CNN will rebroadcast its coverage of 9-11 as it happened

Tracey Kane at Wizbang Pop links to the story via the AP:

CNN will mark the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks by replaying on the Internet the cable network’s coverage of that day’s events.

Viewers can watch how events unfolded starting at 8:30 a.m., minutes before the first reports of an airplane hitting the World Trade Center. The feed will run in real time, as the network showed it five years ago, until midnight.

For the day, CNN will make its online video service, CNN Pipeline, available for free. Normally, viewers pay $2.95 a month or $24.95 a year for four separate video feeds.

Online viewers will be able to watch live reports of memorial services through one of the feeds. So that viewers won’t accidentally stumble upon graphic footage from 2001, the replay feed will be covered with a notice instructing users to click only if they want to watch.

“Our users may choose to view the stream of coverage from Sept. 11, 2001, or live coverage of memorial services at Ground Zero, or they may click through the numerous interactive elements on the site,” said David Payne, senior vice president and general manager of CNN.com. “They have the power to determine the best way for them to remember the anniversary.”

I remember when my friend and I got up to our hotel rooms that day in NYC, we turned CNN on and saw some horrifying images being replayed of people from the WTC jumping from the buildings. The media imposed upon itself not long after 9-11 a ban of sorts on reshowing/printing those images. Most of them still don’t, out of sensitivity concerns for the families.

In any event, kudos to CNN for doing this, especially for making their online video service free for the day. Nearly five years after our nation was attacked by Islamofascists, I think too many people have forgotten the horror of that day. Time passes, memories fade. Maybe – to a least a few of them, anyway – this will bring things sharply back into focus and serve as a somber yet angering reminder of what happened on what would have otherwise been a beautiful, sunny, just-barely-feeling-a-tinge-of-autumn-in the-air day in New York City.

Hat tip: Lorie Byrd

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