Despite covering the shooting of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, former CNN anchor Judy Woodruff said the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were like nothing she had ever reported on."There are no words that could do justice to the experience, thoughts and feelings of that day," she said.She was leaving her house when her assistant called to inform her about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Woodruff said. She raced to the Washington CNN office to interview people from the studio, she said."Being a journalist, it was a mix of being called on to report what happened, but it shook everyone's lives," she said. "Everyone at CNN was experienced in covering news so it was more of instinct and experience on how to report the events."Woodruff was a CNN anchor from 1993 until 2005 and currently is working on the Generation Next: Stand Up. Be Heard. documentary at PBS. The documentary team recently visited Ball State University's campus to film students.Steve Bell, professor of telecommunications, said the biggest change journalists had to make since the attacks was the concern over balancing security and civil liberties."Everyday journalists have to make decisions about stories they cover and whether the focus should be on the need of security or the need to protect civil liberties," he said.Bell was a war correspondent for ABC when he reported on the Vietnam War, but said the news coverage of the war was nothing compared to the news coverage of Sept. 11."What made Sept. 11 so different from anything else the United States has encountered was that it was a symbolism of having the tallest buildings in the biggest city being attacked by planes," he said. "Once we realized the attacks were done by terrorists people were suddenly worried and wanted to know how many terrorists might still be out there, would it stop, what was next and how many planes were still in the air."Robert Papper, professor of telecommunications, said the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks have affected everything and everyone's lives not just news organizations, but the organizations have developed crisis plans since the attacks."Until then, everyone just talked about what would happen if there was a crisis," he said. "Now, they work out all kinds of plans in case something happens."Papper, former news director at Indiana Public Radio, said he first heard about the attacks when he arrived to work at Ball State. "At the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, my two oldest kids lived in New York City," Papper said. "As a news person I wanted to get out the best information we could provide. As a human being, I was interested in how my children were."At IPR everyone was scrambling to get information to the public, making the situation frustrating, he said."We normally get news from the National Public Radio but that morning NPR wasn't geared toward covering breaking live news," he said. "They were slow about covering what happened so we had to switch to CNN until NPR caught up."Reporting across the country remained focused on the basic fundamentals of accuracy and speed, Woodruff said. "Americans were not sufficiently aware of the terrorist groups that threatened the United States, but now there is more information," she said. "Now we have journalists covering stories on how the Bush administration and CIA are treating prisoners of war. The debates we have now are on how we cover news and terrorism related news."
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