If you have ever been to the CNN Center (I am not one of those sadly), there is a policy to not record; but if you work for the company, it was allowed. Even for breaking news. There has been home movie recordings as well as Creative Services productions from Turner from the major events from the Challenger explosion and the 1991 Gulf War. On 9/11 it’s believed some network level people were recording candids (in a respectful manner, despite in one shot there was resistance very early on.) I say this because in the video description, it doesn’t state who specifically recorded, but there are 2 audio channels and one side of your ear hears something from a boom mic, and the other side is coming from the camera.

Steve Stahl, a former CNN staffer has had a YouTube of these internal videos and have posted them on there. I recommend to follow that YouTube, as much as I am sucker for seeing ol inside tapes of CNN and the Taj Mahal of newsgathering ops.

What you see in this footage as well as another near hour long is a very well oiled machine. CNN even before it was taken seriously (history shows it was The Gulf War was the moment) had covered breaking news, ran stories raw, or run stories that had very sketchy information, etc. Of course there was some raw emotion from within (the legendary CNN anchorman Lou Walters showed some disgust in one shot in his space) as well as the welfare of the New York Bureau; the idea they were not completely hap-hazarding around the most breaking story in modern history, these Atlanta newsies kept on going; from an outsider looking in – it shows how 9/11 seemed to not be the most breaking story the network had covered.

As one commenter said it was “morbidly fascinating”

One interesting note, if you saw a full height tripod with a camera in the midst of the newsroom it was used to do live hits from a reporter “from the newsroom”. It was used earlier in the morning for CNN Daybreak as some airchecks from other YouTubes have shown.

Just another post to not forget the events that changed our country on that fateful day

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