25 years on, they haven't forgotten. How 9/11 changed these TV journalists' lives
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Set us as preferred On Sept.11, 2001, there were no smartphones and no social media.
What the country watched that morning — a jet airliner colliding with the south tower of the World Trade Center, the ash rolling through the streets, the paper still falling in the afternoon — was through a television set and the journalists who had to deliver the unfathomable details.The jarring images shattered the peacefulness of a sunshine-filled late summer morning in New York.“Everything seemed so perfect,” said MS NOW’s Chris Jansing, reflecting on the moments before anchoring her network’s continuous coverage.
“It was another day of doing a job I loved, living in a city I loved.”By nightfall, nearly 3,000 people were dead in lower Manhattan, at the Pentagon and in a field outside Shanksville, Pa.The experience of covering the terrorist attacks and their grim aftermath transformed Jansing and other journalists who were there.
Twenty-five years later, it’s never far from their minds.“It’s with me in ways large and small,” said NJ Burkett, a correspondent who covered the tragedy for New York station WABC.“When I look at my phone and it says 9:11, it takes me back.”The Times asked five of the on-air personalities who are still working today to look back on the day they were called to cover the tragedy and its lasting impact.On every anniversary of Sept.
11, Fox News anchor Bret Baier uses the hashtag #NeverForget.He can recall every moment of that day.Baier, 56, was driving to the Fox News bureau in Atlanta when he first heard on his car radio that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
He was a 31-year-old correspondent for the network, covering stories throughout the southeast U.S.and Latin America.
When he arrived at the office, a call came from New York headquarters telling him to book a flight to the ...