Sandra Sully on tonight’s news watching herself reporting from that night.
I believe it was The West Wing, rather than The Sopranos (which aired on Mondays).
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10’s special tonight was a reminder of that night 20 years ago. Now, we know what happened in detail, but at the time it was quite different. As has been mentioned early on it wasn’t clear that it was a passenger jet that hat struck the first tower. There were several conflicting reports. The clear images that show the first impact were not immediately available. However, while everyone was watching the news feed we saw the second plane fly straight at the second town and it was clearly a large passenger jet. Then, also that night exclusive videos started to shown up on CNN and other networks of the first plane strike as seen from ground level.
When the Pentagon was hit, that at first was reported as a helicopter and/or a light plane crash and only later was it confirmed as a jet. The flight that crashed in Pennsylvania was a further late addition to the story.
One thing where this event tended to differ from a lot of rolling coverage was that there was always something new to report across the many hours. It didn’t rely of endless repeated short loops of events.
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10’s US correspondent at the time was Michelle Stone. She was a long standing US correspondent along with Pam McKay who would mainly report on weekends.
We know seven had Mike Amor and Nine had Mike Usher but do we know of any other reporters from the commercial networks who reported from the scene?
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That is so true. Twenty years on it’s hard to comprehend that Osama Bin Laden wasn’t even well known. There had been rumblings about him being a potential risk, however the focus was more on people like Saddam Hussein, which allowed Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to plan the attack under the radar of the authorities.
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That’s the one.
It’s disappointing Seven and Nine haven’t released these tapes from that night.
Nine had The West Wing scheduled to finish at 11.25pm followed by Nightline with Jim Waley.
Seven had Talking Footy to finish at 11.40pm followed by Seven Late News with Nat Barr.
I’m just wondering if they both broke into programming prior to the scheduled start time?
Ten Late News with Sandra Sully has been well documented.
I think Deb Knight was travelling with John Howard on his trip to America so she was there too. Not sure if she reported on anything there though.
I was hoping that the 7News Vault YouTube channel would have uploaded something
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Something I find worth considering about the 9/11 attacks is a comparison to 2001 and now and how YouTube, Twitter Facebook etc now treat recent terrorist related events.
These social media platforms have taken it upon themselves to instigate policies that ban showing videos that might be seen to promote terrorism. Specifically the New Zealand mosque attacks come to mind where they have actively sought to remove videos from their respective platforms. They even take down videos originating from TV networks of news reports that were broadcast at the time.
While I can see many differences between the current situation with social media and the situation with 911 and I understand the reasoning in stopping the promotion of terrorist acts I think there is some inconsistency involved.
Also note the change where in 2021 media are reluctant to name the New Zealand terrorist, while they have no problem with 911 perpetrators.
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SBS had Lee Lin Chin on during their coverage but I cannot find the video at all
SBS World News would have finished at 10.00pm… did SBS come back on air around 11.00pm? I’m assuming they would have taken a direct feed from CNN or something.
They had BBC coverage. She was on air at 12lm AEST
Watching the tape he uploaded now (September 11 Breaks Live And Rolling Footage (ABC TV Australia, 11/09/01) : Australian Broadcasting Corporation : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive).
I love that the ABC ran an very ambitious ticker on the screen a few times that they’d return to the advertised programming after the news break.
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This video has the start of Channel 9’s coverage from September 12 at around 4:30am with Jim Waley anchoring and also includes the start of the Today show that day.
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As someone who was quite young when 9/11 happened, what’s striking about watching back the coverage videos on YouTube from the day is the dramatic shift that occurred when the second plane hit the South Tower.
Up until that point, the various coverages were treating the first plane hitting the North Tower as this ‘freak’ accident. However, you notice by how some of the anchors/reporters on air reacted to seeing the second plane hit the World Trade Center that they knew this was no accident (even if they didn’t immediately say so like Sandra Sully did)
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Yes that was when the reporting changed. Prior to that it was confused because some reports said a large plane had hit but eyewitnesses were ringing into TV stations saying they saw a small private plane hit the building.
CBS News though did say something to the effect with a clear sky if it was an accident it would have been a needle in a haystack type accident.
Coverage starting in the US
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Yep I was one of them. I remember watching it live (on Ten Late News) and thinking it was just a standard plane crash… like most of us did, but soon as the second plane hit the second tower everyone was in shock. It felt like America and the western world was at war. As Sandra Sully stated in her interview, it felt like we were on the verge of WW3.
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