Tom Brokaw on Tiananmen Square - TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews

Journalist Tom Brokaw recounts his high-stakes reporting mission to Beijing during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. After navigating complex travel logistics—including a rejected request to the U.S. Secretary of State and a clandestine flight on a Canadian embassy plane—Brokaw arrived to find a city paralyzed by silence and martial law. He highlights the stark contrast between the rural-sourced military guards and the student protesters, noting the soldiers' lack of sympathy for the urban youth. To bypass heavy security and capture forbidden footage, Brokaw and his crew engineered a covert "bicycle tour," concealing a Super 8 camera inside a cardboard box mounted on a bike. This ingenuity allowed them to document the heavy troop presence surrounding Mao’s tomb and the square’s commercial districts, providing the American public with a rare, ground-level perspective of the crackdown's immediate aftermath.