Special Bulletin is a 1983 American drama television film directed by Edward Zwick and written by Marshall Herskovitz, based on a story by both.

[1][2] In the film, a terrorist group brings a homemade atomic bomb aboard a tugboat in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina in order to blackmail the U.S. government into disabling its nuclear weapons, and the incident is caught live on television.

As part of a deal to release the surrendered Coast Guardsmen, the terrorists - Doctors Bruce Lyman and David McKeeson, political activist Frieda Barton, social worker Diane Silverman, and mentally unstable ex-convict Jim Seaver - ask to broadcast their demands to the U.S. Government over the RBS network.

Dr. Lyman states that failure to oblige to the demand or any deviation from the plan will result in the group detonating their own improvised nuclear device stowed aboard the ship.

Eventually, the Department of Defense agrees to the terrorists' demands and a van arrives outside the tugboat, supposedly carrying the nuclear triggers.

As the team frantically try to stabilize the device, the feed is suddenly interrupted by static, at which point the broadcast returns to the RBS Studio, the hosts clearly shaken by what they have just witnessed.

"[3] The Washington Post described it as "A shrewd, keen, wise, hip, occasionally lacerating and sometimes gravely funny dark parody of network TV news coverage."

[1][2] The filmmakers were required to include on-screen disclaimers at the beginning and end of every commercial break in order to assure viewers that the events were a dramatization.

Much as with the famous 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, it was entirely possible for viewers to tune in between disclaimers and make a snap judgment about what they were seeing, although in both cases a quick flip of the dial would reveal that no other stations were covering this supposedly major news event.

[5][6] WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was the only NBC affiliate which refused to air the film out of concern that, as station president Mike McCormick stated, "people will be deceived into believing it's an actual telecast.

"[7] However, some other NBC affiliates preempted the broadcast because they had previously scheduled local programming for the evening, before the film was placed by the network into that timeslot at the last minute.

In his book on TV news, Out of Thin Air, Frank called Special Bulletin "junk" and claimed he wanted to return his own Humanitas Prize in protest, "but I couldn't find it.