Posted on 08/01/2002 10:42:36 PM PDT by Sir Gawain
If you start at 9 a.m., the second plane hits within the first four minutes and it is interesting to note that, from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and BBC (will have to wait until later for the rest), only FOX described this immediately as an act of terrorists, not just by the anchorman but by the on-scene reporter. Amazingly, none of the others, save ABC, is even willing to suggest that the attacks were deliberate. Trailing the back, Bryant Gumbel was busy explaining how it looked like only one tower was hit but, in fairness, he was probably in a studio looking at monitors and likely had people yelling in his ear.
I'll be reviewing more of this. Too bad it's in either REALplayer or Quicktime, which both have very poor picture quality for my tastes.
It is, in a sense, too bad that the archive picks Washington DC affiliates who, of course, were more inclined to cover the events at the Pentagon and the rumors swirling around Washington with local reporters than to stay with the national folks but this archive allows me to see and study much more than I ever expected to review.
While I'm still reviewing them, the one thing I find striking is how quickly Fox reporters identified this as an act of terrorism when nobody else was using "t" word for much of anything until Bush, himself, identified it as a act of terrorism.
CNN appeared to be the hardest ones to convince that it was a deliberate act, endlessly exploring ideas that pilots were just flying off course or that something might have tampered with the radar. They really looked foolish.
Then, viewing the reactions of those who saw the first tower fall. Even hardened reporters don't often get to see 100-story buildings full of people collapse on live television. Even then, some of the anchors seemed very confused about what they were watching and had to rely on folks over the phone to tell them what had happened. The more distant they were from the scene, the more puzzled they were - indicating they weren't watching closely.
At some point, I'll get around to putting a report card on this thread of highs and lows of each network's coverage as I saw it.
I, too, was struck by the dense attitude of the CNN reporters. I kept thinking that it must be orders from on high, do not make any guesses about what you see happening, because they all seem uniformly unwilling or unaware of what was going on. Also, how long it took them to get people in the street. So much of the coverage was just watching burning buildings from a distance. Shepard Smith did make a comment about that (I remember from the day, not the tapes) about the reason for that was the coverage was too upsetting, "not suitable" he called it. And I was mad when he said that, because I felt the news should be shown as it happened, not predigested. I don't want to see guts everywhere, but neither do I want it sanitized to death so no true impact of what happened gets through.
I'm looking for 9/11 live news footage (Full breaking news reports, etc.) from around the world, but televisionarchive.org is down. Can someone help me? I need this because I'm working on an essay for school!
I can't get into their archive.
bump for later
Ping and bump
Excellent analogy!
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