Abstract
This essay is based on the analysis of an extensive and previously unpublished compilation of news wire updates from agencies such as Extel, Press Association and Associated Press received in the BBC newsroom in the run up to the attack and through the first 2 hours of output. The work is comprehensive and is intended as a research resource to enrich the historical record and support further analytical study of news values, especially in connection with major emergencies and unscheduled news events such as terrorist incidents. The significance is that the updates are drawn from all the major news agencies which enable a comparative analysis of their performances. The essay includes a review of frame theory and tests the validity of existing work on frame theory in discussing the stages of news ‘processing’ of crisis and disaster.
Television news coverage of the terrorist attacks in New York on 11 September 2001 has been the subject of much academic research, testing theories of agenda-setting and issue framing by professional media as it interacts with government and other information sources. The literature frequently cites the report of the US National Research Council Committee on Disasters and the Mass Media’s (1980) workshop on disasters and the mass media (p. 10) and its six-stage model for defining and structuring news reporting from ‘warnings of predicted or impending disasters’ (stage one) to ‘defining slow-onset problem as crises or disasters’ (stage 6). Consideration of this model is, for example, central to Xigen Li’s (2007) study entitled Stages of a Crisis and Media Frames and Functions: US Television Coverage of the 9/11 Incident During the First 24 Hours. Television output has been the main field of research in that it was held at that time to be both the most influential in terms of framing public debate, and the most dynamic medium in terms of reacting to events. Furthermore, the aggressive and spectacular nature of the 9/11 attack and the scale of coverage ‘provided a unique opportunity to understand how television media cover a crisis of unprecedented magnitude’ (Li, 2007: 3).
Literature analysing news coverage of the event including relatively early reactions from academics and researchers including, for example, David T Z Mindich (2002) and Eleanor S. Block (2004). Much of this literature has analysed the news values applied to the coverage of the story, usually within a theoretical framework of comparative cultural studies – for example, Cristina Archetti (2010), in her interdisciplinary study of the creation of the news agenda for coverage of terrorism during and in the wake of the 9/11 story.
This study looks at how BBC news responded to the crisis, examining inputs shaping the output mediated by a range of news agencies and showing the extent to which the output reflected the agenda set by the news agencies in the first 2 hours of the crisis. In terms of framing theory, this is the critical period in which the crisis was processed in line with stages 2 to 4 of the US National Research Council’s identified framework, namely: ‘conveying information to officials, relief agencies and the public’ (stage 2); ‘charting the progress of relief and recovery’ (stage 3) and ‘dramatizing lessons learned for the purpose of future preparedness’ (stage 4). An empirical approach, rather than a literature review, is use to add rich detail to existing analysis of the field, foregrounding the link between ‘wholesale’ news agency inputs and ‘retail’ output as consumed by the broadcast audience.
Background and method
I was working as a journalist for BBC News Online in London in 2001 at the time of the 9/11 events. I took the opportunity to collect and file the raw newswire copy BBC news used during the first 2 hours of continuous ‘rolling’ news output. The first plane crashed just before 2 pm London time and my fieldwork material covers the period up until BBC’s scheduled news bulletin at 4 pm. By this time, the events had been fully processed into a news story which then, using the perspective of frame theory, ceased to develop in terms of ‘frame structure’ although it did subsequently continue to develop in terms of ‘frame sophistication’ as described in, for example, Reynolds and Barnett’s (2003) analysis of the first 5 hours of US television output of the same event.
I have tabulated the raw new wires available to journalists in the BBC newsroom on 9/11 in simple chronological order and compared this to the output of BBC television news showing a mean delay of approximately 8 minutes between the receipt of new information from the newswires and the broadcast output of the same information over the 2-hour period. Furthermore, I compared the minute-by-minute output of BBC in London with ABC television news in New York. This work enabled a series of hypotheses arising from the literature to be tested, specifically:
That BBC News television output on 9/11 conformed to the model of framing theory in that at stage 2 content moved progressively from descriptive to attributive and then on to affective. (Stage 1, which deals with warnings of an impending crisis or disaster, does not apply in this case).
That BBC News and ABC News output both conformed to the framing model and that similarities or differences in output are more likely to have arisen because of structural factors in the use of news wires rather than by other factors, such as bias, culture or ideology.
Data
In 2001, storage capacity even for text documents was limited. I created a collection of hundreds of newswire ‘prospects’ (detailed the scheduled news events for the day ahead) and updates once the events of the day began to unfold. The material was storied on 16 portable disc drives with a capacity of about 700k each, from which I created a single document containing all the material networked to all the BBC’s journalists. The collection of wire updates is extensive if not entirely comprehensive, since the updates are drawn from a variety of news agencies patronised by BBC – lead by Press Association (PA; United Kingdom), Associated Press and Associated Press TV and Extel, a financial news service based in the World Trade Centre, which was the first agency to alert BBC news desk that an explosion (at first of unidentified cause) had taken place at the World Trade Centre. This material functions as the raw material for this study. Whereas most other studies including Archetti (2010) and in addition Hargrove and Stempel (2002) have focused on analysis of output, this collection of material facilitates further analysis of links between inputs and outputs with the twin aims of further documenting the events of 9/11 and the response of BBC and also of enriching frame theory as applied to this particular news story and to crisis reporting generally.
The news agenda for the day, produced by PA in London, became available to BBC journalists at 6.06 London time. The lead prospect was Tony Blair at the TUC conference, who was to give a speech to defend his government’s plans to increase private investment partnerships in the public sector. The speech was due to take place at 2.15 pm, and PA was offering to supply pictures. The rest of the running order was a routine list of local political and crime stories.
At 8.02 Agence France-Presse (AFP) delivered its prospects, leading with international stories beyond the reach of PA. Ranked first was a terrorist bomb attack in Afghanistan, followed by an Israeli tank attack on a Palestinian village believed to be harbouring suicide bombers.
Plans for output began to be disrupted when the first plane hit the towers at 13.46 London time (08.46 New York time). ABC News interrupted its scheduled morning news magazine within 4 minutes of impact to show a wide-angled shot distant from North Tower of the World Trade Centre with thick smoke coming from windows towards the top of the tower. The co-presenter commented over the live pictures: 13.51: We are going to tell you what we know as we know it, but we just got a report in that there’s been some sort of explosion at the World Trade Centre in New York City.
The presenters continued to ad lib over the pictures, arranging a two-way interview with an ABC news reporter based in the channel’s New York bureau, a few streets away from the World Trade Centre. The presenters mentioned a report that a plane ‘may have’ hit the building, adding ‘we don’t know anything further’. The fact that the World Trade Centre had been a terrorist target previously was mentioned, but this was softened to ‘we have no reason to believe or not that this is terrorism …’ In these early minutes of the breaking story reporting conformed to frame theory by restricting reporting to purely descriptive summaries of what the audience could see themselves, avoiding the transition to the ‘attributive’ (what caused the event) typical of stage two.
At 13.52 ABC cancelled its morning programme and went over to a rolling news format under the heading ‘ABC special report’. This consisted of unmediated pictures of the burning North Tower and an audio-only two-way interview with an identified ABC reporter in the network’s New York newsroom four blocks away from the World Trade Centre. The reporter said that about 10 minutes earlier, he had heard something that ‘sounded like a missile’ pass over the newsroom, followed by an explosion. Significantly the reporter instinctively attempted a premature transition from simple description (an explosion) towards attribution (a missile). He then softened the claim, saying he was fairly sure the cause was a missile ‘or possibly a jet plane’ which had impacted the building, causing the explosion. The missile claim was not taken up by the news agencies and disappeared from coverage of the event.
The first news to arrive at BBC from a verifiable source on the wires, as opposed to monitoring of the ABC new output, came 1 minute later – 8 minutes after the impact. It was from the Extel financial news agency, itself located in the World Trade Centre. The snap (jargon for notification of significant breaking or unscheduled news) read as follows: FNF486 (0000000)a #ZA 13.53 *WORLD TRADE CENTRE IN NY ON FIRE, PLANE SUSPECTED TO HAVE CAUSED DAMAGE #
At 13:56 – 11 minutes after the impact and 4 minutes after the first news was dropped by Extel – BBC’s internal news service circulated a ‘SNAP’ (brief breaking news alert) and headline AIRLINER ‘CRASHES INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE’ to all BBC journalists, adhering the strict descriptive approach characteristic of frame analysis, stating in neutral terms that a (plane) ‘crash’ had taken place. The SNAP was reliant on live television pictures of smoke pouring out of the World Trade Centre supplied by CNN and verified by the US news agency, Associated Press (AP). The SNAP read as follows: 13.56: SNAP BBC-GNS Reports are coming in from the United States that a passenger aircraft has crashed into the World Trade centre building in New York. Television pictures show black smoke and flames billowing from the tower, one of the city’s highest buldings [SIC]. Details are still coming in. {NET HEADLINE: Airliner ‘crashes into World Trade centre’ } {RADIO HEADLINE: } {SOURCES: cnn,ap }
As the SNAP was circulated, BBC World rolling news service cut into a routine pre-recorded sports round-up and cross-faded to a presenter who read the SNAP with only slight paraphrasing. The sports material faded out mid-sentence in the middle of a report about a baseball match. The presenter was in vision and read the SNAP script word for word to the camera, after which the screen cross-faded to live footage taken from ABC’s output, showing a wide shot of the North Tower billowing smoke. The strapline simply read: BREAKING NEWS with no further information.
13.56: BBC WORLD LIVE BROADCAST OUTPUT [Presenter in vision:] And we are getting reports of a plane crash in the world trade centre in New York … [ABC Footage of the North Tower billowing smoke:] You can see the pictures there … It is one of New York’s tallest buildings–that’s all the information we know at the moment, but as you can see it is a considerable collision and there is a large fire … That’s all the information we have at the moment. But we’ll be back with more details in just a short while at the top of the hour.
The pictures from ABC were then faded out, and sport bulletin resumed without any further comment. There was one final sports story and the presenter signed off to be replaced a scheduled graphic sequence of the current headlines in text form and a countdown to the scheduled bulletin which would have already been prepared for broadcast at 14:00 hours (London time). There was no mention of the World Trade Centre. The top story was still the problems at the Sangatte refugee camp near Calais and the story about Australia migration flagged up in the prospects for the day’s output by AFP. These captions were rotated in the run down to the news bulletin scheduled for 14:00. A minute before the bulletins went on air, a second SNAP was circulated: 13.59: SNAP SUMMARY BBC-GNS [new lead] A plane has crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York. One of the two towers is billowing smoke. It’s not known if anyone’s hurt.
As the bulletins went to air at 14:00, the newsdesk began the planning process for the next and subsequent bulletins continued. Associated Press Television News (APTN), BBC’s main source of TV pictures from the US, at 14:00 delivered a full ‘OUTLOOK’ (list of picture opportunities or material already filed and available) of material available for use in upcoming bulletins. The tag ‘WORLD TRADE CENTRE CRASH’ was the first item on the menu.
At this point, APTN was describing events as ‘a disaster’ rather than an attack or accident: ‘We will continue our coverage of the World Trade Centre disaster following what is reported to be a plane that crashed into the New York tower causing as yet undetermined damage and injury’. The update conformed to the development predicted at stage 2 of the theory, restricted to a descriptive account, transitioning to attribution in the sense of explaining that the fire had been caused by a plane crash. The update also pointed forward to stage 3 development – assessment of damage and the chances of repair and rescue.
The rest of the OUTLOOK offer included numerous prospects and footage already in the file including a follow up to the news that a US military plane had been shot down in Iraq, footage of a bush fire in New Jersey and of refugees a refugee camp near Calais plus a ‘comprehensive wrap of the latest Middle East violence. (First Run 1045 F-L-A-S-H)’.
AP/APTN sent the following additional message 1 minute after the 14:00 OUTLOOK, cancelling its pre-prepared Middle East bulletin and offered BBC (and all other subscribers) live footage of the ‘World Trade Centre Crash’. The message read as follows: 14:01 AP-APTN-0000: WTC CRASH ADVISORY Tuesday, 11 September 2001 STORY: WTC CRASH ADVISORY - LENGTH: 0:00 U-R-G-E-N-T NOTE TO ALL OUR CLIENTS Please be advised that the Middle East One B-U-L-L-E-T-I-N has been cancelled. Instead, clients will be able to get LIVE coverage on the World Trade Centre crash. All material will be ABC – No NAmerica/CBC Regards, APTN London 11 Sep 2001 APTN APTV-09-11-01 0901EDT
Two minutes later, at 14:03 (09:03 New York time), a second plane hit the south tower of the World Trade Centre. Whereas there was no footage of the first plane hitting the north tower, the flight of second plane was caught by the stationary camera showing the first fire. However, the camera angle was such that the south tower was hidden by the north tower. All that was visible was the second plane flying behind the north tower from the right of the shot and then the fireball emerging from behind the north tower towards the left of the screen. This was noticed and correctly described by the ABC presenters watching and commentating on the raw pictures, one of whom gasped ‘Oh My God!’ and the other muttered ‘My God’. At that point, the co-presenter was in the middle of a two-way audio-only interview with ABC’s reporter in the newsroom near the World Trade Centre. The co-presenter said to the reporter: ‘That looks like a second plane’ to which the reporter replied: ‘I didn’t see a plane go in, that just exploded’.
The fact that a second plane had been involved was not incorporated into BBC’s output until 14:09 when an update was circulated via BBC’s internal General News Service (GNS) network to all BBC journalists: 14:09 BBC-GNS/LON Two aircraft have crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York. Both towers are billowing smoke. The first impact happened shortly before two o’clock; another plane hit the surviving tower a few minutes ago. Eyewitnesses say both planes were passenger aircraft – the first a jet, and the other propeller-driven. There are no details yet of casualties.
At 14:10, BBC World presenter confirmed the updated version of the story circulated by GNS a minute earlier and also broke into a two-way interview, in order to show a clip of the 14:03 ABC footage of the second plane flying into the picture from the right, disappearing behind the north tower and evidently hitting the south tower (this event not in view) and a fireball emerging from behind the north tower to the left of the screen.
The presenter said (14:10): ‘We have got some pictures that have also just come in of a second plane crash, crashing in to the other tower at World Trade Centre …’. The clip was repeated in slow motion, with the presenter commenting out of vision: ‘You can see huge explosion there, so a double plane accident at the World Trade Centre …’. This was followed by a resumption of the two-way interview, with the New York reporter speculating (for the first time) that the crashes may have been ‘deliberate’.
It should be noted that BBC at this point was still describing the event using the neutral non-attributive term ‘crash’. The main British news agency used by BBC, PA, followed up 2 minutes later (14:12), reporting: ‘Two aircraft slammed into the World Trade Centre in New York today’ and announcing that the agency’s New York reporter was en route to the World Trade Centre. Most of PA’s subscribers are newspapers with a need for still pictures. PA was thus offering video grabs immediately and pictures sourced from Associated Press ‘soon’. The ‘breaking news’ strap on BBC World screen was changed, but was still lagging: WORLD TRADE CENTRE: THERE HAVE BEEN TWO EXPLOSIONS IN THE BUILDING FOLLOWING A PLANE CRASH. The strap was not updated to mention the second impact for another 3 minutes, which was 12 minutes after the second impact had occurred live on the ABC output BBC was re-broadcasting.
At 14:12, the Extel agency relayed the first estimate of casualties, which it sourced as coming from the US TV network CNBC:
FNF494
(0000000)a
#ZA
14.12 *WORLD TRADE CENTRE BLAST: 6 DEAD, 1,000 INJURED - CNBC
These casualty figures were not used in output until 14:26, when they were added to the strapline. Simultaneously (at 14:12/09:12), PA in London circulated a report quoting a British eyewitness (‘SLUG: Plane Witness’): James Winter, 30, a British worker living in an apartment close to the centre, said he had been woken by a huge bang at around 8.50am local time. ‘I was in bed and there was a huge explosion. The whole building rattled and shook. ‘I ran to the window and there was smoke billowing from the south side of one of the towers. Everyone in my building was panicking and running around’.
PA quoted the eyewitness speculating about the possibility of a terrorist attack: ‘Everybody is saying that this a terrorist attack and everyone around here is panicking’.
The Reuters news agency (14.13) had solid information from the oil spot market, which had reacted to the news. Reuters’ report was headed: IPE BRENT SURGES AS SECOND EXPLOSION ROCKS TOWER, and it commented on speculation that the plane crashes were in fact part of an unfolding terrorist attack. The agency’s report put the speculation in the voice of an unidentified stock market trader, thus: ‘Now that is [SIC] looks like there is a second explosion this has raised the possibility of a terrorist attack and the market is a bit spooked by that’, said one trader.
Reuters continued by reporting that the trading floor in the World Trade Centre had been evacuated but, beyond this, could only add that television pictures showed that the building was on fire.
BBC in its output remained cautious. Presenters talked over a slow motion loop of the second impact, and conducted two-way audio interviews with correspondents. For example, at 14:18, the presenter said: ‘We don’t know if this is an attack at all, though the pictures of that second plane heading right towards the tower would have caused suspicions …’ [it could have been a navigational error]. Eyewitnesses converged on fact of an explosion just before 9 am (New York time) which had been assumed to have been an accident or a bomb, followed by a second larger explosion which had resulted in panic. The reports were summarised by BBC’s New York reporter at 14:22. The reporter, Jane Beresford, said the first explosion had caused visible towers of smoke, but no great panic: 14.22 BBC World Broadcast Output (Jane Beresford): ‘… a plane flew right above very low and smashed into the tower. People were stunned by the first explosion, but were calm. Then the second plane–like something out of a film, it was so low it seemed to be aiming right for it. It didn’t look like an accident. It was heading straight for the tower’.
At 14:24, the breaking news strapline was updated to include the estimate of casualties received from Extel earlier at 14:12: ‘Eports [SIC] of six people dead and 1000 injured after two plane crashes in New York’. With both building on fire and very badly damaged (the towers would collapse entirely within the next 40 minutes), this was by this point an obvious and severe underestimate. (The final death toll was to be 2606, with tens of thousands injured). The update indicates that the strapline had a consistent time lag of about 12 minutes, the same delay in updating from to include news of the second impact.
The first comprehensive report from the World Trade Centre was circulated at 14:30 SLUG: ‘US Plane; Lead / Full’ under the headline JETS SMASH INTO WORLD TRADE CENTRE, by-lined ‘By Hugh Dougherty, PA News, New York’. Half an hour after the impact of the planes, PA was describing it in the intro in neutral terms as a ‘Plane Smash’, though it was also reporting sourced speculation that terrorists had been responsible for the incident. However elements of the report indicate that the story was developing according to frame theory from neutral description to attribution of the cause of the event (to terrorists via a plane crash), and also tentatively pointing towards stage three development (charting the progress of relief and recovery).
PA was now reporting that there had been ‘hundreds of casualties’. Beyond this the report re-used and added length to the eyewitness accounts circulated in earlier reports, reported what could be seen on television and filled in with background information, including the fact that the World Trade Centre had been the target for a terrorist attack in 1993.
At the same time (14:30), the AFX financial news agency circulated a report from its New York bureau, moving the story along markedly from description to attribution, confirming that according to its sources, the plane crashes were ‘deliberate’, though the term ‘terrorism’ was not used in the lead paragraph. Instead, the agency relayed output from CNBC which quoted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as saying ‘the explosion was the result of foul play and was investigating reports’.
The first unambiguous reports that US security sources regarded the incident as a terrorist attack came a few minutes later in a report from PA, and by-lined Sam Greenhill, PA News: BOMBING ‘BEARS HALLMARKS OF ORGANISED TERRORISTS’ By Sam Greenhill, PA News Terrorism experts said today’s extraordinary attacks in the United States bore all the marks of a well-organised paramilitary group.
PA attributed speculation as to the culprits to the FBI, the CIA and to President George W Bush. PA also reported that an organisation called the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) had claimed responsibility for the attack, but the organisation denied that this was the case. PA later sourced the DFLP story to a television station in Abu Dhabi which had said that it had been contacted by the DFLP, claiming responsibility.
PA then reported: ‘Osama Bin Laden – the world’s most wanted terrorist – will also be high on the list of suspects’ indicating the development of the story in line with frame theory towards greater sophistication, defined as greater contextual and abstract attribution of cause, including a political context and the element of blame and accusation.
The broadcasters were now driving towards their 15:00 (10:00 am New York) bulletins, which would now be entirely devoted to events in New York and which, at least it terms of TV news, would be highly reliant on live pictures of the damage to the buildings and replays of the crash and of the subsequent collapse of the towers.
The organisation of story development around the framework of scheduled news bulletins was significant in moving between stages of story development, with each successive stage requiring the story to ‘move forward’ thus providing a series of structural turning points. Two minutes before the 15:00 deadline, AFX was the first circulate news that BAA, the company which owned the major British airports including Heathrow, Gatwick and Stanstead, had suspended all flights to the United States, indicating that story processing was now transitioning to stage 3: ‘charting the progress of relief and recovery’.
For the 15:00 bulletin, AP Television News was offering subscribers pictures sourced from the US ABC TV Network. The available list of shots was as follows: AP-APTN-1500: ++WTC Attack Tuesday, 11 September 2001 STORY: ++WTC Attack – NEW Two airlines hit World Trade Centre LENGTH: 2:37 FIRST RUN: 1400 RESTRICTIONS: No US networks TYPE: English/Nat SOURCE: ABC STORY NUMBER: 314854 DATELINE: NY, 11 Sep 2001 SHOTLIST: 1. Various aerial shots of tower on fire 2. Wide shot of smoke billowing from tower over the top of adjacent tower 3. Closer shot same 4. Wide shot second plane hits other tower 5. Mid shot fire in second tower 6. Various of towers ablaze 7. Wide shot New York skyline with World Trade Centre towers ablaze
The accompanying summary story lead by describing events in neutral terms in respect of attribution, but introducing the structural ‘sophistication’ framing elements of human interest and emotional impact over and above the bare facts: Two planes crashed into the upper floors of both World Trade Centre towers minutes apart on Tuesday in a horrific scene of explosions and fires that left gaping holes in the 110-storey buildings, causing them to collapse.
The second paragraph simply stated that no reliable estimate of injuries or fatalities has been received in connection with ‘the twin disasters’.
The agency did not use the underestimate of casualties circulating on the wires and did not in fact speculate at all, instead filled in with a neutral description of what could be seen on television pictures of the scene: There was no immediate word on casualties in the twin disaster which left gaping holes in the 110-storey buildings. Fire and thick black smoke were seen billowing out of the towers.
At 14:32, BBC broke into its output to show President George W Bush giving a brief official response (70 seconds) which described events as ‘an apparent terrorist attack on our country’. BBC added terrorism experts, commenting on the President’s statement. At 14:42, the presenter relaying a report from Reuters saying that ‘a Palestinian group has claimed responsibility …’. The presenter added: ‘Those are unconfirmed reports I must stress’. The terrorism expert added: ‘I suspect we may see this is Islamic terrorism’. Five minutes earlier (at 14:37), a third plane had crashed into a helicopter pad and an exterior wall of the Pentagon in Washington DC, close to the White House.
Whereas BBC was slow to react to news of the third crash. ABC broke into its live coverage (14:43 London time) of the Twin Towers (now consisting of a wider range of shots, including some street level footage of confusion and debris on the streets near the towers) to show pictures of the White House in Washington DC, with a cloud of smoke in the background, behind the building at a distance. There was a two-way interview with the channel’s Washington reporter speculating on the source of the smoke.
One minute later, ABC confirmed that the Pentagon building was on fire. BBC made no mention of this new development, but the breaking news strap was updated (14.45) to read: ‘Unconfirmed reports that a Palestinian group has claimed responsibility’. At 14:47, BBC began to re-broadcast ABC’s pictures of the Washington smoke cloud, the presenter said that ‘reports are coming in’ of ‘explosions at the Pentagon, which has been evacuated’.
BBC had switched its output to show the scene from Washington and so the moment of the collapse of the first of the two towers (the south tower, which had chronologically been the second, though more heavily impacted, target). The collapse happened at 14:59, too close to the 15:00 bulletins to be included in comprehensive summaries. BBC switched back to pictures of New York at 15:01, by which time the south tower had disappeared to be replaced by a huge plume of dust and smoke.
The reporter was speculating cautiously about casualty figures and rescue attempts (indicating a transition to stage 3 in the framing model). During the interview, the presenter interrupted to comment on the live pictures: Presenter (during two-way interview): ‘… and it looks as if he towers … one of the towers has fallen down, is that your understanding?…’. The reporter appeared to ignore the question and continued with his theme, describing the situation in general terms. A few moments later, once the facts had been established by ABC, BBC presenter confirmed the news: ‘We are looking at the very disturbing pictures from New York of the World Trade Centre … only one tower is standing … the other has collapsed …’ (15.02).
At 15:03, a fourth hijacked plane crashed in Pennsylvania. Shortly after 15:00, BBC monitoring service began to circulate summaries of reaction as broadcast by television and radio stations around the world, lead by a English translation transcript of the 15:00 (London time) bulletin aired by Iraqi TV news in Arabic (14:00 GMT). The Iraqi bulletin stuck very closely to the syndicated AP/APTV report, describing the event as ‘a crash’, but adding the early line sourced by AP to the FBI that the planes had been hijacked: [BBC Monitoring summary of 15.00 Iraqi (14.00 GMT) TV News bulletin]: ‘Two planes crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Centre in New York today. World television networks are now carrying footage of the building with its upper floors on fire without giving details about the cause of the incident or the death toll. Power and gas supply was cut off to the 110-story building in an attempt to save scores of citizens locked in the building. Fire spread to a nearby building. ‘In a subsequent report, news agencies said one of the planes was hijacked without mentioning which side hijacked it. ‘Six people have been reported dead and 1,000 wounded. News agencies said US President Bush Jr will give a speech in a short while on the incident. Source: Iraqi TV, Baghdad, in Arabic 1400 gmt 11 Sep 01 BBC Mon ME1 MEPol dh
Shortly after 15:00, PA provided a 1000 word summary report from the British agency’s New York correspondent Hugh Dougherty. This was the first agency report to unambiguously describe events as ‘Terror Strikes’, attributing the destruction of the towers to a ‘brutal attack’ by (unidentified) ‘terrorists’. The second paragraph described a third plane attack also carried out by ‘suicide bombers’. The third paragraph carried an unconfirmed report that a fourth plane had also been hijacked.
Dougherty’s report for PA also increased the estimate of fatalities, saying that ‘thousands were feared dead’ in the opening sentence in the report. The report was a significant structural point in the developing sophistication of the story, emphasising in emotional terms the human suffering involved for the first time: ‘Eye-witnesses reported seeing bodies plunging from the buildings as the flames spread out of control’.
Further details of the scope of destruction were given by eyewitnesses. Much lower down the report PA quoted ‘the US’ blaming the attack on Osama Bin Laden, bringing speculation to a close. The report contained a detailed profile of Bin Laden and his previous involvement in terrorist attacks against the United States.
Shortly after the first mention of Bin Laden as a possible organiser of the attacks, BBC’s Middle East correspondent reported that the Palestinian political group named as claiming responsibility for the attacks had denied the claims. The correspondent said, in line with BBC and journalists’ regulatory code forbidding the reporting of speculation or comment as fact, that claims of Palestinian involvement with the attack needed to ‘treated with a great deal of caution’ (14:53). Thirty minutes later (15:27), BBC processed this aspect of the story by broadcasting an interview with the leader of the Palestinian group which had been accused categorically denying any involvement with the attack.
Dougherty’s comprehensive summary was supplemented by a ‘colour piece’ (as the agency described it - 430 words of his firsthand account of being close to the towers. It was headlined: I LOOKED UP AND THE TRADE CENTRE TOWERS WERE GONE).
PA’s ‘night schedule’ of Tuesday September 11th led with ‘US Plane’ – the slug chosen for the updates on the story, with the settled summary: ‘Thousands were feared dead today after terrorists launched an astonishing and brutal attack on the American nation, demolishing the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre and striking at the heart of the US military machine’.
PA alerted subscribing news desks that the story would be updated continuously, with fresh reports being added to both home and foreign news files. Pictures and graphics, the agency noted, were already in the file, ready for use.
PA was now offering four leads – or what might be called angles – on the attack, including a speech in response to the attack by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Stock Market reaction to the events, the eyewitness ‘colour’ piece from Dougherty in New York and the main story in summary. The political story, Blair’s reaction, was updated under its own slug: ‘US PLANE–BLAIR’.
In addition, PA offered a full roster of routine or scheduled ‘on diary’ UK and international news stories, with details of reports and pictures likely to be available.
BBC continued its rolling news, with eyewitness interviews from reporters in New York, now with the interview subjects in vision and with views of the evacuation effort. These interviews contained much more detailed accounts of death and injury, for example at 15:19: ‘I have seen people jumping out of the building’ … ‘I have seen people with all their skin hanging off … I have seen at least 14 people jumping out of windows … you could see they were still alive because they were flailing around …’.
At 15:28, the north tower collapsed. BBC did not have a wide shot of this event, but was showing street-level pictures of dust of people leaving the area amid dust and smoke. Over these pictures, the presenter said (15:29): ‘Both towers have now collapsed, we gather.’ … Two minutes later, the presenter mentioned ‘unconfirmed reports’ of the plane crash over Pennsylvania which had taken place 26 minutes previously. This was firmed up 10 minutes later by the presenter: ‘a fourth plane has crashed in Western Pennsylvania, according to news agency there are unconfirmed reports quoting airport officials’.
By the time of scheduled summary bulletin at 16:00, BBC had produced a structured report led by and built around the ABC pictures of the second plane hitting the south tower and a montage of street scenes. There were three elements to the story, all of them conforming to expected narrative developments indicated by frame theory at stage 4. These were:
The extent of casualties [‘It’s still impossible to calculate the number of victims of these unbelievable, virtually simultaneous attacks’];
Terrorist responsibility for the attack [a studio guest expert said the attack was ‘right out of the playbook of Osama Bin Laden’];
Political reaction – the report linked through the presenter to President Bush’s speech, to the denial of responsibility by the named Palestinian group;
The continuing threat quoting Reuters saying (incorrectly) that all airports in Canada had been closed in addition to those in the United States. BBC also reported (‘unconfirmed’) that another plane had been hijacked and had been heading towards Washington’.
Findings
Consideration of the newswire inputs in the analysis of BBC output in the first 2 hours of 9/11 coverage tends to confirm in general the validity of frame theory.
It will be recalled that the six stages of story development predicted by the US National Research Council Committee on Disasters and the Mass Media model are as follows:
Warning to the public of impending danger;
Conveying information to officials, relief agencies and the public;
Charting the progress of relief and recovery;
Dramatising lessons learned for the purpose of future preparedness;
Attributing blame or responsibility;
Further debate of policy required to avoid a repeated disaster or crisis.
Hypothesis 1. BBC news processing of the 9/11 crisis moved directly to stage two of the crisis reporting model accepted as standard in the literature, as predicted by the theory. Stage 1 (warning of impending crisis or danger) was absent because this was a surprise attack. Coverage proceeded from very basic and guarded descriptive accounts of events towards progressively attributive accounts through a series of predictable turning points in story development, structured by journalists updating scripts and checking facts around scheduled bulletin times. Premature attempts to attribute events to ‘a missile’ impacting the world trade centre were quarantined as the opinion of an individual eyewitness, and quickly dropped. Inaccurate eyewitness attribution of the explosion to a ‘propeller-driven’ plane was provided by the news wires and networked by BBC to its journalists, but was not included in output. Second-level (in terms of the theory ‘sophisticated’ as opposed to ‘literal’ attribution) political and contextual attribution was quarantined as ‘speculation’ until 14:31 London time, half an hour after the event, when BBC relayed a press conference by President Bush who attributed the event to ‘an apparent terrorist attack on our country’. Thereafter, this aspect of the story developed rapidly with the systematic airing and dismissal of false attribution (to an aviation accident and to Palestinian terrorists) and the citation of authorities and experts offering ever more sophisticated and detailed attribution to Islamic extremists and to Osama Bin Laden (first mentioned in the PA wires at 2:33 reporting expert opinion adding detail to President Bush’s comments about terrorism 2 minutes earlier). Analysis of the first 2 hours of newswire inputs, cross-referenced to broadcast outputs shows that the story was processed through stage 2 (transitioning from description to attribution, which was given in full and sophisticated detail) and on to stage 3 (charting recovery) as indicated by item (a – ‘casualties’) in the 4 pm bulletin. The bulletin signalled a punctuation point, moving on to stage 4 (‘lessons to be learned’) by item (c – ‘political reaction’). In the subsequent coverage, the facts of the attack were taken as established, and the stage 4 questions were processed by the use of numerous experts ranging from experts in airline safety to experts on extremist ideology and on the political and international relations context. The complicating element of further plane hijackings also introduced stage 1 (‘warning’) elements to coverage mainly in the reporting of the closure of airports and air space.
Hypothesis 2. Analysis of news wire inputs with tabulated cross-referencing to output tends to confirm the proposition that frame theory can be applied consistently across different news organisations showing that they will process crisis stories in a broadly similar way. The minute-by-minute analysis for both news organisations shows that the delay between inputs and output diminished as the story developed. The delay time in the case of BBC was 12 minutes to begin with and 5 minutes in the case of ABC News, but the stages of development were virtually identical. The most likely explanation for the structural similarity is that output actors at both organisations were using a very similar range of news agency inputs and, also, that they were working within a similar regulatory framework with producer guidelines which forbade the reporting of unconfirmed speculation or surmise without confirmation from an official source.
Discussion and reflection
This study is based on the detailed documentation of the news wires, the raw material as a working broadcast journalist at BBC might think of it, from which the output was fashioned and the purpose is to test the validity of framing theory rather than propose new directions for the development of framing theory as such. A secondary purpose was to place on record an extensive summary of the material as a resource for further detailed research. The collection of material may well be unique or, at the very least, would be very time-consuming to re-assemble, since the wire copy would reside within the archives of individual news agencies where the material originated by one organisation would not be available to another.
As a working journalist at the time reliance on information from the news agencies was the predominant factor in framing the story. BBC journalists were assured by their managers that information from the PA could be presented immediately as a matter of fact without further verification. This was because the PA was viewed as using systems of verification which at least matched those used by BBC itself. If there was a consensus among a number of the larger news wires (charging larger subscription fees), then reports could be asserted with greater prominence and confidence. Reports originating from other sources, including the BBC’s own reporters, were treated as unverified and filtered as ‘unconfirmed’ or omitted entirely. The study shows that although BBC output showed elements of confusion in the first few minutes after the attack, editorial assessment of the raw input and control of the output was quickly established once the major wholesale news agencies had verified factual elements of the story. Thereafter, the output conformed to the framing theory model ‘instinctively’ largely because the protocols concerning news values and verification of sources were embedded in the culture of the newsroom, and the training and reputation of the journalists involved cemented by BBC’s editorial guidelines.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
