8:44 AM 9/11/2012 , NBC's Today Show

[firepoint525]

I never suggested everyone should forget about the tragedies of September 11th, 2001 (I never liked the references "9/11" and "September 11th " for the tragedies). I just broadcasters and other communicators would let folks remember and study the tragedies in their own personal ways without constant reminders that may give some folks the idea that every future eleventh day of September is supposed to be a somber day rather than another day with great potential.

What would you suggest that they call it? The horse has really left the barn, with regards to that one, as well as calling the twin towers site "ground zero." I really didn't like it that the networks pre-empted our own local news coverage last year for network coverage from "ground zero" on for the tenth anniversary of what we now call 9/11. (The anniversary fell on a Sunday last year; first time (that I can recall, anyway) that Sunday morning programming was pre-empted for network news coverage since the capture of Saddam Hussein back in 2003.) Before it came to be known as 9/11, it was usually called the September 11th terrorist attacks or something like that.

 

[fybush]

But as someone pointed out, we who were alive in 1963 and remember it
like it was yesterday will be dying off. It'll eventually be like the anniversary
of Pearl Harbor: little coverage because of the steady dying off of sailors and
soldiers who were in Hawaii in 1941.

Time has a way of doing that. I look at my daughter going off to school and realize that for her, "9/11" is already ancient history that happened before she was even born, much the same way the JFK assassination was for my generation. There's nobody now alive under the age of 60 with any significant first-person memory of JFK, and nobody under 80 with any memory of Pearl Harbor. That doesn't mean those events won't still be honored and recalled - I was born nine years after JFK's assassination, and that didn't stop me from visiting the grassy knoll and the Sixth Floor Museum with great interest on my first visit to Dallas. But there's always going to be a difference between having a visceral, first-person memory of a traumatic historical event and having an after-the-fact historical understanding of it, and every event, no matter how searing it is when it happens, will always slide away into third-person eventually.

 

[Mario500]

I never suggested everyone should forget about the tragedies of September 11th, 2001 (I never liked the references "9/11" and "September 11th " for the tragedies). I just broadcasters and other communicators would let folks remember and study the tragedies in their own personal ways without constant reminders that may give some folks the idea that every future eleventh day of September is supposed to be a somber day rather than another day with great potential.

What would you suggest that they call it?  The horse has really left the barn, with regards to that one, as well as calling the twin towers site "ground zero."  I really didn't like it that the networks pre-empted our own local news coverage last year for network coverage from "ground zero" on for the tenth anniversary of what we now call 9/11.  (The anniversary fell on a Sunday last year; first time (that I can recall, anyway) that Sunday morning programming was pre-empted for network news coverage since the capture of Saddam Hussein back in 2003.)  Before it came to be known as 9/11, it was usually called the September 11th terrorist attacks or something like that.   

I suggest broadcasters and other communicators say, "The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon" before mentioning related details, including the date and the year they occurred. To them it may be a bit much, but I find it better than using a calendar date to refer to all of those connected events.

 

[firepoint525]

I suggest broadcasters and other communicators say, "The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon" before mentioning related details, including the date and the year they occurred. To them it may be a bit much, but I find it better than using a calendar date to refer to all of those connected events.

A bit verbose, as you suggest, but even your version omits the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, apparently intended for either the White House or the Capitol.

 

[Mario500]

^The crash in the field in Pennsylvania would be among the "related details" I mentioned previously.

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

Even though I don't usually watch "Today", I don't believe the folks in charge of the program did wrong by not broadcasting the moment of silence. I wish more broadcasters would focus more on other subjects for every future eleventh day of September and not constantly remind folks about the tragedies that occurred on the same date in 2001. Every day is a new day and no calendar date should be dedicated to a single series of tragedies since tragedy occurs on a daily basis.

Before I go, I would like to wish everyone whose birthday or wedding anniversary is today another happy day to be alive. Do not let some folks make your feel you should feel somber today just because of a series of calendar that happened on the same date. Today is a new eleventh day of September, not the one from 2001.

Very thoughtful gesture. Remarkably, my wife and her sister both celebrate birthdays on 9/11. No, they're not twins. One is 3-years older (I won't say WHICH one).

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

It's NBC. Did you expect anything less?

G

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