Reliving the horror

As 11 September approaches, the US media is preparing every kind of memorial possible. By David Usborne

For America's print and broadcast media, the next 10 days will be far from ordinary. Whether out of a sense of civic responsibility or a simple rivalry, editors and controllers will swamp the land with coverage marking the terror strikes of a year ago.

Or is the motivation different? Will every network, newspaper and weekly magazine bulk up with commemorative pieces because no one has the courage not to? The remembrance of 11 September, the date of the catastrophe, is an exercise in flag-waving. Play this down and the cry will go out that you are failing in your patriotic duty.

"It's got to the point now where you really can't not do something," noted Robert Thompson of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "So many places have planned so much stuff, it would be almost blasphemous to ignore it."

No editor can ever resist a good anniversary. Last week, it was five years after Diana's death, evoked by the CBS network on Sunday evening, for instance, by a gooey TV movie about her biographer, Andrew Morton. Three weeks earlier, the country was asked to remember Elvis Presley yet again. It is 25 years since his demise.

Those who don't want to relive 11 Septemberhave few options this week, other than rowing out into the ocean. Some magazines, such asTime, Newsweek and The New Yorker, will concentrate their coverage in special tribute sections. Those, at least, you can save or throw away. The New York Times plans extra pages on 11 September-related stories, and has published a book of pictures of ground zero, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania crash site. At the last count, there were 150 books on the attacks either already on the shelves or in the pipeline.

The frenzy is more furious still on the airwaves. CNN has already aired a documentary, America Remembers, and is punctuating its schedule with set-piece snippets on the tragedy. On 11 September itself, it will be tough finding any station not broadcasting material on the attacks from dawn until midnight.

A year ago, network executives claimedthat they had set aside their usual competitive impulses to provide Americans with the clearest, most objective coverage of events possible. But such gentlemanly behaviour is long gone. Producers have scrambled to secure the big names, sometimes offering large sums in return for exclusive access to them. Not all have been pleased. The former police chief Bernard Kerik turned down all offers to attach himself to a single network, cable or broadcast.

"It's almost as if someone was trying to figure out who was going to get the best coverage of Roosevelt declaring war after Pearl Harbor," says Don Hewitt, the executive producer of CBS news magazine 60 Minutes. "The competition is in poor taste."

But inevitable. CBS, in fact,can most reasonably claim first-anniversary bragging rights. It has snagged an exclusive interview on the day with President George Bush. Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor, will be all over the airwaves, as will his successor, Michael Bloomberg. Tom Brokaw, the NBC news anchor, will host a musical tribute called Concert for America. Fox, HBO, the cable giant, and PBS, the public-service station, all have specials planned.

There are only a limited number of big-name personalities available with direct association to the tragedy – Giuliani, Kerik, Bush and a small number of relatives of the victims who have attained a kind of gruesome star status. One is Lisa Beamer, the widow of a passenger on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. Beamer's late husband has been identified as the man who cried "Let's roll!" as the passengers tried to overcome the hijackers. She will be the property for one day of CNN's Larry King.

The losers in this scramble are the international news organisations. Sunny Mindel, a spokeswoman for Mr Giuliani, says the demand from abroad has been relentless. "It is difficult to respond to the overwhelming demand from all over the world," she said. "All seven continents have called in."