Anguish on the Airwaves: Television was our electronic hearth, uniting us when tragedy pulled us apart.(World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks)(The Fallout)(Brief Article)

Publication: Newsweek

Publication Date: 24-SEP-01

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Television has always had a way of searing the most horrifying images into our national psyche. Corpses piled up in a Vietnamese village. A masked kidnapper waving a gun out a window at the Munich Olympics. The midair explosion of the Challenger. But television has never shown us anything like an airliner slamming into the tallest building in New York City--at the instant it happens. And then, almost before we can comprehend what we're seeing, scenes almost as terrifying: the Pentagon smashed like a fallen souffle, terrified employees sprinting out of the White House, one building of the World Trade Center collapsing into itself, followed quickly by the second. Television doesn't always get tragedy right. A slow-speed...

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