This morning, terrorism came into our living rooms, our offices, our lives. It came to us across TV in images that mixed fear and disbelief with questions no one could answer:
Are none of us safe?
What could possibly happen next?
As we faced the unknown, TV gave us some of its finest hours, delivering one unfathomable story after another, doing its best to keep us informed on a day when pictures where transforming us in a way few other national events have.
The scandals were gone. The talking heads were gone. The exploitation shows were gone. It was all gone, replaced by journalists thrust into reporting history – live – for the country and the world to see.
They did it in measured tones, trying to make sense of what was unfolding, keeping guesswork and speculation to a minimum, but telling us firmly that what we were seeing was no Hollywood movie, no computer game.
The destruction, the death and the mayhem were real, and we could not turn away because the unfiltered images would not let us turn away.
It started with the top of one of the World Trade Center twin towers aflame, smoke billowing into the bright sky of a late summer New York workday. What was going on? Was it an accident?
Then, suddenly, you could see a dart shoot in on the TV screen, disappearing momentarily behind the towers, followed quickly by a massive fireball erupting from the second structure.
My God, a suicide attack? The replay confirmed it, again and again.
In the background, reporters mentioned the possibility that passenger jets had been hijacked and crashed into the buildings. A short time later, the FBI confirmed two hijackings had occurred. Later, the number rose to four.
There was more.
The TV networks broke away from New York and switched to Washington, D.C., where a plane has crashed into the Pentagon, smoke rising in a giant cloud that resembled the sunken Pacific Fleet at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.
More news:
The Federal Aviation Administration shuts down the nation’s air network; the Pentagon evacuates; the White House evacuates; President Bush boards Air Force One in Sarasota and heads to Louisiana, escorted by Air Force fighters; Capitol Hill evacuates.
More images:
One tower of the World Trade Center collapses into the streets below, choking smoke enveloping the blocks around it. The second tower collapses, covering the most famous skyline in the world with a gray funeral pall.
More news: A car bomb explodes outside the State Department; all federal offices in Washington evacuate; congressional leaders are taken to a safe location; part of the Pentagon collapses; casualties are expected to be in the thousands.
More images: Another hijacked passenger plane crashes about 80 miles from Pittsburgh.
It doesn’t stop there. It doesn’t seem that it will ever stop.
“I’ve never covered a story with the dimensions of this,” said CNN anchor Judy Woodruff. “And I’m sure I can say the same about my colleagues at CNN and the other networks.”
She’s right. None of us has.
