Television news networks are drawing on their distinct brands — and their own histories covering Sept. 11 — as they commemorate the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks Friday.
Across broadcast and cable, the programming falls into three broad approaches: using television’s archives as a historical record, treating the anniversary as a national ceremony and examining the political and legal questions that remain unresolved.
Those choices reflect the challenge of speaking both to viewers who watched the attacks unfold and to a generation for whom 9/11 is history — an audience network executives are explicitly seeking to reach. The anniversary is also happening at a time when audiences are more polarized than ever, with the national unity seen after the original attacks almost alien when compared to today’s hyper-political environment.
This year, the networks’ archival footage plays a particularly prominent role, allowing them to revisit not only what happened but introduce the people who experienced it.
Tapping into history
NBC will center its primetime coverage on a special edition of “Dateline” anchored by Lester Holt and built around footage from the NBC News archives, including previously unseen images.
“Our goal is to bring viewers, especially those who were born after 9/11, back to the experience of that day as it unfolded at Ground Zero,” “Dateline” executive producer Paul Ryan told TheWrap.
The documentary profiles New Yorkers whose experiences were captured by NBC’s cameras in real time on Sept. 11, 2001. Producers located several of those people — including survivors who escaped the towers, first responders, a WNBC cameraman and an NYPD helicopter pilot — and interviewed them about what they witnessed and how the attacks shaped their lives.
Ryan said the program aims to show viewers who are too young to remember 9/11 “what that day was really like at Ground Zero, and how New Yorkers responded, helped one another and survived.”
By returning to people it documented as the attacks unfolded, NBC is using its original reporting as both a historical record and a bridge between generations.
CNN is similarly drawing on its documentary library and history as a live-news institution. The network rebroadcast the Naudet brothers’ “9/11,” which includes the only known footage of the first plane striking the World Trade Center, and followed it with a new interview with the filmmakers.
CNN also premiered “Top of the World,” Betsy West and Julie Cohen’s documentary short about Windows on the World, the restaurant that sat atop the World Trade Center’s North Tower. Those films complement the network’s live coverage from New York, Washington and Shanksville by returning to footage and personal accounts recorded during and after the attacks.
CBS is also looking to its institutional history through “60 Minutes.” In the primetime special “9/11: We Remember,” Lesley Stahl will revisit the first “60 Minutes” story about 9/11, originally reported by her late colleague Ed Bradley.
Stahl will return to Summit, N.J., which lost nine residents on 9/11, to examine how the community has carried that history.
A person familiar with CBS News’ plans said the archival segment “does transport the viewer back to 2001,” painting a picture of the days immediately following the attacks.
Fox News is treating institutional memory primarily as firsthand testimony. Steve Doocy and Eric Shawn, who were part of the network’s coverage in 2001, will report from Lower Manhattan, while survivors, victims’ families and military officials will recount their experiences throughout the day. Rather than center its approach on a single documentary, Fox is weaving those recollections through its regular programming.
Fox Nation extends that approach across generations. One special follows former NYPD inspector Paul Mauro as he returns to Ground Zero with notes and previously unseen imagery from 2001, while another, hosted by Harris Faulkner, profiles people born on 9/11. Together, the programs examine how the attacks are remembered by those who experienced them and understood by those who inherited their consequences.
Paying tribute
Alongside that archival approach, several networks are treating the anniversary as a shared national ritual.
ABC is leaning most heavily into that model with “9/11 Tribute in Light: Live From Lower Manhattan,” hosted by David Muir, Robin Roberts and Diane Sawyer. The first national live broadcast of the Tribute in Light will combine the annual memorial ritual with performances by Cyndi Lauper, Lainey Wilson and Five for Fighting’s John Ondrasik.
The combination gives ABC’s coverage a focus on remembrance, healing and resilience rather than the mechanics of the attacks or the policy decisions that followed.
Examining 9/11’s legacy
CBS and NewsNation are also devoting programming to the unfinished legal and political legacy of 9/11.
CBS will follow “9/11: We Remember” with “Daughters of 9/11,” which examines whether accused mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will ever face justice. The documentary follows Elizabeth Miller and Jessica Trant, who both lost their fathers in the attacks, and FBI agent Frank Pellegrino.
The two CBS specials will approach the anniversary from complementary directions: one through individual stories of survival and loss, the other by examining why the prosecution of an accused architect of the attacks remains unresolved 25 years later.
NewsNation is taking the most personality- and politics-driven approach. Chris Cuomo will anchor from the 9/11 Memorial and reflect on covering the attacks from Lower Manhattan, while the network’s documentary will feature interviews with President Donald Trump and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. By centering recognizable political figures and Cuomo’s personal recollections, NewsNation is filtering the anniversary through personalities closely associated with New York and the post-9/11 era.
The networks’ approaches differ, but each relies on television’s unique relationship to the anniversary. They are covering an event that millions of Americans first experienced through their broadcasts.
Twenty-five years later, they are using that footage, the journalists who reported it and the people captured by their cameras to explain why the day still matters.
The post How TV News Is Approaching 9/11, 25 Years Later | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.
