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What it Means to Give 110%
By JOHN F. KUCZAJ
Where were you the day the world was changed?
I remember where I was at when the Challenger exploded, when the Murrah Building was bombed and when news of Princess Diana's death came out. In each case, the news networks went live and presented uninterrupted coverage to a shocked world.
On Monday, the biggest news story was the Michael Jordan comeback.
On Tuesday, the world changed--utterly.
I had just arrived at work and turned the TV on to see both World Trade Center towers on fire. Noone did any work that day as disbelief turned to horror and indescribable grief. We did nothing but watch TV on Wednesday as our grief continued to overwhelm us. By Thursday, grief turned into an anger that will simmer for years.
Television news coverage was exemplary. I continually flipped around, looking for the best coverage. On Tuesday, I'd say that ABC & CBS nudged out NBC for the best coverage, with Fox News Channel and CNN very close behind. Kudos have to be given to Channel 26 and Channel 50, who (eventually) dropped their programming and picked up the channel 9 or CNN feed. This was journalism at it's best, and everyone came through. I will say that another reason I stuck with channel 7 was because they offered the most un-cluttered picture. Everyone else felt it important to fill the lower-third with a ridiculous logo and a news ticker-obscuring the video. Kudos to ABC for presenting a clean picture.
News departments go commercial-free in these times so that people will notice and identify the station as a strong news station that has comprehensive coverage. As for Chicago stations, ratings have shown that people stayed with the newscasts they generally watch. Channel 7 was the highest rated, with channel 5 next and channel 2 a distant third-only slightly higher than channels 9 and 32. Interestingly, channel 9 and 32 had virtually the same ratings despite channel 32 having the Fox News Channel feed and Channel 9 using CNN. Another interesting note is that at about 8:15 on Tuesday morning (just after the 2nd plane hit), channel 9's & channel 32's morning news ratings went down while channel 7's went up. Clearly, Chicago viewers flocked to the stations they already trusted. Doesn't matter--they all kicked ass!
The newspapers did an incredible job also-but the Chicago Tribune definitely outpaced the Sun-Times. Both papers had Extra editions on the street by 3pm, but the Tribune took the unprecedented step of delivering the Extra editions that evening to subscribers. Wow! What an excellent idea. I'll also note that on Wednesday morning as I was commuting to work and the enormity of what happened was sinking in, I had a very hard time reading the papers. After 2-3 pages, emotion would overwhelm me as tears welled up in my eyes and I'd have to stop reading and compose myself. They did an excellent job reporting the tragedy.
I didn't tune to the radio except on my way home from work on Tuesday. I flipped to WBBM and I thought their coverage was very good. One of the newspeople said something that has stuck with me. The talk was about how the terrorists probably don't understand that they bit off more than they could chew and one guy mentioned the famous quote from Japanese Imperial Admiral Yamamoto, upon the completion of the Pearl harbor attack-"We have awakened a sleeping giant..." The newsperson mentioned that most people forget the second part of the quote, which really cements it's meaning-"We have awakened a sleeping giant and have instilled in him a terrible resolve". How true.
I really can't think of any reason to complain about the Tuesday and Wednesday except for the lower-third graphics. Any factual errors that came about tended to be corrected in good time, and since everyone was broadcasting by the seat of their pants, you have to give some leeway. I will say that by Thursday, the networks were starting to screw up at an unacceptable rate. All day Thursday there were confirmed and unconfirmed stories that survivors were found. All those stories proved to be false. Then the stories about airport arrests and knives found turned out to be false. The wall-to-wall coverage was starting to be detrimental to the story as the networks strained to give every bit of news to justify the wall-to-wall commercial-free coverage. Otherwise, I don't think anyone can complain about the Tuesday & Wednesday coverage (although Chuck Novak has a good point...).
Check the Facts!
By CHUCK NOVAK *
A neighborhood-based news reporter in Chicago
Back during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-81, a number of Americans angry with Ayatollah Khomeini and frustrated by President Carter's inability to bring the hostages home, turned their wrath against Arab-Americans. Mosques and other buildings were vandalized, and individuals were harassed and sometimes beaten.
Arab-Americans typically responded by pointing out that Iranians aren't Arabs. They are Persians. They don't speak Arabic. They speak Farsi. So please, the Arab-Americans pleaded, don't blame us. That stopped some of the persecution, but not all.
I was reminded of that ignorance on the afternoon of September 13, when a WBBM-AM reporter stated that a man from southwest suburban Worth was under arrest and charged with a felony hate crime for brandishing a machete at a local gas station attendant who appeared to be an Arab. "But he isn't an Arab, he's from Morocco," the reporter said.
Send that reporter back to school with a social studies book under his arm, because Morocco is indeed an Arab country and has been since it was invaded and conquered in 682. It has been a member of the League of Arab States since 1958, and its official language is Arabic. There is a remnant population of the Berbers conquered centuries ago, but they are a fairly small minority.
So, a machete-wielding bigot is worldlier than a Newsradio 780 reporter. Now what does THAT tell us?
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* Pseudonym
Published weekly...or so--usually on Friday.
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