Friday, December 14, 2012. It was a clear, crisp, and trouble-free start that morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Classrooms filled with kids excited for Christmas, just 11 days away. The school day started, as they always had, with a comforting routine. 9 A M, children settling into their classrooms. 9:10 A M, the pledge of allegiance. 9:15 A M, outside doors…locked. Then came 9:30 A M, when the day and the children’s innocence was shattered. On this 10th remembrance, Brian Williams shares the story as you’ve never heard it before. Told by the by the journalists who covered it, and the parents who suffered through it.

Contributors:

Chris Jansing, anchor for MSNBC

Chris Hansen, former correspondent for Dateline NBC

Connecticut U S Senator Chris Murphy

Ali Velshi, MSNBC anchor, former correspondent for CNN

Nicole Hockley, parent of first grader, Dylan Hockley. Co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise Foundation

Mark Barden, parent of first grader, Daniel Barden. Co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise Foundation

Michael St. Peter, former news director at WVIT TV, NBC Connecticut affiliate

Liz Dahlem, former filed reporter for WVIT TV, NBC Connecticut affiliate

John Senecal, news cameraman for WVIT TV, NBC Connecticut affiliate

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On April 19, 1995, two years to the day following the U.S. government’s botched raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, a rented truck pulled to the curb in front of the nine story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. Inside the building, about 500 federal employees, and several hundred visitors were beginning their workday.  Then, at 9:04 a.m., came the explosion which would alter the American social and political landscape.

Contributors:

Jerry Bohnen, former KTOK News director

David Bohrman, former executive producer of special events for NBC News

Beth O’Connell, former Senior Producer, Today Show

Stewart Dan, former Chicago-based producer, Today Show

Tony Clark, former Dallas Bureau Chief and CNN Correspondent

Trace Ready, former CNN cameraman

Chris Hansen, Investigative news reporter

Stephanie Becker, former Los Angeles-based producer, NBC

Broadcast audio licensed from CNN/WarnerMedia, CBS News, NBC News.

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He was an extraordinarily gifted athlete, the premier football player of his time, a California golden child who emerged from abject poverty to win the Heisman trophy in college and set records as a pro football running back. Effortless grace and a ready smile eased his transition from ex-athlete to corporate-backed celebrity. All of that changed on the night of June 13, 1992, when his ex-wife Nicole Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, were found brutally murdered. Evidence gleaned from the murder site suggested that her executioner may well have been O.J. Simpson. But when police decided to arrest Simpson two days later, an even more surreal tableaux unfolded - live on national television in front of 95-million viewers. 

Contributors:

Hannah Zoey Tur, an independent helicopter reporter in Los Angeles.

Carl Stein, video journalist for KCBS, Channel 2 in Los Angeles

Diane Dimond, the investigative crime reporter for the television show Hard Copy

Steve Futterman, Los Angeles-based reporter for CBS News Radio.

Broadcast audio licensed from:

NBC News

ABC News

Los Angeles News Service

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The Space Shuttle Challenger flew nine missions into space. But its fateful tenth mission, which lasted only 73 seconds, ensured its tragic place in history. On the morning of January 28, 1986, a crew of seven boarded the Challenger, including a New Hampshire grade school teacher named Christa McAuliffe, representing the aspirations of so-called ‘ordinary’ citizens to journey into space. It was an adventure vicariously shared by millions of Americans through television, as the Challenger lifted off at 11:38a.m. from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and hurtled majestically into the sky. But less than two minutes later, horror struck in full view of all who watched.

Contributors:

John Zarrella, former CNN Miami Bureau Chief

Tony Clark, former national correspondent for CNN

Beth O’Connell, former coordinator for the NBC Boston Bureau

William Harwood, CBS News space analyst

Steve Nesbitt, the voice of NASA Mission Control

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Pandemonium reigned in downtown Dallas on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. An assassin's bullet had murdered President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Within an hour, police had arrested their lead suspect Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine and accomplished sharpshooter. On Sunday morning, November 24, with TV cameras in place, and NBC airing it live, Oswald was led through the department's basement for transport to the county jail. And, for the first time, the nation watched an historic national news event - as it happened.

Written by Joe Garner and Brian Williams

Contributors:

Gary DeLaune, formally a reporter for KLIF Radio Dallas

Bill Lord, formerly a producer for ABC News

Ike Pappas, formerly a reporter for WNEW Radio New York

Bob Huffaker, formerly a reporter for KRLD Radio and television and the CBS affiliate in Dallas

Fred Rheinstein, formerly the field director for NBC News

Chad Hagan, formerly a producer for NBC News

Homer Vinso, formerly a cameraman for NBC News

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“War of The Worlds” is a phenomenon of a bygone era, and of a medium a hundred years old, yet its lessons resonate to this day. It’s the original “deepfake of 1938.” A radio drama about an alien invasion but presented as “breaking news,” scared the daylights out the nation. On the evening of October 30, 1938, radio listeners across the U.S. heard a startling report of mysterious creatures and terrifying war machines moving toward New York City. But the hair-raising broadcast was not a real news bulletin—it was Orson Welles' adaptation of the H. G. Wells classic. This episode goes behind the scenes of the making of Welles' famed radio play and its impact. Welles's broadcast became a major scandal, prompting a different kind of mass panic as Americans debated the bewitching power of the radio and the country's vulnerability in a time of crisis. When the debate was over, American broadcasting had changed for good, but not for the better.

Written by Joe Garner and Brian Williams

Contributors:

A.Brad Schwartz, broadcast historian and author of BROADCAST HYSTERIA: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News (Hill & Wang, May 2015)

Orson Welles

Howard Koch

John Houseman

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It was the finale to a decade of turbulence and upheaval, but this time it was an event through which a nation could put aside its differences and stand together to marvel at the achievement. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy had pledged that before the sixties were over, an American would walk on the moon.

The enormity of the mission aside, one question remained, how to get a television signal 240 thousand miles from the lunar surface onto televisions in living rooms around the globe. Robert Wussler, Walter Cronkite's producer, called it "the world's greatest single broadcast" in television history.

Broadcast audio licensed from CBS News

Contributors:

• Walter Cronkite, Former CBS anchor (Courtesy of the Television Academy Foundation Interviews. See the full interviews at TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews.)
• Richard Nafzger, Former engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center responsible for getting the television signal from the lunar surface to Earth.
• Danny Epstein - Music director for NBC (Courtesy of the Television Academy Foundation Interviews. See the full interviews at TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews.)
• James Wall, Former CBS Stage Manager (Courtesy of the Television Academy Foundation Interviews. See the full interviews at TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews.)
• Mike Russo, Walter Cronkite’s desk assistant
• Joel Banow, Director of the Apollo 11 telecast for CBS News

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When Ronald Reagan was elected president in November 1980, he hoped to defy an unusually grim circumstance of that office. In the seven previous even-numbered decades, every U.S. President had died in office - four times from assassin’s bullets. A few months later on March 30, 1981, as President Reagan strolled outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, he nearly met the same fate.

Broadcast audio licensed from ABC News Video Source

Contributors:

• Sam Donaldson, Former Chief White House correspondent, ABC News
• Susan King, Former White House correspondent, ABC News reporter.
• Ross Simpson, Former correspondent, Mutual News
• David Prosperi, Former Assistant Press Secretary to President Ronald Reagan

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The first reports from Los Angeles had an all-too familiar ring - a black motorist who had been stopped by police for drunk driving was pulled out of his car and beaten by several white officers. But this time, the entire incident was captured on a bystander’s video camera, then broadcast via television around the world. When the offending officers went on trial, an all-white jury saw things differently. After announcing a deadlock on a single assault charge and acquitting the four police officers, the city erupted in an eerie replay of the Watts riots thirty years before which had left much of Los Angeles’ inner-city community in ruins. It all began with a hand-held video camera and ended with the whole world watching a great city going up in flames. And just how much had television’s wall-to-wall coverage fanned those flames.

Broadcast audio licensed from NBC Radio; KTLA/Nexstar, Inc.

Contributor:

• Bob Brill, Former stringer radio reporter for NBC Radio
• Carl Stein, Former KCBS video journalist
• Mark Coogan, Former KABC-TV reporter
• Warren Cereghino, Former News Director at KTLA TV Los Angeles
• Tony Fote, Video editor at KTLA TV, Los Angeles
• David Bohrman, Former executive producer of ABC’s World News Now

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She was a princess who never lived happily ever after - and the world loved her for it. Diana Spencer became a global celebrity when she wedded England’s Prince Charles in July 1981. But the fairy tale marriage soon unraveled, and, after no end of adulterous revelations and public separations, finally ended in divorce. But Diana remained a princess in the hearts of her millions of fans - and of the mass media, who faithfully chronicled her every move. Ultimately, it was the pursuit of an image with the highest bounty that lead to her tragic death. The lingering legacy of the death of Princess Di is how media must operate within this ambiguous territory, without overstepping perceived notions of privacy, yet also serving the insatiable appetite of editors and the public.

Broadcast audio licensed from CNN/WarnerMedia, BBC

Contributors:

• David Bernknopf, Former CNN Vice President, News Planning, 1980 – 2001
• Kevin Connolly, BBC on-scene reporter in Paris
• Jim Bittermann, CNN on-scene reporter in Paris
• Patricia Kelly, Former CNN Brussels Bureau Chief
• Marcy McGinnis, Former SVP, Special Event News Coverage, CBS News
• Beth O’Connell, Former Producer of Special Programming at NBC News
• Dickie Arbiter, Former spokesperson for Buckingham Palace

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It was the darkest nightmare of every parent come to life - and it happened in the land of “It can’t happen here.” The setting was Littleton, Colorado, a comfortably middle-class suburb of Denver, a place where people come to raise a family, and where the arch over a hallway at local Columbine High School is inscribed with the motto: “The finest kids in America pass through these halls.” But on April 20, 1997 - the halls of Columbine suddenly became the scene of a murderous reign of terror. Coverage of the shootings was intensified by the ubiquity of 24-hour cable news, and its constant need to come up with fresh information - often incorrect. The media quickly realized they simply had no protocols for a mass casualty incident of such dimensions.

Broadcast audio courtesy of KOA Radio, Denver, CO, ABC News Video Source, CBS News

Contributors:

• David Bernknopf, Former VP CNN, A founding employee of CNN
• Jayson Luber, Former KOA Radio and KUSA TV Traffic reporter
• Kathy Walker, News Director, KOA Radio, Denver
• Marcy McGinnis, Former Senior Vice President News Coverage, CBS News
• Jerry Bell, KOA NEWS Radio Managing Editor

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