CBS circumvents 9/11 blockage
In this growing threat of TV censorship, and fearful they would face a huge FCC fine, a few CBS affiliates refused to air the Peabody-award winning documentary “9/11” on CBS, set to air on Sunday.
In response, CBS goes to the Internet to stream “9/11” on the CBS website following the Sunday broadcast at 10 p.m. following the West Coast airing of the broadcast. In the Bay Area, KPIX-Channel 5 is owned and operated by CBS and will air the special.
The online version will remain available for one week.
To date, about 10 percent of the affiliates have chosen either to pre-empt or delay the airing of the special, mostly due to concerns over language used primarily by firefighters on September 11.
CBS has decided to air the award-winning presentation in the same manner it aired during its original network broadcasts on March 10, 2002 and September 11, 2002.
The broadcast will include several audience warnings in the presentation, and Robert De Niro, who will again serve as host, in a newly taped introduction to the program, will also alert viewers to the graphic language.
For this special program, filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet and James Hanlon updated the multiple-award winning feature with new interviews, including many of the firefighters who were featured in the original program discussing how their lives, families and the world have changed in the five years since the tragedy.
On Sept. 11, the Naudets and Hanlon were in lower Manhattan shooting a documentary on the Engine 7, Ladder 1 firefighters when Jules suddenly heard a roar from above and turned his camera upward.
In doing so, he captured the only known video of the first plane striking the World Trade Center. Camera still rolling, Jules followed the firefighters into the heart of what would soon be known as Ground Zero.
Gedeon also rushed to the scene with members of Ladder 1. Over the next several hours, the brothers captured extraordinary video unlike any broadcast since, including 75 minutes of footage from inside the North Tower as the rescue effort was underway and dramatic scenes of escape in the minutes before the building collapsed.