How we experienced September 11, 2001

When Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather ascended to their anchor chairs between 1978 and 1982, 95 percent of Americans who watched network television news preferred to watch the big three. PBS’s broadcast was widely available, but seldom watched. CNN’s telecasts were new and hard to find on cable systems. The other cable networks had not arrived, and the Internet was the obscure playground of a handful of academics, government workers, and defense contractors.

“I don’t think journalism is changing,” said Peter Jennings, as the rising popularity of the cable networks began dangerously to erode the big three’s share of market. “What’s changing is access to journalism. I both envy the cable news networks in one respect, when there’s a really great news day, but, boy, I sure feel for them when there’s nothing going on.”

By the close of 2000, the big three’s shares tumbled to 60 percent, and by the close of 2001, they eroded to 47 percent. For the first time, a majority of viewers preferred to get their news from cable news networks.

2001                2000

CNN               18.2%              14.4%

Fox News        14.2%              7.5%

MSNBC          10.4%              8.0%

CNBC             9.7%                11.4%

HLN                7.0%                5.9%

59.5%              47.2%

 

NBC                16.8%              26.7%

ABC                14.0%              18.2%

CBS                 9.5%                7.7%

40.3%              52.6%

Source: CNN and Nielsen Galaxy Explorer 1/01–12/30/01 and 12/27/99–12/31/00. Does not include broadcast prime time magazines.

As September 11, 2001 dawned, the three major networks were in the midst of the ratings slide when the attacks on New York City interrupted broadcast reception throughout the city. Ultimately, the disruptions disconnected New York from the big three because the local stations, WCBS, WNBC, and WABC ran their own local coverage. It is the most significant example since World War II of how news distribution would function without the network news.

Broadcasting and Cable magazine did a remarkable job of piecing together what the New York City audience actually did see that morning:

8:45 a.m. A plane crashes into the north tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York.

8:49 CNN: Obviously, a very disturbing live shot of the WTC, and we have unconfirmed reports that a plane has crashed into one of the towers.

8:52 WTTG: We’ll go to a live picture from New York City. A plane has crashed into the WTC. We don’t know whether this was an accident or some sort of planned incident.

9:01 WABC (eyewitness via phone): It looked like a normal plane going over the city, and then, all of a sudden, a turn to the left, and it slammed right into the WTC.

 

9:03 a.m. A second plane crashes into the WTC’s south tower.

9:03 CNN: We’ve got an explosion inside. This would support the probability . . . that the fuselage was still in the building. That could cause a second explosion such as that. We’re getting word that perhaps a second plane was involved, but let’s not even speculate on that point, but perhaps that may have happened.

9:06 CNN: Eyewitness says a small plane—it looked like a propeller plane—came in from the west about twenty to twenty-five stories from the top and appeared to crash.

9:07 WABC: I don’t know if perhaps some type of navigation system or some type of electronics would have put two planes into the WTC within—it looks like—eighteen minutes of each other.

9:08 CNN (airing feed from WNYW[TV] New York): Some people said they thought they saw a missile, so we might keep open the possibility that this was a missile attack.

9:10 CNN (Ira Furman, former National Transportation Safety Board spokesman, on phone): Absolutely inexplicable. There shouldn’t be any aircraft in that area. It’s just not possible for a pilot during the daytime to have taken a course that would put it right into the WTC. A second occurrence within a few minutes is beyond belief.

9:12 WCBS: Thousands of pieces of what appeared to be office paper came drifting over Brooklyn, about three miles from Tower One, according to a witness.

9:14 WTOP: Clearly, this has been a morning of extremes for us here. This is the most serious of circumstances that we’re monitoring in New York. Earlier today, it was euphoria in this town as we all celebrated what appears to be word from Michael Jordan that he is going to be returning to the National Basketball Association and playing his next season with the Wizards. Obviously, our coverage of that will continue at its appropriate time.

9:15 AP: The FBI is investigating reports that the two crashes are the result of foul play.

9:15 CNN: President Bush is informed in Florida and cancels the rest of his schedule.

9:17 WABC: LaGuardia and Kennedy airports are now closed.

9:18 WCBS: The UN has been evacuated as a precautionary measure.

9:26 WABC: Many people see those twin towers as an example of American capitalism and as an example of American might and power. They are a very strong and very vulnerable symbol to the rest of the world—and the U.S.—and that may be why they were targeted this time. Osama bin Laden is the former Afghan freedom fighter—a billionaire by all accounts—who is maybe No. 1 on America’s list of terrorism exporters. He springs immediately to mind.

9:30 CNN (President Bush makes a statement in Florida): Today, we’ve had a national tragedy. Two planes have crashed into the WTC in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. Terror against our nation will not stand.

9:31 CNN (on-screen graphic): sources tell cnn one plane was an american 767 from boston.

9:32 WNBC (eyewitness via phone): The second plane was a larger plane because the explosion from the second plane was tenfold larger than from the first plane. May God be with all those people because this is going to be a tough day for all of New York.

9:33 WABC (phone call from man in the WTC): I’m stuck on the 86th floor of Tower No. 1 on the east side. I heard a noise, felt the whole building shake, and the glass on my floor was blown from the inside out, and the interior core of part of the building collapsed.

9:34 WCBS: A no-fly zone has been established over Manhattan.

9:36 CNN (on-screen graphic): all ny area airports closed. Information we now have is that there are at least one thousand injuries.

9:36 WNBC: To New Yorkers, try to get out of that area to let the emergency crews do what they need to do because there clearly are still people trapped up there, and fire fighters and emergency crews still need to do a lot of work.

 

9:40 a.m. A plane crashes into the Pentagon.

9:43 AP: An aircraft has crashed into the Pentagon, witnesses say. The West Wing of the White House is being evacuated amid terrorist threats.

9:43 WTOP: We’re going to interrupt the [CBS Radio News] coverage and bring it closer to home. We have some indication of fire and smoke at the Pentagon right now. We’ve gotten calls from people who live and work around the Pentagon, who have told us that they have seen something that they have described as an explosion.

9:43 WTTG: There are reports of a fire at the Pentagon. You can see the thick, black smoke. This is no trash fire, folks, so obviously something has happened. [To producer]: Do we have any indication that a plane was involved here?

9:43 CNN: There’s a huge plume of smoke from the west side near the helicopter landing zone. The plume of smoke is enormous; it’s a couple hundred yards across.

9:45 CNN: We’re also getting reports that there’s a fire on the Mall in Washington.

9:46 WTOP: We’re hearing from a caller who says she is eyewitness to another hit here in town; the USA Today building may also be on fire in addition to the Pentagon.

9:48 WTTG (terrorism expert from American University): It is a well-planned, concerted attack on the U.S. as the world’s superpower, particularly, I would assume, because of the role it plays in the Middle East, in its hostility toward Iraq, Iran, and other Arab countries, and its support, obviously, of Israel.

9:49 AP: The Federal Aviation Administration has shut down all aircraft takeoffs nationwide.

9:50 CNN: Bridges and tunnels into New York are closed.

9:51 WTTG: Metro is shutting down its trains, possibly concerned that Metro might somehow be used in this.

9:54 WCBS: A number of people were apparently jumping from windows. We saw at least five or six. The people who were standing there were absolutely horrified to watch this. Many people started screaming, many people started crying. There were people hugging each other, and, every time they saw a person jump to his death, there were people who were just grabbing hold of each other and sobbing and wiping their tears.

9:56 CNN (on-screen graphic): capitol, treasury, wh evacuated. This has all the appearances of an extremely well-coordinated and devastating terrorist attack.

9:56 WNBC (terrorism expert): This has all the worst-case scenarios put together into one. When you think of the psychological trauma that this is going to cause New Yorkers and to Americans, it’s monumental, it’s off the map.

9:59 a.m. The south tower of the WTC collapses.

9:59 WTOP: After the WTC was hit, the Pentagon’s antiterrorism unit went into action. The first thing it did was dispatch military aircraft to what is now a no-fly zone over Manhattan. These fighter aircraft, armed with guns and missiles, have direct orders to divert and, in a worst-case scenario, to shoot down any plane that seems bent on crashing into something else.

10:00 AP: An explosion hits another building near the WTC.

10:01 WABC: The attack on the WTC in February of 1993 was designed to bring down the towers. It appears that, this time, one of the towers is down.

10:01 WCBS: Generally speaking, for a building to collapse in on itself like that, it would seem to indicate—obviously, this is just early speculation—that there could have been an explosion, a bomb planted on the ground, that would make the building collapse in on itself.

10:02 WTTG: The 14th Street and Memorial bridges are shut down.

10:06 CNN (on-screen graphic): witnesses see people jumping from wtc tower. Some of the Secret Service patrolling the perimeter of Lafayette Park directly across the street from the White House have automatic rifles drawn.

 

10:07 a.m. A plane crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania; a portion of the Pentagon collapses.

10:09 WTOP (reporter near the White House): Another explosion has just occurred. We don’t know where it happened, but it sounded like a cannon going off, and now we’re seeing big billows of black smoke in the direction of the Pentagon. It’s sort of organized chaos. A lot of people have had the presence of mind to whip out the old video camera and take pictures of whatever is going on here.

10:12 CNN: There’s a report of an explosion on Capitol Hill. [Five minutes later, a congressional correspondent says there was no explosion, but that “the speaker and other leaders have been evacuated to a secure location.”]

10:15 WNBC: St. Vincent’s Hospital is preparing for the possibility of many more people arriving. They have what looks like a trauma center set up on the street, on the sidewalk of 7th Avenue.

10:16 WTOP: We’ve just been told that all government offices are closed, and people are advised to go home. They obviously want to get people out of the downtown area and away from federal buildings, which, presumably, are still targets.

10:17 WTTG (U.S. Capitol Police spokesperson): Ten minutes ago, we ordered a mandatory evacuation of the Capitol and all the House and Senate office buildings. We are taking extraordinary precautions to protect the leadership of the Congress.

10:19 AP: The State Department is evacuated due to a possible explosion.

10:21 WABC: People [near City Hall] were running out of the smoke. The street now is just littered with shoes as people literally ran out of their shoes to escape the smoke and debris. There are pieces of the plane on Church Street . . .  what look to be large pieces of the fuselage and this, amazingly, was about three blocks away from the scene.

10:22 WCBS: Doctors . . . expect thousands of people to be affected by smoke inhalation in and around the WTC because of that building falling in.

10:22 WTOP: A plane went overhead . . . some sort of jet, maybe it was a military plane. But everywhere you looked, people were looking up into the sky with concern and fear on their faces that this might be another incoming terrorist attack. Just mind-boggling.

10:23 AP: A car bomb explodes outside the State Department, senior law-enforcement officials say.

10:26 WTTG: We’re told there is another aircraft that has been hijacked and is twenty minutes outside Washington, D.C.

10:26 WNBC: Looking up at the top of the building, at a rate of about one every five minutes, you see people that are jumping from the top of the building. It is an absolutely harrowing scene.

 

10:28 a.m. The north tower of the WTC collapses.

10:28 CNN: Good Lord. There are no words. This is just a horrific scene and a horrific moment.

10:28 WCBS: You’re looking at what there is of the Manhattan skyline. The two most prominent landmarks—the WTC—now reduced to a pile of ash and rubble, smoke billowing above the city.

10:29 WNBC: They’re gone. The WTC is no more.

10:29 CNN: There were several people that were hanging out of windows right below where the plane crashed when, suddenly, you saw the top of the building start to shake and people began leaping from the windows.

10:34 WABC: If you are a child watching and you do not have a parent there, I don’t know what to advise you, if you can understand this. This is just so tragic that it’s ridiculous to try to talk through this.

10:37 AP: A large plane crashes in western Pennsylvania, officials at Somerset County airport confirm.

10:43 CNN: All federal office buildings in Washington are being evacuated.

10:43 WTTG: There are now fighter jets in the air as the situation continues to unfold here at the Pentagon. There are unconfirmed reports that they are concerned about Camp David as well.

10:48 CNN: Military officials anticipate a second aircraft arriving at the Pentagon. [At 11:04, it reports: No second plane ever materialized.]

10:49 WTTG: All museums and public attraction in the District of Columbia have been shut down.

10:51 WTOP: A senior law-enforcement official gave information that is now being contradicted. We are now being told that the Federal Protective Services says there was no car bomb at the State Department.

10:52 WCBS: We’re hearing from intelligence sources that there were actually eight planes hijacked and that five are still in the air. The Air Force and military intelligence are scrambling to try to take these planes out of the air before they can do any damage.

10:58 WCBS: At Newark International Airport, there are officers with shotguns blocking the road leading to Port Authority offices and the air traffic–control tower.

10:59 WTOP (reporter): I just drove in, and people are not paying attention to things like stop signs and red lights today. You have to be very careful . . . it’s a very dangerous situation out there. [Reporter at Washington Monument: There’s a big crowd of people around the pay phone. Nobody can get a cell signal out, nobody can get a cell phone call in.]

11:00 CNN: Mayor Giuliani urges people to remain calm and at home unless they’re in lower Manhattan, in which case they should “get out and walk slowly and carefully . . . directly north.”

11:03 WTOP (traffic reporter): It’s pandemonium everywhere on the highways right now.

11:04 WNBC (NYU Downtown Hospital spokesperson): We’ve seen hundreds of people. Our entire cafeteria has been transformed into a triage area, and it is wall-to-wall people.

 

Using September 11, 2001 as a guide and example, we can look back on the coverage of the day and reflect on the cataclysmic changes it showed not only for the future of the country, but for the future of television news broadcasting. It is a remarkable portrait in many ways, especially because viewers were able to watch a colossal tragedy unfold before their eyes in the very backyard of the major networks. Viewers got a complete picture of the event, despite the fact that what New York saw was local coverage supplemented by major cable networks.

What is the role of the national network evening news? The contrast between the Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination and the World Trade Center disaster, is important to consider. All were national catastrophies of the first magnitude. The central action unfolded over a period of less than two hours. But Pearl Harbor and Kennedy happened essentially ‘off-camera’ and no live coverage of the event was available.

Our experience of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was almost entirely through the medium of radio and from reports generated and read out of the New York network headquarters; on-site reporting was extremely limited due to distance, the lack of broadcast facilities and personnel in Hawaii, and an immediate clamp-down on local reporting by military officials. The story spread extremely slowly, and the reporting featured extensive re-capping, rather than substantive updates, and was presented initially in the form of interruptive bulletins and only later in the day in the form of continuous coverage. The anchors were indispensable because they were not only a focal point for news delivery, they were a focal point of news gathering as reports were fed in to New York. Moreover, our collective national memory of the experience is indelibly associated with the words and tone of the anchors themselves. Extended coverage via film and newspaper would rapidly develop late on Sunday and into Monday December 8, 1941—but at the flashpoint, at the point when we as a nation first learned about Pearl Harbor, America was being anchored by the anchors.

By 1963, television supplanted radio as the primary network news distrubution medium, but the anchors also played a central role in the reporting of the kennedy assassination. Although there were news crews on the scene, there was no live coverage of the Kennedy motorcade and no crew was filming during the shooting. The first reports came in from the field via telephone, and no visual information was available for hours as news crews were not permitted into the hospital or near Air Force One where the action shifted in the effort to save the President and then, ultimately, to move President and Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Kennedy back to Washington DC.

There is perhaps no single image that better sums up the Kennedy assassination than Cronkite’s reporting of the President’s death, and although all Americans over the age of six would forever remember where they were when first told of the assassination, our experience of the President’s death was primarily, like Pearl Harbor, something experienced through the ears rather than through the eyes. We heard about it second- or third-hand. Most of us found ourselves turning to the informed voices we could trust—and these were the evening network news anchors.

When we reach 9/11, we for the first time have a national tragedy played out on live television—this is not meant to underplay the significance, say, of the 1986 Challenger disaster—but 9/11 is an event all out of proportion to anything that had come before it.

9/11 was experienced visually—news watchers actually saw the collapse of both towers, and CNN was on the air with live pictures only four minutes after the first jet crashed into the north tower and fourteen minutes before the second jet crashed into the South Tower. Also, 9/11 was on the air as a live story well before anyone at the networks had a firm grasp on the storyline. We experienced the visual material and attempted to grasp the significance in virtually the same time-frame as the networks, and even the government. There was no need for a Walter Cronkite to inform us about the collapse of the South Tower; it was something we all saw at the same time. In fact, viewers of CNN saw it before anchor Aaron Brown because he was delivering a rooftop broadcast from midtown Manhattan as it happened and the camera was pointed to capture the images from the WTC in the background: in order to look into the camera, Brown had to look away from the World Trade Center as the South Tower collapsed behind him.

By the time the network anchors were on the air—although they were on quickly—much of the story had already played out in front of our eyes, and although the anchors would excel in helping us to understand the background information as it came to hand, so that we could develop an understanding and context for the event, the broader question on everyone’s mind—what next?—was something no one could answer. A nation which had been comforted by the anchors on November 22, 1963 went to sleep on September 11, 2001 confused and frightened, if they went to sleep at all.

By the time the network evening news ran on November 22, 1963, there had been only a few hours of bulletins during the day, and since there were few televisions in offices in that era, many Americans received their most comprehensive briefing on the crisis during the news hour. By contrast, virtually every broadcast and cable network was running constant coverage of the crisis throughout September 11—many entertainment cable networks such as the Comedy Network switched their coverage over to feeds from the news networks, and the average American cable-connected home would have had access to over 400 hours of continuous coverage by the time the network evening news aired—featuring dozens of anchor personalities (local, cable and network) including Brokaw, Jennings and Rather. By the time of the scheduled evening news, the main attacks themselves were over and few comprehensive answers were available regarding the terrorists, their backers, or their next plans.

The September 11 attacks made the point that the device of a scheduled evening network news is an increasingly unsuitable platform for the anchormen themselves. They appear to be caught between the proliferation of all-the-time news on television, and all-the-depth news via the Internet. Whether it is a slow news day or a colossal tragedy such as September 11, there seems to be little incentive for the viewer to wait for a scheduled news presentation. Instead of deriving their recognition from the evening news, they appear to be building their image through books, other news programs, and network promotions, and applying that ‘brand awareness’ to the task of keeping the evening news ratings afloat.

Yet, for each of the big three anchors, it was to be a workday like no other. Afterward, they reflected on the emotion and the adrenaline of a day that touched and challenged the New York–based broadcasters like no other tragedy did before.

Tom Brokaw

“During September 11, I was very conscious of that all day long. I didn’t want to break down on the air. I was surprised, and, frankly, I’m a pretty emotional person, and I was worried that there would be episodes that would crash through whatever barriers I put up. By and large, I, through the day, I kept control of my emotions, and I think I had some help by this adrenaline pumping and this laser-like intellectual focus—I had what I was doing. There was so much information, it was all new, and it was coming from unexpected places, and I just had to work as hard as I possibly could. So I didn’t have time to get emotional.

“A couple of times there would be something that happened unexpectedly and would catch me unaware. One man was on the air with a telephone, and he began to break down as he described leaving Tower Two, and they were way up high, and there were people in motorized wheelchairs at the entrance to the stairs and they weren’t going to be able to get down. I have particular empathy for people who are confined to wheelchairs with spinal injuries because I live such an active life, and they’re generally so brave, and I thought my God, the end came this way for them. That was a hard moment.”

Peter Jennings

“I was thinking about the story—what was happening to the country, what was happening to the people? I think that, in many respects, those people who were anchoring on that day and subsequently—and this is particularly true for people who had lots of experience, I would not have wanted to do this if I had not had a lot of experience—were so focused on what was happening to other people that, in some way, we were insulated. We were insulated from the emotional trauma of it that so many of our friends and fellow citizens were having who were not engaged in something.

“I watched the HBO program months later about September 11th. I was in tears before it was halfway finished. But, on the day in question, there was simply no time for tears. The magnitude of it was so enormous. One minute you were trying to find out what was going on in Washington, what was going on overseas, how would the U.S. respond? I could spend an hour talking about the many datelines that we dealt with hour after hour after hour. I refer to myself and others like me as editors because what an editor does on an occasion like that is to try to lay the table hour after hour, so that people with strengths in a variety of areas, like intelligence, law enforcement, the fire department, the political arena, in all those arenas, so you can lay it out and have it make sense to people.”

Dan Rather

[Note: Rather appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman some weeks after 9-11 and became emotional when talking about the coverage.]

“When you have a cataclysmic event, a calamity on the scale of September 11th, I know that the audience overwhelming and, in general, recognizes that it’s inhuman to expect everyone, every second of every day, in every way, on that story not to, at some point, have their emotions show through. About the Letterman program, it was an entertainment program, not a news program. Perhaps it was ill-advised of me to go on. I didn’t think so then, and I don’t think so now, but I don’t have any argument with anyone who thinks it was, but that was a case of ‘I wasn’t on a news program’.”

 

(This text is excerpted from Anchoring America: The Changing Face of Network News, by Jim Lane and Jeff Alan)