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Redesigned 9/11 TV News Archive Launches at NYU

By Andrea Swalec | August 25, 2011 7:01pm

GREENWICH VILLAGE — On Sept. 11, 2001, people around the world were glued to their television sets.

News crews scrambled to report on the devastation and to bring people information in real time about their loved ones and countrymen.

Now, a new collection of archival footage from 9/11 has been assembled to help researchers investigate how TV news helped the nation understand the attacks.

The non-profit Internet Archive unveiled a redesigned collection of international coverage of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath at a conference at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts on Wednesday. 

The 9/11 Television News Archive, which is available free online, assembles 3,000 hours of TV news coverage from 20 channels internationally, starting on Sept. 11, 2001 and spanning through the following week. 

NYU cinema studies student Matthias De Groof examines a poster of still images of TV coverage included in the 9/11 Television News Archive.
NYU cinema studies student Matthias De Groof examines a poster of still images of TV coverage included in the 9/11 Television News Archive.
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DNAinfo/Andrea Swalec

"You can see how the world was interpreting the news as it happened," said Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that aims to create universally accessible, permanent online libraries. 

The Internet Archive began recording 20 TV channels in late 2000, Kahle said. After the attack, the group realized that they could organize a collection of 9/11-related recordings. 

"We wanted to figure out what we could do to help," Kahle said. 

They made the footage available online a month after the attacks, on Oct. 11, 2001, and got positive responses from researchers and the general public. 

"We found that people liked to use the archive to figure out what had been going on then," Kahle said. 

The footage, however, was difficult to sort through.

"For 10 years, it was not very accessible," said Howard Besser, the director of NYU's Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program. 

Besser worked with the Internet Archive to test and review the archive's interface to make it easier to use, splitting the footage into one-minute and 10-minute increments. 

A large poster of still images pulled from news coverage on Sept. 11 shows that CNN, Mexican network TV Azteca and many other channels broadcast the news within seconds of American Airlines flight 11 crashing into the World Trade Center's north tower. 

PBS did not interrupt children's cartoon programs to broadcast the news, and an Iraqi station broadcast the news along with images of Iraqi tanks, the poster shows.

NYU cinema studies student Matthias De Groof said he said he was looking forward to digging into the collection. 

"How the media covered 9/11 affects the meaning of the happenings. It really pulls me," De Groof said. 

Kahle, of the Internet Archive, said what strikes him about the collection of footage is the display of goodwill worldwide following the attacks. 

"The international response was very sympathetic and supportive. There were accusations then that Palestinians were dancing in the streets [after 9/11], but if you look at the tape, you see that that wasn't the case."

Besser said NYU has another media archive project is in the works, but he wouldn't reveal any details. 

"It will be another matter of significant historical and cultural value that is of very popular interest to civil society," he said.