Here’s a fascinating article about TV news coverage five years ago today.
The news came into Matt Lauer’s ear as he interviewed a Howard Hughes biographer on what felt like another slow news day in the summer of shark attacks and Chandra Levy.
“Go to commercial,” “Today” executive producer Jonathan Wald told him tersely. “Breaking news: A plane has hit the World Trade Center.”
I’ve felt the weight of 9/11 today more than I have on past 9/11 anniversaries. Maybe it’s because five is one of those milestone numbers; maybe it’s because this is the first 9/11 anniversary in three years to fall on a weekday; maybe it’s because I’m not currently working; maybe it’s because I’ve been watching so much original 9/11 news footage today. CNN.com has been showing CNN’s original 9/11 coverage today in real time, since 8:30 this morning, exactly as it unfolded, and it’s still on; MSNBC ran NBC’s original coverage this morning, also in real time, from 8:53 until noon.
This describes well the feeling you get while watching it – it’s like opening a time capsule. Now, five years later, we tend to view everything that happened as one event, but it’s something else to re-watch everything happening as it happened. I stepped away from the computer for a few hours today, and went I came back in the evening I turned on the original CNN coverage again, and now the “live” footage showed lower Manhattan getting dark as the sun went down, just as the sun was going down here in 2006. Eerie.
Newspapers are usually seen as the first draft of history, but five years ago, when the first newspapers *finally* came out, it had been nearly 24 hours since everything had happened. “Everything that happened” happened before 11 a.m., and there was still an entire day ahead to try and begin absorbing everything. When I finally read the first newspaper accounts the next morning, they seemed so long overdue.
I’m really looking forward to this day being over so I can get it out of my head again.
I watched again the Today show on MSNBC, just as I had done five years ago when Matt and Katie broke the news to me. I follow news and current events real close but wasn’t sure I wanted to see it all again as it developed. I did though because I felt I owed it to those other folks who had to live through it in New York and still feel the pain tonight.
I admit my stomach is tense tonight and my body needs a long fast walk. It is rainy here and chilly outside so plan to play online checkers to get my head some where else.
For all my fellow citizens in New York and that whole region my heart is with you.
D.
I watched the replay of Matt Lauer (and Katie Couric, Al Roker and – later on – Tom Brokaw’s) coverage of 9/11, which was aired on MSNBC on the fifth anniversary last week.
It was an odd experience.
I was at work the morning of 9/11/01, and had a lot of stuff to get done, so was only able to catch the live coverage between duties. It’s unclear in my memory which news station it was, but upon watching the replay of NBC’s coverage, I’m fairly certain it wasn’t Lauer, Couric & Co.
They seemed very calm about the situation. The coverage I remember watching was full of shock and dismay when the first tower fell. On NBC, it was notable that they did really start to address it in earnest until about 10 minutes after it fell.
What also occurred to me is that I was viewing the replay through the lens of the past. During the actual events, I was mortified, confused, shocked, etc., but that’s because no one knew what the heck was going on. It’s different now, five years later. Maybe that’s what the problem was of watching the replay. Who knows?
Hey wut do you think is the reason 9/11 happened?