Covering 911
Note: The world changed at breakfast time nine years ago tomorrow, when terrorist hijackers destroyed the World Trade Centers and, in many ways, America’s sense of itself. As during disasters and city council meetings everywhere, every day, reporters did their work. Here’s one of them, Stacy Forster’s recollections on WSJ.com two months later. Full story.
“On Sept. 11, a new work assignment for my job as a reporter for the online Journal brought me to work earlier than usual. At about 8:45 a.m., midway through my breakfast cup of yogurt, I heard a low, deep rumble combined with the crunch of metal. The windows shook, even more than they do when a fierce wind whips between the buildings.
“From my desk on the northeast corner of the World Financial Center, I had a good view of the Twin Towers. I leaned over to see what had happened and saw that flames had engulfed several floors high in the North Tower. I was soon joined by my co-workers, who had rushed to my window. One by one, they all said the same thing: ‘Oh, my God, the World Trade Center is on fire.’“I was sent outside to gather color for whatever stories might follow. I grabbed my reporter’s notebook, cellphone and purse and left the office. ‘Be careful,’ one of my co-workers warned as I dashed out. I thought he was being overprotective and laughed—sort of—at his concern. . . .
“As I made my way across a parking lot, I tried to piece it all together, but it wasn’t adding up. Was it a fire? A bomb? Glass, luggage, a seatbelt, mangled pieces of metal. I was momentarily confused by what I thought was restaurant trash -- was there a dumpster nearby that had exploded, too? Then, I saw a severed arm and realized I was looking at pieces of human flesh. . . .
“People were gathered in front of the Amish Market across from the Trade Center, and I started asking them, ‘What happened? Did anyone see? I’m a reporter and I’m trying to figure out what happened.’ No one responded. They simply looked skyward at the burning building. It wasn’t until I was about a half block south that I found someone who could actually speak. A man told me he was walking toward the pedestrian bridge when he heard what sounded like a sonic boom, and then metal crashed down around him. All he could say was, ‘I was lucky.’ . . .
“Still expecting to file quotes to my editors, I kept talking to eyewitnesses. What had they seen?
What did the plane look like? Was it a commercial airplane? . . . My cell phone wasn’t working, because everyone on the street was trying to call someone. I found a pay phone and got in line to call the office. After telling one of my editors that I was all right, I started dictating quotes. I’m not sure if he ever used them in a story, but I could hear the keys clicking away on the other end of the line. He told me the newsroom was being evacuated and our staff would regroup at a point along the Hudson River.“I walked slowly, asking questions of people huddled in the streets. But I couldn’t find two people who could provide the same description of the second plane. . . .
“After I found my colleagues, we started walking to the apartment of one co-worker who lived nearby, where we hoped to use a phone to keep adding to the story. But again, my stomach sank and my heart skipped when I heard what sounded like thunder behind me. We tried to figure out what we were hearing. Maybe another plane, maybe a bomb, I thought. At the same time, I ran.”
Editor’s Note: The next time you see a journalist, tell her, “Thank you.”
Today’s Wish-I-Were-Here Photo: Foghat
NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily.
On Sep 10, 2010, at 8:48 AM, Mark Brunson wrote:
ReplyDeleteA contrarian comment:
You opened today’s WORD with a well-crafted lead — a kind of ringing pronouncement that journalists (and probably non-fiction writers everywhere) love to make. But I beg to differ. Yes, that morning changed the world, and it destroyed the World Trade Centers. (Aside: It also killed some 250 airline passengers and 125 people at the Pentagon, a fact which few journalists or op-ed writers or bombastic politicians seem to recall or care about — because the images didn’t play as well on TV?)
But did it really destroy America’s sense of itself? I’d argue it did not. Yes, we discovered previously unsuspected vulnerabilities. But we’ve resolved any conflict between that suddenly visible chink in America’s armor and our over-inflated sense of superiority by activating our most juvenile and chauvinistic impulses — the worst aspects of America’s sense of itself. We acknowledge no blame for the distrust we engender throughout much of the world (not just in Muslim nations). We lash out at anyone who dares to disagree with us. Many of us demonize an entire religion and region of the world because it’s easier than trying to understand the complexities of international public opinion and religious diversity. And then we are puzzled when the world doesn’t embrace us with the same unquestioning adoration with which we embrace ourselves.
Has America’s sense of itself been destroyed? It’s been damaged, but not in the way the terrorists might have hoped. The damage is largely self-inflicted. We must find ways to re-energize our best impulses and shove our current mindset back into the depths where it belongs.
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Pease responds:
ReplyDeleteMark:
Not contrarian, because I didn't say 911 destroyed America's sense of itself. It did not (although it may have reinforced some of the less attractive of our baser nationalistic traits, as you say. I agree.).
It did change the world, though, which is all my lead says. I completely endorse your noncontrarian riff.
Well said.
On Sep 10, 2010, at 8:12 AM, Bud Brewer wrote:
ReplyDeleteI was in my car, heading from Port St. Lucie, Florida to Boca Raton. I was listening to NPR when, at about 8:58, the local cutaway said, “A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.” Then the station went to an underwrite message. I started screaming at the radio, driving 75 MPH down I-95, “What do you mean, a plan crashed into the World Trade Center? And that’s all???” I said wordy dirds. I switched to WIOD-AM, a 50KW blowtorch AM station out of Miami, and started hearing the reports from the scene. When I got to my daughter’s in Boca, we watched until about 2pm without saying a word to each other.
I used to take lunch from my job at 40 Wall Street in the plaza in front of the towers. Great girl watching and the best sausage dogs.
We, as a people, Americans have never been the same since 9/11 and we’ll never be the same until we solve the puzzle of how to deal with Islam.
Bud
Bud:
ReplyDeleteWe were here in Utah, and it was before 7 local time when Good Morning America changed from chirpy Katie and Matt to impossible catastrophe. When I worked in New York in the early '90s, I often commuted by train from NJ through the World Trade Center and onto the subway up the West Side. I was horrified: At 7 a.m. there are typically 20,000 commuters rushing through the basement, packed shoulder to shoulder.
T
I was in 6th grade when the planes crashed in the Twin Towers and every one was confused. We were listening to the news, on the radio in the bus and when we got to class, our teachers changed their curriculum and we just watched the news. My family and I were in America for only 5 years at that point and we saw America as an invincible nation... no one could touch us. I understand that when something as devastating as planes crashing into the Twin Towers is "news gold", all reporters want answers. I feel that Stacy was brave to go out in the streets to ask questions but at that moment, what can one say? 9-11 opened America's eyes and it did bring us all together, but a terroist attack shouldn't be the only thing that brings a nation together.
ReplyDeleteRomina Nedakovic
Steve Cribari teaches law at the University of Minnesota. On 9/11/2001 he was teaching at the FBI Academy at Quantico, and remembers the day this way.
ReplyDeleteYOU DO WHAT YOU CAN
By Stephen J. Cribari
(F.B.I. Academy, Quantico, Virginia)
(Hendecasyllables)
So on September 11 where were you?
I was at the FBI Academy
on Quantico Marine Base in Virginia.
It is known as a secure facility.
A beeper sounded: a plane has collided
with a tower at the WTC.
A small plane surely we thought and laughed it off
but then the Pentagon and burning fuel oil
and the image of a plane not possibly
where it was seen to be. Why did a fourth plane
not destroy the White House or the Capitol?
Because some chose to die their own way thank you
very much, not as a madman would have them
his people his religion and his god die.
Why was not the plane that hit the Pentagon
shot down? There’s missiles on the roof. What happened?
There’s a question! Paralyzing disbelief?
Down at Quantico, at the Academy,
everyone responded. I’ll say it again:
Everyone responded. No one reacted.
Reaction would have been cheap, this was costly.
Where do I go now? Do I have enough clothes?
What about transportation? Is there a plane?
What are the priority needs? Who goes where?
Will I be able to phone my family?
All responded as they had been trained to do,
in case someday . . .
Close to home, the young man
who lived with his wife and kids near my parents
gone; a friend was hit by debris from the sky;
people on a smoking break escaped, or died.
Years before I had seen the Air Florida
plane crash beside the Fourteenth Street Bridge. That was surgical silence through a red gauze of snow and emergency lights. This was fire and dread and white noise. The Marine Base strung barbed wire (it is known as a secure facility)
around itself and us, and it mobilized
boys and girls to do what they were trained to do,
in case someday. Said one armed with M-16:
”We are so ready, sir!” We did not doubt him.
It would not have occurred to us to doubt him.
An extra guard was posted by the entrance
to the FBI National Academy.
Unkempt, aging, a lanky drink-of-water
cigarette dangling from his mouth, .45
automatic pistol with a magazine
fatter than his grip and holstered to his chest,
rifle in one hand the other holding firm
to a crutch wedged under his armpit. He smiled:
“I broke my leg at the ankle bone.” We laughed:
“then what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
He shifted his weight, looked at us and his eyes
filled with disappointment and accusation.
“You do what you can,” he said, shaking his head.
In the evening when we looked up at the sky
we saw twin contrails where they should not have been.
It meant fighters.
And on the long drive back home
- we had to drive, there were no flights to be had -
Only fighters overhead. Only fighters.
But as we pulled into Denver in the rain
In the rear view mirror, trailing behind us
caught in the road spray and arcing horizon
to horizon: a double rainbow complete
and even without its pots of gold enough
more than enough. So much now more than enough.
The pot is iron and we had had enough
of iron which, however sturdy, strong and
threatening destruction is not immortal.
The indestructible was what we wanted.
The indestructible, fragile but secure
double rainbow, neither expected nor sought
But given.
You do what you can, he had said.
On 9/11 I was alone (and I thought secluded) in my mountain house on the Wellsville range, the western slope of Cache Valley Utah - my husband called from work and said "turn on the tv." By the miracle of modern media I sat with the entire world and watched the horror unfold. We were all together on that day, and what happened in the minutes and hours that followed united us more than anything else could have done. We need to get that unity back now. Let's spend this anniversary working on unity, not division - on respect, tolerance and acceptance, not hate.
ReplyDelete