9/11: The end of Innocence

Twin Towers in NYC Skyline
Photo Courtesy of Mark Walston

I remember 9/11. I remember where I was, what I was doing, who I was with. I was in my 4th grade class in Sunrise, Florida and we were doing some sort of arts and crafts project, but then my teacher got an email or a text message, and I will never know what it said but she jumped out of her seat and ran to the television to turn it on. I can't remember what station it was tuned to, it didn't really matter at that point because every channel had the same thing. One of the Twin Towers was smoking, like there had been a fire or an explosion we didn't know. We kept watching and finally someone came on and told us what was happening, a plane had crashed into one of the towers. I thought it was weird, how can a plane crash into a tower, didn't they see it in front of them? Why were they flying so low anyway? We sat there and watched the tower burn for a long time, now we know that it was about 16 minutes, but it seemed like forever before we saw the second plane hit the other tower. It had been completely silent in the room, which in retrospect was amazing for nine and ten year olds, because no one was saying anything. I remember looking around and seeing everyone glued to the TV and my teacher sat at her desk crying. I've heard other people say their principal came on and told the teachers to turn off the televisions so the kids couldn't watch but I don't remember any such message at my school. We watched from beginning to end, no filter, no censor. I watched the people hanging towels out of the window trying to get help, the jumpers who fell past a camera that was courteous enough not to show them hitting the ground, the grey ghosts fleeing from billows of dust and ash as the towers fell, we saw it all. That was the craziest part in my mind. Watching the tallest buildings in New York sink straight down into nothingness. They were there and then they weren't. Simple as that. The skyline changed forever. America changed forever. Our class changed forever. You can't unsee something like that, ever. Then to hear that it was a terrorist attack, that this wasn't a tragic accident but a deliberate act by people who hate us simply because of where we live. That two more planes had gone down, one into the Pentagon and another in Pennsylvania, that 3,000 people had lost their lives through senseless violence. This was indescribable... Today we have the Freedom Tower, and exhibit of the enduring strength of America and it's tenacious spirit.

The new NY skyline with Freedom Tower completed earlier this year.
Photo Courtesy of Google

As far as the news coverage, in the clip below you can see a compilation of 6 major news networks coverage of 9/11. From left to right and top to bottom it is NBC, CBS, BBC, CNN, FOX, and ABC. If you watch from beginning to end you can see that it started out as a completely normal day, Good Morning America was on, football games, pageant contestants trying on a crown, normal things that one would expect to see on TV. One by one you see the news come through, much of the footage came from local New York affiliates of the station, and the stations would say something like breaking news, or have whatever anchor was on air announce that something that happened. Then it cut directly to footage of the first tower smoking. None of the stations cut to commercial during the entire incident and the footage was live with a small delay so that the stations could screen any sensitive content before it would be broadcast to the entire nation. When the second plane hit, almost every station showed it because they couldn't change away in time. They felt obligated to show the incident from beginning to end without interruption, and censored very few images, they let the American people see exactly what was happening as it was happening. Even in the days after when they were looking for people in the rubble and beginning to clean up the debris, it was still the lead of every news cast.