In a StoryCorps interview, now supplemented with animation, Monique Ferrer recalls the morning of 9/11 when her ex-husband called to say goodbye from the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower, just hit by a hijacked jetliner.
That devastating morning, then 10 years of certainties and confusion
How many ways can you commemorate the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001?
Public media are delivering a week’s worth of special coverage, including investigative reports, one-off documentaries, cross-platform oral history and live coverage of national memorial ceremonies planned for the anniversary on Sunday.
StoryCorps, the oral history project established by Dave Isay, has unveiled a new trio of animated shorts created from its 9/11 Memorial project. The animations were produced by the Rauch Brothers whose first batch of lovingly rendered shorts aired on PBS’s POV in 2010 (Current, Aug. 23, 2010).
The new animations will run on YouTube and PBS stations on Sept. 11, and will be discussed in an NPR special offered to stations, “We Remember: StoryCorps Stories from 9/11,” hosted by Audie Cornish.
The highest-impact NPR story so far — in terms of exclusive news coverage and audience reach — has been “Under Suspicion,” a two-part report investigating how counterterrorism tactics adopted since 2001 have increased scrutiny of private citizens and disrupted the lives of innocent people. Two radio pieces produced from NPR’s joint investigation with the Center for Investigative Reporting aired on NPR’s newsmagazines Sept. 7 and 8.
Colorado Public Radio and Rocky Mountain PBS tapped NPR photojournalist David Gilkey to produce a video report on “LifeQuest,” a Colorado Springs nonprofit that operates an outdoor rehabilitation program for soldiers injured in the U.S. response to 9/11. The video, also posted on NPR.org, is part of a broader collaboration on 9/11 remembrance coverage between the Colorado pubcasters.
On the Tuesdays before and after the anniversary, Frontline airs two programs, making a total of 45 documentary hours of 9/11-related documentaries made by its producers. On Sept. 6, Michael Kirk’s Frontline team joins Dana Priest of the Washington Post to look at America's vast infrastructure of secret facilities and prisons around the world. A week later Frontline's Martin Smith interviews FBI agent Ali Soufan, who says the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented.
PBS will fill its schedule with 9/11 programming starting at 4 p.m. on Sunday, including a replay of Helen Whitney’s Frontline’s two-hour “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero”; a new Nova on the rebuilding of the twin towers area, “Engineering Ground Zero”; and a 90-minute NewsHour special at 8, “America Remembers – 9/11,” which probes the reactions of young Americans, Muslim Americans, military families and others.
PBS.org offers an archive of new and old programs related to the attacks and their aftermath. This weekend's programs will be available online the day after broadcast, the network said.
On Sept. 11, NPR will produce nine hours of live coverage of the national memorial services at the World Trade Center site, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa., location of the national memorial for passengers of United Flight 93, who thwarted a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol. Audie Cornish and Neal Conan will anchor the coverage from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern.
Public Radio Exchange is offering several 9/11 remembrance specials, including “All Available Boats,” David Tarnow’s account of the evacuation of thousands of survivors by the crews of tugboats, ferries and other vessels on 9/11; two shows from New York’s WNYC; and an update of the Kitchen Sisters’ Sonic Memorial Project, first aired as an NPR series in 2002. “We Were All on Duty,” Richard Paul’s 2002 tale of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, is also offered for radio broadcast.
NPR Music teamed up with WNYC’s sister station, WQXR, to co-produce and webcast two live concerts from Manhattan:
- “Choral Performance at Trinity Church,” a live video webcast of six choruses performing at a church near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, Sept. 9, beginning at 8:30 p.m.
- “Remembering September 11,” a live concert webcast and broadcast from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur. The program features the world premiere of an orchestration of experimental composer William Basinski’s “The Disintegration Loops,” Sept. 11, 3:30-5:30 p.m.
Both concerts are presented by Q2, WQXR’s online alternative service featuring modern composers and new music.
At 9:30 that night, PBS’s Great Performances will carry “A Concert for New York” with the New York Philharmonic and vocalists performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, taped the night before at Lincoln Center.
In the vox populi department, more than 100 viewers responded to questions about how 9/11 has changed American life for a “video quilt” on the NewsHour’s website (pictured below).
The oral history output from StoryCorps extends beyond its animations and NPR special. Through its five-year partnership with the National September 11 Memorial and Museum — known in short-hand as the 9/11 Memorial — StoryCorps has recorded remembrance interviews by friends and family of 583 individuals who lost their lives during the attacks.
On Thursday's Morning Edition, Isay discussed StoryCorps' work incorporated in the 9/11 Memorial.
Ten of these interviews have been incorporated into the 9/11 Memorial Guide, a software application created for iPhone, Android and Windows smartphones. The app allows visitors to search the names on the 9/11 Memorial and listen to StoryCorps interviews of individuals who represent the various groups memorialized at the site — passengers in the hijacked airplanes as well as workers in the twin towers and emergency responders who lost their lives. The memorial will be dedicated on Sept. 11 and open to the public the next day.
For PRI’s Studio 360, Kurt Anderson toured the 9/11 Memorial with its architect, Michael Arad. (WNYC’s website offers a video of the interview.)
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