TV anchors on 9/11 tell Marvin Kalb their personal stories

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said he had just gotten out of the shower in his home high in a New York City building when he heard the news on the radio that the first plane had hit the World Trade Center. He first thought of an incident in World War II when a bomber accidentally flew into the Empire State Building. He went out on his balcony and could see black smoke billowing from the World Trade Center.

In commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, “The Kalb Report” host Marvin Kalb talked with four of the national TV news anchors of Sept. 11, 2001, before a packed audience in the National Press Club's ballroom Sept. 9, 2011. Kalb and the audience heard what happened and what it meant to television news. The program marked the start of the 18th season of "The Kalb Report" and the 73rd program dating back to 1994.

With no warning and starved for actual information, all four journalists said they struggled to maintain their composure and set the tone to report to the nation and the world the most important breaking story of their time.

Rather said he was fortunate his wife was there to help him get dressed as he descended in the elevator 26 stories to the street.

By the time Rather reached CBS News headquarters, Bryant Gumbel, then the co-host of “The Early Show,” was ready to hand the situation to him.

Rather remembered he said a short prayer and recalled what the late Edward R. Murrow would always say in times of stress, “Steady.” And he launched into what would be days of non-stop newscasting.

Frank Sesno, CNN’s former Washington bureau chief, said he was at the doctor’s office in northern Virginia with his wife and son when he saw the first report on the television. He jumped in his car and sped toward downtown Washington. He could see smoke billowing from the Pentagon, and considered stopping to cover that story himself. Instead he kept going to the CNN Washington bureau.

At Fox News, Brit Hume said he was in the coffee shop having a chat with a colleague on the first level of the office building that housed his bureau. He looked up and saw the first report coming over the television set and raced upstairs.

Charles Gibson was on air with Diane Sawyer cohosting ABC's “Good Morning America.”

“When the first plane hit, I was in a commercial break,” Gibson said. “I was told something had happened at the World Trade Center and we had a remote camera on the scene. You’re on in one minute. We had to admit we did not know what was going on. Madly, we’re writing notes to each other, trying to get information. I will forever think of my reaction on the air when the second plane hit. Diane said, ‘Oh my God.’ I said, 'Now I know what’s going on. We’re under attack.’"

“You have to level with your audience that you don’t know anything more than they do,” Gibson said. "You are in this together. You had to think about the tone. You had to be reassuring. I said to Diane, ‘if one of us starts to cry, the other has to pick up.’ You can’t break down.”

Sesno said he was cognizant that he was not just reporting to America but with CNN worldwide contacts, to everyone around the world.

“There is a language of ‘live,’” he said, referring to all of the times that CNN reports live stories as they break. “Human emotion is colliding with your news duty. Seven planes were still unaccounted for. You have to talk as though you know something, and you have no breaks. We were speaking to the planet. It was a humbling, scary thing.”

"You had to report information you got from reliable sources, such as a bomb exploding near the State Department," Sesno said. "And when it turns out to be false, you have to go back and correct it."

“However it may seem, when you are an anchor, you are not a robot,” Rather said. “You have a battle to suppress your own emotions. This is the mark of a professional. You have to get zoned on the story. On the air, once you get zoned, you ask yourself, what’s my role? To be an honest broker of information. This is what we know. What we don’t know is so much greater.”

“There’s nothing worse than being an anchor and about to announce something you are not sure is true,” Hume said.

As reports came that a plane was racing toward the Capitol, Hume said he was told he had to move from his desk that overlooked Capitol Hill. When he started to protest that he had to stay at his post no matter what, he said, he realized the staff was not trying to get him to safety. They just wanted to get a camera set up at his window: “If that plane hits the Capitol, we need to get the shot.”

What would be different with the news coverage if a 9/11 event happened today? Kalb asked.

The amount of information available from Tweets and texts would be huge and difficult to sift for factual information, the panelists said.

“We would have to decide instantaneously what’s real and what’s not, what’s an invasion of privacy, what do they really know,” Sesno said.

Everyone has a cell phone camera, Rather said. Imagine those images of people trapped inside the World Trade Center coming out to us.

“What happens now scares me,” Gibson said. When U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire at Ft. Hood in 2009, he said, ABC was getting Twitter messages from inside the room that were diametrically opposed to official military reports.

“I didn’t have a clue where that information was coming from,” Gibson said. “But it turned out to be more true.”

"The Kalb Report" is a series produced jointly by the NPC, George Washington University, and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard and underwritten by a grant from Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.