Skip to comments.

Posted on 10/07/2001 8:47:58 AM PDT by NW Viking

Brokaw addresses challenges of Sept. 11 newscast Anchor tells Medill students via phone he is 'proud' of media response By Justin Ballheim The Daily Northwestern The World Trade Center has just been attacked. Now the second tower. Now the Pentagon. And millions of Americans are counting on you to keep them informed and reassured — right now.

Tom Brokaw found himself in this position Sept. 11. And while the veteran NBC news anchor said the task was not easy, he also told about 50 Medill students in a conference call Monday that he believes news organizations are covering the Sept. 11 crisis and its aftershocks well.

"I'm quite self-critical," he said. "(But) for someone that has being doing this for a long time, I was definitely proud, not only of NBC News, but of my profession."

Brokaw spent about 20 minutes speaking with undergraduate and graduate students and Prof. Joseph Angotti via speakerphone in Louis Hall's TV production studio. Angotti, a former executive producer of NBC News, worked with Brokaw for three years and fondly calls the anchor "Brokes." Brokaw spoke of the need to remain calm on the air, his personal reaction to the attacks and the challenges of news judgment.

"I have always believed that our primary obligation to our audience is to provide them with as much accurate information in the appropriate context as calmly and reasonably as we possibly can without worrying about being, if you will, the anchorman as robot," Brokaw said. "I think that you cannot suppress human feelings when you're out there, but you can't lose control of them either."

Brokaw said he came home at 2 a.m. on Sept. 12 and had "a couple of stiff drinks." Moments later, he found himself breaking down in what he called "a cathartic exercise."

"I would hate to think that I've lost so much of any personal feelings that I could go on and report something like this without being affected by it," he said.

At the same time, Brokaw said journalists should not be overly influenced by the recent surge of American patriotism.

"I wear the flag in my heart," he said. "I'm a patriot, and I think being a patriot means: Love your country but think you can always improve it. And part of my role as a journalist is to ask questions and to examine the issues that will lead to some improvement of the country. I don't think a journalist ought to be wearing a flag because it does seem to be, to me at least, a sign of solidarity toward whatever the government is doing, and that is not our role."

Brokaw also criticized the media's role of occasionally softening the news. NBC, for example, did not show footage of people jumping from the World Trade Center. He said he wished the network had used the images to show some of the human consequences of the attack.

"We should show them sparingly and give fair warning, and not keep going back to them," Brokaw said. "But I do think that the audience deserved to know, if they were watching NBC, just how horrific this was that it would force people to leap out of the upper stories of the World Trade Center."

Brokaw said NBC and other news organizations should be prepared to make more difficult decisions as the coverage continues.

"We will not broadcast anything that will jeopardize American lives," he said.

Medill junior Jenelle Walter said she enjoyed Brokaw's talk because she is preparing for a career in broadcast journalism. Walter said she appreciates having a role model like Brokaw because she "can expect that something of this magnitude will happen (again)."

Brokaw said he remembers telling young people like Walter a year ago that they were living with an unparalleled sense of prosperity.

"There was also such a sense of privilege, a sense that this would never end," he said. "There was peace in the world. There was no draft, obviously — the military was the last thing on anyone's mind.

"(Now) we have gone almost 180 degrees the other direction, and it will be interesting to see how your generation does respond to the change that will necessarily come."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.