NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- This year marks the 20th anniversary of 9/11. While most news and media outlets are currently preparing pieces to revisit the events of that day featuring families of victims and survivors, one company has created a series of projects exploring the perspective and experiences of those who saw it unfold firsthand: the journalists.
This week, the video-streaming service Wondrium, in collaboration with the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, is unveiling a long-form documentary titled Reporting 9/11 and Why It Still Matters, as well as a 20-part docuseries titled Women Journalists of 9/11: Their Stories.
The documentary features more than 40 national reporters from various TV, print, and radio news outlets - including WCBS 880’s very own Sean Adams, Peter Haskell, and Tom Kaminski - as they recall and react to the events of the day.
The docuseries, on the other hand, features 20 prominent female journalists and highlights their contributions to the event’s coverage. It also explores the effects that day had on both their personal and professional lives.
From the moment the first plane hit the first tower to the (then) mysterious crash in Shanksville, no stone is left unturned. Speaking to WCBS 880 in an exclusive interview, directors Allison Gilbert and Phil Hirschkorn, explained that the purpose of the projects was to create a “really effective time machine.”
“We all know the cliché that journalism is the first rough draft of history,” Hirschkorn said, “and that’s what we have brought together here.”
While the female-centric series is wholly original, the documentary is a bit of an expansion on a book the two previously co-wrote also titled Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11. How are the two different though? Well, the book notably features triple the amount of interviews and accounts than the film has; however, it was only released a year after the terror attacks.
With so much more information now, the film goes beyond the events of September 11th. Additionally, it looks ahead to when Bin Laden was killed and to the present day.
Despite being designed as a retrospective, on a larger scale, it’s also a wake up call. Twenty years later, and it’s far from over. The psychological and physical health effects still linger.
“We are [still] living with the consequences of 9/11 everyday in our lives,” Gilbert says. She hopes the film will be most informative for those too young to remember the event, or those that weren’t even born yet.
“More people appear to be dying, and have died, from [9/11-related illnesses],” Hirschkorn adds, but health hasn’t been the only thing to change though. Journalism has too.
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Social media is noticeably absent from the documentary. That’s because it barely existed back then. As the filmmakers point out, “There was no Twitter or Facebook...nobody had smartphones.” The most popular thing at the time was amateur video, but that wasn’t even widely accessible.
When you realize just how drastically technology has changed in the span of the last two decades, it seems almost like a miracle that journalists then were able to report so accurately and so effectively with far less tools.
Throughout both series, there are countless anecdotes of reporters all heading towards the danger. In the case of the Pentagon, some were already inches away. However, the film makes it abundantly clear that, regardless of circumstance, the best tool at any reporter’s disposal is the truth.
In the film, there is a reporter who actually reveals that he’s developed 9/11-related cancer. Not just from being there on 9/11, but for going back every single day and wanting to keep the public informed - all in pursuit of the truth.
“It’s important not only to never forget the people who lost their lives, who were memorialized in the three memorials, but [to remember] what actually occurred,” Hirschkorn says, “because we live in a world today where the facts aren’t trusted.”
Oftentimes, when people hear the words “first responder” they immediately think of police officers and firefighters and nurses and doctors. While true, in addition to proving why 9/11 still matters, the documentary proves that journalists are first responders to a degree too.
Between August 30 and September 1, Reporting 9/11 and Why It Matters can be viewed in its entirety on Wondrium's YouTube channel. Beginning September 1, both the documentary and the series will be available exclusively via Wondrium's platform.
The documentary also features appearances from reporters Tom Brokaw, Savannah Guthrie, Byron Pitts, Dana Bash, and Barbara Starr.