Don't let government shut down news.

Each was a major news event, with legions of media encamped nearby: an armed showdown between federal authorities and the Branch Davidians in Waco, Tex., and a violent stand-off between Canadian police and Mohawk Indians in Oka, near Montreal, Quebec.

The news coverage, in both cases, was massive. But how good was it?

How well did the media hordes serve the public?

How genuinely enlightening was the flood of information that poured out of Waco and Oka, which in turn informed the editorial pages that tries to make sense and foster understanding of these complicated events?

Just how aggressive and courageous was the press in penetrating beyond the "official version," and fighting to learn the truth on both sides of the barricades?

The media armies lost the battle in both cases, allowing themselves to be disarmed by the government; they generally let the public down, according to an ethics workshop featuring U.S. and Canadian journalists led by Catherine Ford, associate editor of the Calgary Herald. Tommy Denton, senior editorial writer and columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram; Rena Pederson, editorial page editor of the Dallas Morning News; Patricia Graham, editorial page editor of The Vancouver Sun; and Peter Calamai, editor of the editorial page of the Ottawa Citizen, filled out the panel.

In the Canadian instance, the media dispatched to cover the story of an armed confrontation between Mohawk Indians and the government over a land dispute failed to grasp and relate the complexities of the story, Graham said. One of the reasons was simple laziness.

The press let itself be manipulated in a public relations battle in which scant light fell on complex issues, including little understood aboriginal law, she said.

The make matters worse, Calamai said, during much of the crisis, only one reporter was among the Indians. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation pulled its reporters back, and Calamai theorized there might have been a connection between this action and the CBC's concern over future government funding.

Reporters inside the Indian reserve had difficulty filing stories because of constant government harassment. The government sought and obtained an injunction to bar cellular phones. To obtain the order, it lied that the reporters were letting the Mohawks use them for tactical communications. The government also cut off supplies to journalists, he said.

The press let the government bulldoze it in Waco as well, Denton and Pederson agreed.

"Official people used every instrument at their disposal to stifle our participation," Denton said.

When several Branch Davidians were taken into custody, the court would not release the case number. The government sealed the arrest warrants, and a federal judge sealed the motion to preserve tapes made the day of the raid.

Newspapers were generally timid about challenging the government's secrecy in both cases, panelists said.

But would more aggressive press coverage have made a difference in Oka or Waco?

The sparse coverage that came from the other side did not make a difference in the former instance, the Canadians felt. It mitigated the violence and painted a fairer picture of the Mohawks than the unflattering one the government tried to create.

In Texas, the Waco Tribune-Herald had completed a series on the Branch Davidian cult concentrating on the cult's paramilitary preparations and child abuse inside the compound.

What might have been different if the series had run a week ahead of the raid, instead of on top of it, Denton asked without trying to answer his own question.

Denton also offered a more classic example that raises the same question: the Bay of Pigs invasion. How might that have turned out had the truth been published in advance?

Here are a few of the conclusions that surfaced:

* The media should prepare contingency plans to challenge authorities when events like Oka and Waco occur.

* The press needs to identify other such flashpoints before the first shots are fired.

* The press needs to educate the public better to the need for a freer flow of information in such situations.

We should be writing more about why government shouldn't be cutting off phones and harassing reporters.*