Like every other journalist working in a Canadian newsroom on Sept. 11, 2001, Michelle Shephard recalls the moment she learned a plane had struck the World Trade Center in New York City.
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plane → work → City
Then a crime reporter at the Toronto Star, she barely stopped to grab her passport and a notebook before rushing to the airport, which had already grounded flights and switched off television screens.
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which → stop → screens
Shephard quickly switched gears and jumped into a car headed for New York with other Star reporters, joining scores of other journalists and volunteers hustling toward Ground Zero as thousands were trying to escape it.
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thousands → switch → it
Reporting on the 9/11 attacks required an extraordinary collective effort at a time when verifiable facts and explanations were scarce and the world was gripped with fear.
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world → report → fear
The attacks also pushed journalists to their physical and emotional limits, exposing the risks of reporting on traumatic events.
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attacks → push → events
Twenty-five years later, prominent journalists reflected on their triumphs and regrets in covering 9/11, and how newsroom decisions shaped Canadians’ understanding of the events that changed global security and international politics.
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that → reflect → security
Reporting from a traumatized city
During their “crazy fast” drive to New York, Shephard and her colleagues got lucky.
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Shephard → report → York
She said her laminated Toronto Star press pass “looked like it was made in someone’s basement,” but it was enough for one official to let them into a lane marked for emergency responders.
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official → say → responders
They arrived in the eerily quiet city that night and the sight of a firefighter slumped over on the ground, weary after digging for bodies in the rubble, stopped Shephard in her tracks.
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sight → arrive → tracks
Other details from the scene are still seared in her mind a quarter-century later.
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details → sear → mind
The mountain of papers that fell in a blizzard from the collapsed office towers, which Shephard initially mistook for a snowbank.
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Shephard → fall → snowbank
Thousands of eyes staring out from posters of missing people plastered across Manhattan.
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Thousands → star → Manhattan
“It was an entire city that was traumatized,” Shephard said in a recent interview.
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Shephard → traumatize → interview
Every other aspect of her life quickly fell by the wayside.
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aspect → fall → wayside
Shephard’s husband, fellow Star reporter Jim Rankin, had rushed off to Boston, where the flights that crashed into the towers originated.
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that → rush → towers
The pair realized within a few hours that in the chaos, neither had made plans for someone to look after their new kitten.
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someone → realize → kitten
For three days, Shephard wore the same shirt and pants she had arrived in, washing off thick dust in the sink each night and blasting the clothes dry with a hotel hair dryer in the morning.
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she → wear → morning
Shephard, who subsequently authored the book Decade of Fear about national security since 9/11, said she is proud of her coverage but might make some small changes if she could go back.
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she → author → changes
She recalled there being pressure in the newsroom to get emotionally charged photos, such as of a grieving wife crying.
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wife → recall → photos
The journalism industry has since become more mindful of retraumatizing sources, she added.
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she → become → sources
Shephard believes that meeting people who became victims of post-9/11 policies early in her national security reporting career strengthened her journalism.
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who → believe → journalism
She said many of her early stories about Islamophobia were relegated to the back of the paper, but eventually “the pendulum swung the other way.”
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pendulum → say → paper
Despite covering funeral after funeral in the days after 9/11, Shephard said she found solace knowing her reporting was a public service.
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reporting → cover → solace
She believes some journalists who weren’t reporting from New York may have been even more traumatized, including editors who had to watch footage of people jumping from the towers over and over.
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who → believe → towers
She recalled breaking down at the end of an interview with a Red Cross official, who asked Shephard who was looking after the reporters.
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who → recall → reporters
“I remember that when I would put my head down, I would be teary about all that I had seen,” she said.
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she → remember → that
The voice mail that changed Peter Mansbirdge’s perspective
CBC News anchor Peter Mansbridge was at his doctor’s office when he got a call about the 9/11 attacks.
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he → change → attacks
As the veteran journalist drove toward CBC headquarters in Toronto, not yet knowing that day would be the biggest of his 50-year career, he turned the fundamentals of reporting over and over in his mind: “You’re going to hear all kinds of things.
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You → drive → things
You have to deal with fact.”
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You → have → fact
Forty-four hours of wall-to-wall coverage from the public broadcaster would follow.
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hours → follow → broadcaster
Mansbridge said he was running on adrenalin and he got his first “real break” around 4 a.m. on Sept. 12, when he ducked into his private dressing room to change and take a shower.
A short voice mail from his daughter, then a university student in Winnipeg, was waiting for him.
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mail → say → him
“I just want you to know that I’m watching you,” she told her father.
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she → want → father
“And I love you.”
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I → love → you
Hearing her voice, Mansbridge felt the emotional weight of the attacks for the first time since he sat down behind the anchor desk the day before.
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he → hear → desk
“Sometimes, when you sit in the studio, it’s almost like watching a movie,” he said.
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he → sit → movie
“You’re watching a monitor, and sometimes as real as you know it is, it doesn’t feel real.”
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it → watch → monitor
The voice mail “was one of the things I used that night to remind me how big the impact of this thing was for families literally around the world – wanting to reach out and connect with each other.”
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impact → use → other
Mansbridge said the CBC’s 44 hours of intensive coverage weren’t perfect, but overall he is proud of what the broadcaster achieved.
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broadcaster → say → what
He said the network was careful not to hazard guesses about the death toll and was judicious about replaying footage of the plane crashes.
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network → say → crashes
Mansbridge said the CBC relied on experts to “keep feeding the beast” and find new ways to convey information to audiences as interns sprinted back and forth through the newsroom, hands full of marked-up scripts.
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interns → say → scripts
…and 35 more, not listed.
