9/11 and Journalism

On this fifth anniversary of the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I've been watching CNN's original coverage of the day's events on my PC, and it amazes me how, even with all of the information-gathering technology we have at our disposal, it took so long to figure out what had happened. The second plane hit the south tower of the World Trade Center live, yet it took fifteen minutes for anyone to even mention the possibility of terrorism. Until about 9:20 A.M., speculation was that navigational equipment had gone awry and thus caused two planes to hit the twin towers. Even White House chief of staff Andrew Card figured out in fifteen seconds what it took CNN to figure out in fifteen minutes: America was under attack.

Also, even though reports of at least one of the airplane hijackings that morning was received at about 8:30 A.M. by the authorities, and it somehow took forty-five minutes for that report to reach the media. I'd always assumed that a report of something wrong with an airline flight - at least a sketchy, uncorroborated report - might have made it to the press before the first attack.

The lesson? Technology and instant communication are no substitutes for old fashioned news reporting. Unfortunately, most television "journalists" don't know how to report even in the most normal of circumstances. That said, CNN did a decent job of reporting what they knew when they learned it. A lot of credit for that goes to CNN's beat staff and crew.

Also, I've been watching CNN's original coverage to the exact minute of what it happened five years ago today. At this point, about 10:50 A.M., reports of a second plane heading toward Washington were coming through even as that plane had crashed in Pennsylvania forty minutes earlier. Reports of that crash coming through concurrently meant that no one realized the two planes were in fact one and the same (United Airlines Flight 93).

Why have I been watching this? Because at the time this all happened, as you might remember, I was on my way to Baltimore via train on September 11, 2001, and I learned about everything about an hour after the fact. My first experience with media reports came at two in the afternoon in the Amtrak station in Wilmington, Delaware, where I was forced to get off the train and try to get home. I simply didn't learn anything in real time, or anything close to it, from any source other than through hearsay on the way toi the train station or on the train itself. When I heard about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, both towers had already hit and one tower was several minutes away from collapse. I thought it was an accident, shrugged it off, and left Newark, New Jersey for Baltimore when I should have turned around and gone home before being stranded over a hundred miles away. (The Amtrak station in Newark had no stores or eateries with TV sets.) Had I been able to see or hear any of this media coverage, I certainly would have gone back home when I still had the opportunity to do so without any trouble. :-(