of the Asian
culture will find it unreal. The reason the case stayed buried was insensitivity and
indifference of the white media.” K.W. Lee, the master of subtlety… telling it like it
is…then and now.
If it weren’t for K.W. Lee, I probably would not have fought so hard for the case or stuck
with it to its completion. I would not have found ways to work around news editors
whose goals were not always my goals. K.W.’s passion and encouragement guided
journalists like me to be tenacious and skeptical when a story didn’t add up, to have a
healthy disrespect for authority, and to explain our world in culturally sensitive terms. I
am proud to be called one of his “young s--t” reporter friends.
Re-editing the documentary and speaking to you have had a cathartic effect on me. I had
suppressed the war stories all these years, but now, perhaps like Chol Soo Lee, I feel a
sense of freedom and vindication.
It was an honor to share with you what went on behind the scenes of “Perceptions: A
Question of Justice”. I hope we have learned from our successes and failures.
Thank you for inviting me.