On 9/11, millions of Americans turned to their televisions to make sense of the news. There they encountered three primary news anchors: Tom Brokaw of NBC News, Peter Jennings of ABC and Dan Rather of CBS.
Dan Rather poses in a CBS studio in New York on Feb. 20, 2001, left, Peter Jennings poses on the set of ABC's "World News Tonight" in New York on Feb. 5, 2001, center, and "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw delivers his closing remarks during his final broadcast, in New York on Dec. 1, 2004. Most Americans were guided through the events of the day by one of three men: Tom Brokaw of NBC News, Peter Jennings of ABC and Dan Rather of CBS.
But on that day, when America faced the worst of humanity, it had three newsmen at the peak of their powers.Brokaw, Rather and Jennings were the kings of broadcast news on Sept. 11, 2001. Competitive drive and ego had led them to that place. Each had anchored his network’s evening newscasts for roughly two decades at that point. Each had extensive reporting experience before that — Brokaw and Rather at the White House during Watergate, Jennings primarily as a foreign correspondent.
Was it a terrible accident? The second plane bursting into the towers with a ball of flame, and scary reports from the Pentagon, answered that question but left many more.Initial network reports were handled by journalists of considerable reputation: Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, Bryant Gumbel, Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer. Yet there was an unmistakable sense that the first string had arrived when Brokaw, Jennings and Rather took over.
Until late afternoon, President George W. Bush stayed in the air on Air Force One; then-primitive communications captured TV signals only intermittently, allowing the president to watch broadcast TV only when the plane flew over big cities. “Throughout my career, I was constantly trying to think, ‘What’s the big picture here?’” he says. “I think that was especially true that day.”
Surprisingly few false reports slipped through in those early hours, most prominently that a car bomb had exploded at the State Department in Washington. One group falsely claimed responsibility for the attack. Speculation was kept largely in check, though in the shadow of the World Trade Center attack eight years earlier, Osama bin Laden’s name quickly came up.
He revealed that he had just checked in with his children, who were deeply stressed. “So if you’re a parent and you’ve got a kid in some other part of the country, call ’em up,” he advised. That night, after more than a dozen hours on the air, Brokaw returned to an empty apartment, his wife and family out of town and unable to get back. He poured himself a drink and took a phone call with the news that a family friend had died, unrelated to the attacks.Brokaw stepped down from “NBC Nightly News” after the 2004 election. Now 81 and ailing, he keeps busy writing books but seldom appears on television.
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