Kidnykid's Full Review: Cathy Trost, Alicia C. Shepard, Tom Brokaw, Newseu...
RUNNING TOWARD DANGER presents the story behind the story of 9/11 and the terrorist attack on America. Authored and compiled by two journalists on behalf of the Newseum (literally a news museum), it gives the perspectives of a large number of working journalists who actually covered the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA, on the day of the worst terrorist attack in American history.
Frankly, I liked this book - a great deal. I found it beneficial to read precisely because a reader can gain perspectives of what exactly it was like to be a working journalist on 9/11. Several journalists - Carol Marin, a former Chicago news anchor, among them - were directly affected by the attacks, and it was very interesting to read their firsthand accounts of the disaster scene.
As one discovers from reading RUNNING TOWARD DANGER, broadcast journalists in particular get into something of a "zone" when a story like this breaks. Eating, drinking and even trips to the restroom have to be squeezed into perhaps thirty-second blocs of time, when reports from the disaster sites are being aired. Often, such biological imperatives are simply ignored, as a Russian print reporter learned to his peril when he ignored chest pain while covering the World Trade Center attacks. (He had to be taken to a local hospital in the midst of the crisis, with a ruptured aorta; doctors told him that at the time he arrived at the hospital, he had an hour to live unless he had emergency surgery.)
One also learns that there was more debate over certain aspects of the coverage than the general public would be led to believe. For example, some would have preferred wider publication of photographs showing people jumping from the World Trade Center to their deaths, while others would have preferred to see these photographs suppressed entirely.
For those of us who are certified news junkies, this is a fascinating read. It provided me with a very good idea of the emotional toll the terrorist attacks took upon reporters, including the widow of William Biggert, who took the last photograph of the North Tower just seconds before his death and its collapse. I would recommend that news junkies in particular, as well as history buffs, purchase this book. (After all, the news is history's first rough draft.)
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