As the Smoke Clears

Blessedly, the network newscasts largely downplayed such flotsam in favor of substantive matters. Misinformation did pop up now and again, and other matters slipped through the cracks, such as when the St. Petersburg Times reported that Fox News ran a toll-free Scientology number as a source for mental-health assistance. But the gaffes were small in number, understandable given the hysteria following the assaults, and invariably corrected as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, debate arose over the rawness of the footage that was screened in the day or so after the crashes. Some viewers felt U.S. fare was too sanitized and so turned to the tougher stuff provided by the BBC (seen locally for a time on the Learning Channel) and Univision, which, says one viewer, showed "bodies raining down" from the World Trade Center, including "a man trying to hold his coat up like a makeshift parachute before it was ripped from his hands." But many others objected when American channels showed similar snippets. In a September 13 New York Times piece, NBC vice president Bill Wheatley said his network's decision to run one such image was wrong.

Or was it? In the same Times article, Denver Post editor Glenn Guzzo responded to complaints spurred by his paper's publication of a disturbing but stunning and evocative photo of a man plummeting to earth, head down, with the line "The terrible truth is the truth that we should not deny folks." (Guzzo made the same point in a September 16 column.) Hear, hear.

Other items in the dailies were tougher to understand. On September 11, the News and the Post found ways to publish extra editions, which the Denver Newspaper Agency hyped with a highly questionable press release on PR Newswire (only two of the over 100 other newspapers that printed extras did likewise), but somehow the papers couldn't yank blurbs about long-canceled events from entertainment sections that appeared the following Friday. And shouldn't someone at the Post have suggested holding a September 16 video-game column that included the deadpan line "War makes for some pretty good video gaming"? Like local TV, however, the News and the Post generally acquitted themselves well, with even the papers' fashion editors, Lesley Kennedy and Suzanne Brown (in New York for a big show at the time of the assaults), making valuable contributions.

Most of the local tie-ins found in the dailies revolved around the shutdown and startup of Denver International Airport and local victims, with sports, business and other non-news sections appearing in truncated form. The same was true of TV newscasts. On September 11, local sports and weather was virtually nonexistent, but by the next night, these staples were slowly beginning to reassert themselves. For example, the September 13 broadcast by Channel 4 devoted less than half the usual time to weather, with weatherman Larry Green squeezing in forecasts both for Colorado and New York City -- a smart decision that provided information people thirsted for even as it tied Green into a story to which he'd previously had little opportunity to contribute. Channel 4 news director Angie Kucharski thinks this particular choice illustrates the station's approach as a whole. "We know there's an overriding interest in the events happening on the East Coast," she says, "so we want to make sure and be responsible enough to provide proper context and coverage even as we look for appropriate and respectful ways to provide local coverage."

Bill Dallman, news director at Channel 31, is trying to walk this tightrope as well: "Being a local news entity, we want to cover the local impact, but not at the expense of the universal story that we all want to tune into. So we're trying to balance both -- and I think we've been able to do it."

Trying to achieve this goal hasn't been easy -- but the rough edges have sometimes been more revealing than perfection might have. Channel 31's newscasts usually conclude as follows: The sportscaster completes his segment and hands off to the two news anchors, who then give the weatherman a chance to synopsize the forecast one more time before all four say a cheerful goodbye. But on September 12, cheerfulness was out of the question, leaving primary sports anchor David Treadwell at sea. He glumly wrapped up his approximately sixty-second report about sporting events that might be called off (all of them were) before throwing to anchor Ron Zappolo, who did likewise to seemingly speechless weatherman Bob Goosmann. An instant later, this threesome plus fill-in anchor Kim Posey turned to face the main camera, apparently unable to find something to say. Finally, Zappolo saved the day, admitting, in one of the more honest moments in Denver's coverage of this story, "This has been another incredibly difficult day."

Unfortunately, there are more to come. Even now, there's fallout in unanticipated areas. For example, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that The Onion, America's preeminent satirical newspaper (and a Denver favorite), is publishing "light and diversionary articles" from previous issues this week because of the impossibility of finding fun amid the carnage.