In 2001, as Americans got ready for a day of work and school on Tuesday, September 11, millions had their TVs tuned to one of the network morning shows on NBC, CBS, or ABC. News junkies with cable TV were likely tuned into 24-hour news pioneer CNN, or one of the newer cable networks, FOX News and MSNBC, which were both five years old at the time.
No matter which morning show people were watching, no one could have imagined that they were about to witness the deadliest terrorist attack in American history unfold on their TV screens. But moments after American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center’s south tower at 8:45 a.m. ET, each network’s morning teams went live with images of smoke billowing out of the tower.
With producers scrambling in the background to get answers and footage, the morning news anchors who Americans trusted to keep them informed, from NBC’s Katie Couric to ABC’s Diane Sawyer, tried to make sense of what they were witnessing in real-time.
In honor of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and the 2,977 victims who perished that day (not including the 19 hijackers involved), Parade takes a look back at how the reporting unfolded on multiple national morning broadcasts.
NBC’s Today Show Anchors Katie Couric & Matt Lauer Shocked by 9/11 Attacks
In 2001, NBC’s Today dominated the morning ratings, anchored by Katie Couric and Matt Lauer. The morning broadcast that Tuesday began as usual, with headlines from Ann Curry, weather reports by Al Roker, and numerous interviews — including Lauer speaking with a Howard Hughes biographer — until executive producer Jonathan Wald tersely told him in his earpiece: “Go to commercial. Breaking news: A plane has hit the World Trade Center.”
In the clip above, Couric and Lauer returned from the commercial break and she told viewers, “Apparently, a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Center here in New York City.” They immediately spoke with an eyewitness, Jennifer Oberstein, who said it was a “terrifying” scene after seeing a huge fireball and debris falling from the building (though she was unaware at that point it was caused by a plane).
One of the most chilling moments of the broadcast occurs around the 9:26 mark in the video, as Couric and Lauer were talking on the phone with Today producer Elliott Walker. She was reporting from near the site when she screamed, “Oh! Another one just hit! Something else just hit — a very large plane just flew directly over my building and there’s been another collision.”
As a giant fireball enveloped the second tower, voices in the studio could be heard gasping, “Oh my God!” Within a few moments, they went back to Oberstein, who sounded panicked as she told Lauer she’d “never seen anything like it,” describing how she watched a huge jet fly straight into the building.
Five years later, in 2006, Lauer recalled, “That was the realization, in an instant, that this is a major act of terrorism. And where there were two, there could be more, and by the way, we’re sitting in Rockefeller Center, a landmark and iconic attraction in New York City.”
ABC’s Good Morning America Hosts Charlie Gibson & Diane Sawyer React to Second Plane on 9/11
In 2001, ABC’s Good Morning America was hosted by Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer who also couldn’t fathom what they were seeing when the show aired live footage of smoke billowing out of the first tower.
Gibson called the Twin Towers the “beacons of New York” and recalled the 1993 terrorist bombing there, but noted, “We don’t know anything about what’s happened here, other than the fact that there’s obviously been a major incident there.”
They then broke in on all ABC stations across the nation, with Gibson telling viewers that there was “one report, unconfirmed, that a plane has hit the World Trade Center.” When the second plane hits, at about 12:35 in the video above, someone in the studio shouts, “Oh my God,” and Sawyer can be heard gasping, “Dear Lord.” Gibson, talking to a witness on the phone about seeing the plane and the second explosion, said, “So this looks like some sort of concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center.”
In 2006, Gibson told Today.com, “For the rest of my life, I will second-guess what happened then. Diane had the human reaction, and she said, ‘Oh my God.’ And I had the reporter’s reaction, which was, ‘Well, now we know what’s going on — we’re under attack.’ And I wish I had her reaction.;”
CBS’ The Early Show Lean On Anchor Bryant Gumbel to Handle Initial 9/11 Coverage
In 2001, CBS’ morning program was called The Early Show, hosted by Bryant Gumbel and Jane Clayson. After a pre-recorded segment about granting a “Week of Wishes” to deserving viewers, they shifted to a nationwide CBS Special Report at 8:52 a.m., with Gumbel announcing over footage of the towers that “a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.”
While Gumbel spoke on the phone with an eyewitness, Theresa Renaud (wife of the show’s producer, Jack Renaud), she was speaking with him as she saw the second plane hit at the 22:45 mark in the above video. As a fireball appeared in the lower left corner of the screen and Clayson gasped in the background, Renaud exclaimed, “Oh, there’s another one, another plane just hit! Oh my god, another plane has just hit, it hit another building! It flew right into the middle of it!”
When Renaud noted that it “definitely looked like it was on purpose,” Gumbel asked, “You saw a plane?” and she insisted, “Yes, I saw a plane go into the building!”
Eric Shapiro, who was director of the CBS Evening News and special events, told Esquire he raced from a doctor’s appointment and took over the broadcast an hour later, around 10 a.m., with Dan Rather in the anchor chair, and ran their coverage until 2 a.m. the next morning.
CNN’s Carol Lin Was First to Break the News on the Morning of 9/11
On the morning of 9/11, CNN cut into a commercial at 8:48 a.m. with a “very disturbing live shot” of the World Trade Center, morning anchor Carol Lin told viewers. She is widely considered the first person on 9/11 to break the news on television.
Lin recently revealed on the On The Knows podcast that while she was anchoring the coverage, “there were still many things we were not telling you that I was hearing in my earpiece,” including that then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was “sending 10,000 body bags to Ground Zero” and that “there might be a car bomb outside the State Department.”
Meanwhile, you can also watch how FOX News covered the attacks here. Footage of when MSNBC broke into its daily simulcast of radio icon Don Imus’ morning show to report live can be found here.
The day after the attacks, the New York Post called 9/11 the “most-widely broadcast news story in the history of television.” It also reported that in an unprecedented move, news division presidents at each network gathered for a conference call and agreed to share “whatever videotape any of them had shot during the day and provide the footage to any news organization that wanted to use it.”
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