You have to remember, a lot of the big networks are based in New York, so they were literally* right there*. I remember Fox News locking a camera down on a three shot and camera operators and floor managers all standing in front of the camera, watching the TV that’s in front of the anchors.
I remember a reporter having to tell Peter Jennings that the entire building collapsed…he kept asking, “One side of the building is gone?” and then when he finally understood, saying, “Hooo…” like, I’m supposed to remain calm and objective but holy fricking crap.
I remember one anchor lady telling children who may be home alone watching to call a parent or a loved one.
Yes, they are professionals, but they’re also human beings.
I was lying in bed listening to the TV news when the anchor announced that a plane had crashed into the WTC. His tone and the word “plane” rather than “jet” made me think it was a small plane that had hit. I imagined a prop plane. There weren’t many details at that moment so I took my shower and started to get ready for work.
A bit later I was walking past the TV, listening to the coverage and realizing it had been a jet when I heard a reporter cry out that the second plane had hit the other tower. That obviously got my attention and I knew it wasn’t an accident.
I lurked on the dope for years before I registered and on September 11 I refreshed that thread every ten minutes since I had so much trouble getting through to the news sites…
On that day I was on Popbitch, Arstechnica, Fark and snopes, four sites that managed to stay up all day. Arstechnica and Fark still have the threads of that day archived and anyone can find them. I guess snopes have kept the threads somewhere, but that’s on the old site archive. Popbitch isn’t the sort of site that keeps a public record, sadly. That’s a pity, because that was the best link to people in NYC. The Rev had a copy saved at one point, I think. Perhaps an email to pauly?
One of the men in the tower lobby (Jules Naudet) was filming, and when he looked to his right and saw people staggering in on fire, he decided at that moment that he wouldn’t film people dying. The Naudet brothers’ film 9/11 is one of the best I have ever seen. It’s about firefighters. Not global terror, not political bullshit… firefighters.
Stunning documentary. Really fucking stunning. There’s a bit with the Fire Marshall in the lobby of one of the towers, and it pans around to all the Station Chiefs or whatever they are called, and all the firemen are lifting their gear and going upstairs, and then there is a horrible splash, and then another splash , and those fucking heroes climbed the stairs, and a lot of them looked scared shitless, getting the big packs they needed on their backs to fight a fire a hundred storeys up, but they went up those stairs anyway. And then the buildings collapsed.
All the major developments have about 10 dopers posting the news at the same time. You can feel the panicking in that thread.
Does anyone know If they will air the news footage again?
I was in school during the attack and all my teacher told me was that a plain hit a building and that news might be on the AOL homepage. So I made a mental note not to forget to go on AOL and look for a story about a plane hitting a building. When I got home everyone was glued to the TV.
I live in Arizona, where we don’t observe Daylight Savings time, so we’re 3 hours behind the East Coast in September. I didn’t know about the attacks until I had my radio on while driving to work, and there was no TV available at work, so I didn’t get to see any news coverage until the afternoon. So this Monday night, I happened to notice in the listings that MSNBC was rebroadcasting the Today Show from 9/11/01 and made a point to set my DVR. It was the first time I got to see the events unfold in “real time” and like others, I was impressed by the sheer calm and professionalism of Lauer, Couric, and Brokaw, contrasted with the field reporters who understandably, allowed some of their emotion to creep into their voices. It gave me a greater sense of the impact of the events of that day. Six years later, even though I knew what was going to happen as it unfolded, from the second tower being hit, to the Pentagon getting hit, the collapse of the towers, and the crash of Flight 93, I still felt a sense of great sadness and pain as if everything were happening for the first time and could sympathize with the shock and confusion that the people who witnessed the events that day must have felt.
Like I stated above, I was in New Jersey right outside NYC and we had no TV coverage. If it hadn’t been for the radio and the Internet I would have really gone crazy.
Sportscaster Warner Wolfe was on the terrace of his NYC apartment watching the Towers and giving reports to Don Imus:
Wolfe: Oh My God, I can’t believe it, the Tower is gone
Imus: Long Paunse You mean the top of the Tower fell off?
Wolfe: No, the whole Tower just fell. It is gone. Oh My God. This is horrible.
I’ve seen several different networks coverage of the moment the second plane hit. On the Today show, the camera was showing a different view live. You could see the plane coming in from the side of the picture, then it disappeared, then you saw the burst of flame. It was a few seconds before they switched angles and showed the videotape of the actual impact. That’s where the confusion came from.
On Good Morning America they had a live shot of the plane going into the Tower and the anchors instantly reacted.
I have a DVD of CNN coverage from 9/11. I don’t know if it’s still available, but I bet there’s an old copy on eBay somewhere.
I was driving to work when the attack took place, so I heard the first 40 minutes or so on the radio. If you think TV coverage was chaotic, you should have tried to follow it on radio, stuck between traffic reports, local news, etc.
I’m sorry, but I really disagree with the impression of the morning-crew professionalism and can’t help but lump them in with the 48 TimeLive guys - their hair gets between their brain and their mouth.
However.
I do not disagree at all.
But isn’t it funny, the bits that stick with you? There were two for me:
The brothers, meeting again, and the rest of the “brothers” supporting.
There was that one Italian looking guy giving post-disaster commentary (paraphrased): “This was an office building, right? File cabinets and office chairs and desks and doors? The largest thing I could identify was a telephone keypad. And they want us to find bodies?”
1)That did it for me too. The brothers had gotten separated, and they didn’t know if the other was alive. The reunion at the fire station, where they just hugged each other and started weeping, was one of the most heartbreaking things I’d ever seen.
2) That also got to me, as well as the firefighters sitting around outside on benches, coughing and wiping their eyes of the dust, stunned. You could tell they were trained to rescue people, and they couldn’t do their job, and they looked so lost.
True, Walloon, but the firefighter didn’t know that at the time he made the statement.
What shocked me was the fact that that house didn’t lose a single man on 9/11. Not one- not even the probie who was supposed to babysit the house radio and ended up at ground zero with a retired chief who saw him and grabbed him to help out.
They had guys in the buildings, all around the site- and not one was killed, even the ones close to the collapse. That’s almost a miracle.
I don’t know, but from my own experience I’d say it was either some scanner traffic passed up the food chain or some on-scene phoner by a reporter that was put on the wire. In any case, it wasn’t long after that that the newsies realized that their normal practice of keeping a running body count just wouldn’t work that day.
As to the dearth of “live shots” from the scene: the normal and easier method (microwave link from the remote truck to the station or a repeater) just doesn’t work in Manhattan, with its tall buildings. One would have to use a satellite truck, which has its own problems (you have to park it in a spot where it can “see” the satellite). Also, by the time they scrambled satellite trucks, it may have been impossible to get it close to the scene. As I recall, WNBC did get a live shot set up (which NBC occasionally used), but it seemed to be at least a half mile from the scene. (Also, after the bridges and tunnels were closed, the TV folks were limited to whatever equipment was already on Manhattan Island.)
MSNBC also reran this coverage last year and I saw it then. I watched because, on 9/11, I was clueless about what was going on until about 11:30 CDT.
I think NBC was a little *too *professional – almost robotic.
Thanks for the link, PlugUgly. In CNN’s footage, when the 2nd plane hit everyone thought they were seeing a secondary explosion from the first impact. Took them 5-10 minutes before they had the brainstorm of rewinding their own footage and looking again.