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The piracy adventure in the Indian Ocean has now devolved into a hostage siege. The Maersk Line's container ship Alabama is safely out of pirates' hands and is steaming to port in Kenya. The attention of the USNavy and all three network newscasts now turns to the fate of her captain, Richard Phillips. He is now the prisoner of a quartet of pirates, sharing a 28-foot lifeboat with them as their hostage, while the USS Bainbridge, a destroyer, blocks the boat's passage back to land. The standoff was Story of the Day with all three newscasts leading off with their Pentagon correspondent's coverage.

NBC's Jim Miklaszewski filled in details about the pirates' original raid: when three of them discovered that the fourth of their squad had been captured "they panicked and at gunpoint started to single out crew members as hostages to take them off the ship. That is when the captain offered himself up as a hostage to protect his crew." ABC's Martha Raddatz reported that FBI hostage negotiators in Quantico have taken charge, communicating with the pirates via the Bainbridge and then to the lifeboat where the captain's radio has been given fresh batteries. "Already they have asked for and gotten food and water," CBS' David Martin narrated. His unidentified sources told him that "their chief demand is safe passage back to Somalia."

ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi made a trip to the Merchant Marine Academy on Long Island to file an interesting sidebar on why the Alabama's crewmembers, knowing they were about to sail through pirate-infested waters, had not armed themselves. Under the law of the sea, she explained, "an unarmed ship is given a right of innocent passage" through international waters. "If the crew is armed, the ship is stopped and inspected at every port, slowing them down."


Andrew Tyndall 4/10/09 7:47:39 pm

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