Documenting firsthand the events of Sept. 11 tested the mettle of news reporters across America. Most who rose to the occasion agreed that when disaster strikes it is their duty to cover it as extensively as possible, however drastic the events and high the risks.
Channel 10 news anchor Gene Valicenti was among hundreds of journalists who traveled to New York City to report what would be the start of the most significant news story of their careers.
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Valicenti said he managed to distance himself from what was truly going on to attend to the matters at hand – broadcasting the historic events taking place.
“As far as it having a personal effect on me I really haven’t gauged that yet,” he said. “I was there to do a job. I think you sort of need the passage of time to evaluate the experience.”
For Valicenti and his crew, who reported the news for WJAR and its sister station in New York City, the magnitude of the tragedy is beginning to set in.
“What I will tell you is that it was sad to go back last week, because the smoke has now cleared,” he explained. “It’s always sad when someone dies, but it’s also sad when you go back to their house and they’re not there.”
Whether they were reporting the happenings around ground zero or the local reaction in Rhode Island, every reporter had his or her challenges reporting something so emotional to all Americans.
At a recent talk he gave at the University of Rhode Island, New York Times reporter Dan Barry spoke of rediscovering his identity in his job with the enormous responsibility of reporting the horror of Sept. 11.
Immediately after hearing the news, Barry drove toward the city against traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike. He ended up taken the Hudson River Ferry to Manhattan and was one of only six people on a boat made for 700 that was primarily used for transporting people out of Manhattan that day.
“We bear witness, but I don’t think any of us expected to bear witness to what we did, which was an honor and a privilege to be a part of, however, such a horrific event,” said Barry, a former Providence Journal reporter.
He spoke of how reporters often have to walk into situations where other people are running out. The situation on the ferry ride into the city was no different.
“Four of the people were crew members, and the other passenger was a guy who works in New Jersey but lives in New York,” he said.
All along he said he was “fully aware of what was happening intellectually.” But the experience was so surreal that he did not react to it until he was back at the office the next night when he received a telephone call from a childhood friend. His friend’s brother was missing in the calamity.
David Abel, a staff writer for the Boston Globe, went to the site of the World Trade Center immediately from his newsroom when the story broke.
Abel said he felt no sense of distance in reporting the story.
“You can’t distance yourself from a story like this,” he said. “You’re writing a story on mass tragedy, which is indeed what it was. I cried multiple times. It was very difficult not to have a reaction.”
Abel said he never feared for his life, but the scene was one of chaos he will never forget. “In Manhattan, I was walking down Sixth Avenue, and there were several police cruisers driving down the street very quickly, blaring over the loudspeaker that everyone had to clear the area,” he said. “It was like a scene out of a Superman movie. There was a bomb threat and everybody feared the Empire State Building would crumble. This scene repeated itself several times at different places. It was just chaos.”
Frank Coletta, a news anchor for Providence’s NBC Channel 10, said he did his job from the “relative comfort and safety” of his studio in Cranston. However, the pressures of reporting the event were still high.
“While you’re in the process you’re really too busy in putting the broadcast together to think about it,” he said. “You think about it after the broadcast.”
Barry said reporters are similar to firefighters and police officers to the extent that action in such chaotic times is second nature, but there is one important distinction.
“Let there be no misunderstanding when I tell you who the heroes are,” he said. “They ain’t the journalists.”
Barry is now working on profiling victims in the attacks in 200-word eulogies that the paper will run for the next year. He said he wrote his first set recently and was having a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that each person’s life was represented in such a small amount of words.
“I talked to the family of this one guy who was exactly my age,” he said, “and the relatives thanked me. I wanted to say, ‘you’ve got it all wrong. Thank you for talking to me.'”
