Cnn Pentagon 911 Coverage Aired Once and Never Again
The 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is tomorrow, and television news, as one might await, is delivering wall-to-wall coverage of the landmark event throughout the day, beginning in the early-morning hours.
Not merely did Sept. 11, 2001 change America forever, but information technology too altered how tv news covers current events.
For our latest #AskNewser installment, we caught up with some of the business's near experienced journalists, and asked them the following question: "How did nine/xi change the course of your career in Tv set news?"
Some of the responses might surprise yous.
The participants in this edition of #AskNewser are: CNN The Situation Room anchor Wolf Blitzer, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin, NBC News chief foreign diplomacy contributor and chief Washington contributor (and MSNBC host) Andrea Mitchell, PBS NewsHour chief correspondent and chief substitute anchor Amna Nawaz, Univision News anchor Jorge Ramos, CBS' 60 Minutes contributor Jon Wertheim, Fox Report anchor Jon Scott, Fox News principal Washington correspondentMike Emanuel, CNN international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson, MSNBC senior national correspondent and anchor Chris Jansing, MSNBC anchor Alex Witt, CNBC senior markets correspondent Bob Pisani, NBC News White House correspondent Kelly O'Donnell, Bloomberg News ballast (and sometime ABC News president) David Westin every bit well as Bloomberg Boob tube and Radio anchor Carol Massar.
Blitzer: Given my groundwork as a former CNN Pentagon and White Firm correspondent who specialized in national security, it was not long after 9/11 that I was asked to begin anchoring CNN's special coverage of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and then in Iraq in 2003. The time I spent anchoring our special coverage of Afghanistan and Iraq certainly contributed to the cosmos of The Situation Room in 2005, which I am notwithstanding anchoring today.
Emanuel: The Sept. eleven attacks forced a lot of us to go from being correspondents focused on domestic bug to war correspondents. A calendar month afterwards the attacks I was sent to Islamabad, Pakistan to embrace the build-upward to the invasion of Afghanistan. Since and so, in that location take been multiple assignments in Afghanistan, a military embed in Iraq and extensive time spent roofing the Pentagon. Reporting in those places has brought me a much better understanding of the complexity of our world. 9/xi taught us those who hate America across the globe could bring decease and destruction to innocent people here at home, and we demand to pay close attention to those threats.
Jansing (seen anchoring on 9/11/01 from the roof of MSNBC's former headquarters in Secaucus, NJ, with lower Manhattan in the altitude): The months following ix/11 became intense, [with] round-the-clock breaking news coverage. Our country was under attack, our emotions under assault and with no sophisticated news websites or social media—cable television receiver became, in a very visceral mode, a human being lifeline—providing viewers with information they desperately wanted every bit information technology was happening, merely also allowing survivors to tell their stories and honor those nosotros had lost. It was a conduit for our shared experience equally Americans, and I was very aware of the privilege and the gravity of being able to chronicle these unfolding events.
Martin: I was the Pentagon contributor for CBS News on nine/11 and I am nonetheless in that aforementioned chore. That twenty-four hour period, still, changed everything almost my task. Afterwards 9/eleven, the Pentagon was at war and that was all I covered. Every unmarried story had something to exercise with the war—either what was happening on the battlefield or its consequences here at dwelling house. Roofing the consequences—the fallen, the amputations, the suicides too every bit the Medals of Accolade—inverse me, exposing me to levels of grief and courage that I'd never experienced before. And in case my memory fails me, I'yard reminded every day when I walk past the identify where the nose wheel of American Airlines Flying 77 came to remainder, 240 feet within the Pentagon.
Massar: I like so many, retrieve ix/eleven similar information technology was yesterday. Existence in lockdown at the NYSE, watching monitors of the towers falling and realizing that we too were a logical target. A known symbol of America. There was a thinking that we might die. At that place was limited or no advice at times. Then emerging a couple of hours later the towers had fallen. All was gray. A shower of debris blocking our visibility and the sunday for several blocks.
Equally for how I idea about my career, my chore … security and terrorism would at present exist components of simply about every future story. It made me aware of how the globe is very small now and how interconnected everything is.
And something that has stayed with me, our daily read on-air of the number and often names of people at financial firms working at the towers who died, people we knew, interviewed and talked to regularly. It was (notwithstanding is) a stark reminder to me that for every big, broad story we do, there are always individuals impacted. Every story. I remember that, as I do that day, twenty years ago.
Mitchell: nine/11—the first foreign attack on America's continental homeland in two centuries left the nation traumatized and transformed, depending ever more on a constant menstruum of data from the news media. In those years before social media, we were thrust into a challenging new role, particularly on my intelligence and national security shell.
I had been doing stories on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda considering of the start attack on the World Merchandise Center in 1993, followed by his attacks on our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. As a event, a half 60 minutes after the second plane striking the World Trade Centre on ix/11, I was the first to report on NBC News that sources were telling me al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was likely the just terrorist capable of such a highly coordinated series of attacks.
Across the tragedy for the immediate victims and kickoff responders, America lost its sense of invulnerability, no longer protected from the evil of terrorism past the distance provided by our oceans. We were immediately thrust into a state of war on terror that continues to this twenty-four hours, with enormous sacrifices by thousands who died in service to our land. This created new demands on the 24/7 news cycle. 9/11 gave me a new sense of mission and purpose equally I covered these events, at domicile and in conflict zones overseas.
Nawaz: I wouldn't be a announcer today if it weren't for 9/eleven. I began what was supposed to be a year-long journalism fellowship in August of 2001. The programme later on that was law school. Then the attacks happened, and the whole world changed. 9/11 was the first big story I covered. For the ii decades that followed, some of the biggest stories of my career—the war in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the finish of America's longest war—stemmed directly from that day. Along the way, I saw how rare, and how necessary, a voice like mine was in a newsroom. My family roots, my pare color, my faith all fabricated me targets of suspicion and scrutiny in the country I, every bit an American, call home. But they also gave me fluency and frontline familiarity with some of the most of import stories we, as journalists, would embrace. I was blessed to learn very early in my career that in our darkest days, in our most cluttered times, facts and truth volition lead the fashion. They'll behave you to the next twenty-four hour period. And the next. And that'due south why I've remained a journalist since and so.
O'Donnell: Covering ix/xi provided proof in those early days and a powerful memory now that I tin never again disregard the unthinkable.
As much every bit life since paved for u.s. layers of new normal, I remain quietly wary that a beautiful solar day tin exist disrupted with danger and utter disaster. That knowledge is often carefully packed away but when in that location are new threats or warnings today during my assignments on the White House beat, I take a deep jiff knowing the unimaginable tin get real.
My memories from roofing ix/xi for NBC News most often settle on sensory recollections of the scale of destruction at Basis Zero with its acid air, the stretch of charred field at Shanksville and the neighborhood street corners covered with candles and posters of the missing.
Had that day not happened, I would non have been sent to cover armed services operations in the Middle East and war in Republic of iraq. Merely 9/xi influences how I recollect nigh all kinds of news assignments because it'south scarred the country and changed many parts of everyday life. That influence makes me ask questions and view events with a pained perspective that 9/11 showed us unthinkable things practise happen and tin can become the stories we tell.
Pisani: I was stocks contributor for CNBC, based at the NYSE, on 9/xi. I was outside and saw the second plane hitting. The nine/11 disaster helped push the U.S. economy into a recession. The stock market went into a irksome tailspin and did not bottom until October 2002.
There were deep psychological scars on all of the states who worked downtown that only gradually emerged. Everyone had a friend or family fellow member who had died. In that location was also the grim reality of working downtown. The Financial Commune had morphed into a partly-closed armed camp. Information technology was almost incommunicable to cross Culvert Street, the dividing line between Soho/Chinatown and the Financial District, unless yous were a resident or worked at the NYSE or on Wall Street. Police were everywhere, on every corner. No one knew if another set on was coming.
There was, above all, the smoldering pit of the World Trade Heart. The smoke would not disappear for a twelvemonth, and it could be seen for miles effectually. The worst was the scent: the acid odor of even so-burning paper, office piece of furniture, and building materials.
Some on Wall Street decided to go out the business, but many stayed. Some firms relocated.
I joined a Buddhist meditation eye and learned to meditate. Information technology taught me that the globe was ever-changing and to end fighting the things I didn't similar that had happened and concentrate on what I could control—my own thoughts. It calmed me down. It taught me to be more in the moment and cease trying to be a perpetual day-planner, always thinking of nothing but where I am going and have to be. Because of meditation, I decided to stay downtown at the NYSE and continue to report for CNBC. And I am still here, however reporting, nonetheless meditating.
Ramos: The twelvemonth 2019 will never come up back, just similar the year 2000 never came back. And merely as we became accepted to living with terrorism, nosotros will have to exercise information technology with the pandemic.
Nosotros forget that the tight security at airports—identification, no metal objects, no water, shoes off, no-flight lists, expert-byes outside the airport—are the product of 9/11. And surely the uncomfortable daily use of masks, wellness alerts, booster shots and filling a lot of forms for travel will stay with us. Terrorism and pandemic are already parts of our lives.
Ane of the songs popular before the terror attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania was "Beautiful Day" past U2. It was like an canticle to optimism. Every bit though humanity had reached the end of history, like one intellectual suggested, and the future would bring us democracy, justice, equality and respect for man rights. We were so wrong. We could not see beyond the fake walls of our borders and our prejudices.
It has taken me two decades to digest what I saw and lived in those days of terror, and I still can't say that I overcame information technology. Afterwards 9/11, I launched into a crazy journalistic take a chance in Afghanistan that could have ended very desperately. I suspect I was protected by all the saints I don't believe in.
Robertson: By ix/xi I'd been roofing wars for more than a decade: CNN's engineer in Baghdad every bit the opening salvos of America cruise missiles crashed into the capital; producer spending best part of three years in Sarajevo, the besieged crucible of the bloody Balkans Bosnia disharmonize; my first TV report was filed from the front lines of the Afghan war in 1997. 9/11 catapulted me to national and international attention.
I was in Kabul that day by coincidence, but my career to that moment had prepared me for it. Technical savvy to run the ground breaking live circulate engineering science "talking head unit" we used, an understanding of conflict generally, the Afghan conflict specifically and a potent cognition of Bin Laden and al Qaeda.
When the world wanted to hear about al Qaeda and Afghanistan I felt like I had a lot I could contribute and I think that gave me the energy and drive to deliver useful insights for the audition. That I was on air a lot didn't sink in for many years. Information technology wasn't until late 2007 when the step of piece of work backed off a fraction that I could brainstorm to put the experience in perspective.
I think even today I am still coming to terms with the bear upon it had on my career. Information technology was a natural extension of everything I had done until that moment, but it supercharged my experiences, fabricated them more useful, put me in the limelight more than and as a upshot immune me to grow stronger equally a reporter, more knowledgeable with more contacts and hopefully more worthwhile for the audience.
When all is said and done what actually matters in the business of journalism is delivering interesting, insightful and challenging information for the audience. I think nine/11 has helped me practice that and have a deeply fulfilling career at the same time.
Scott: Fox News was still young, growing and not yet No. 1 on 9/11/2001 when I anchored the first seven hours of our coverage, from but after the attack on the due north tower until 4 p.m. EDT. Looking back, I call up I did some of my best work on the worst day any of us had ever seen. Did information technology modify the course of my career? Not really. My responsibilities at Flim-flam remained fairly constant afterwards. It did alter the arc of my family; my oldest son, Josh, was 12 that day and deeply offended by what happened. It moved him to join the military; he graduated West Bespeak and did a tour in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, where of course, ix/11 was planned. Watching him become a soldier and praying for his safe became primary. Family is more than important than a career.
Wertheim: A cub reporter at Sports Illustrated, living in lower Manhattan, I was pressed into a completely different kind of reporting duty. One day, you're in the press room of the U.South. Open; 48 hours later, you're using your aforementioned notepads to conduct interviews in firehouses and hospitals. Cynically, games and trades and sports feuds never felt more piffling—I'm non sure I've ever recovered that. Less cynically, the function sports played in unifying , healing and restoring normal was undeniable—I've tried not to forget that either.
Westin: 9/xi forced a lifetime of news into a few short days. For me, it started in my office at ABC News, stunned to run across traffic chopper video of smoke pouring out of the North Tower; taking the network to special report out of a GMA break on the due east coast; watching live on air as the second airplane hit, with Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer taking u.s. through information technology; getting Peter Jennings into the anchor chair correct away; and and so continuing ABC News coverage without intermission for four directly days and nights, cartoon on every resource we had. It was not about us; it was nearly the thousands of lives lost, the tens of thousands profoundly afflicted and virtually the Nation itself. Just I got to come across first-paw the dedication and sacrifice of news men and women who were called upon to give their all and more. And did so knowing that this was why they came to news in the first identify.
Witt: Covering 9/11 from Ground Null reinforced the importance of covering a story from all angles and offer big picture context. The events of the day permanently inverse society. Reporting How and Why is e'er as important equally the basic facts of the story.
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Source: https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/asknewser-how-did-9-11-change-the-course-of-your-career-in-tv-news/488379/
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