The Columbine tragedy - “Shots fired at Columbine High School” – (April 20, 1999)
07/20/21 • 41 min
It was the darkest nightmare of every parent come to life - and it happened in the land of “It can’t happen here.” The setting was Littleton, Colorado, a comfortably middle-class suburb of Denver, a place where people come to raise a family, and where the arch over a hallway at local Columbine High School is inscribed with the motto: “The finest kids in America pass through these halls.” But on April 20, 1997 - the halls of Columbine suddenly became the scene of a murderous reign of terror. Coverage of the shootings was intensified by the ubiquity of 24-hour cable news, and its constant need to come up with fresh information - often incorrect. The media quickly realized they simply had no protocols for a mass casualty incident of such dimensions.
Broadcast audio courtesy of KOA Radio, Denver, CO, ABC News Video Source, CBS News
Contributors:
- David Bernknopf, Former VP CNN, A founding employee of CNN
- Jayson Luber, Former KOA Radio and KUSA TV Traffic reporter
- Kathy Walker, News Director, KOA Radio, Denver
- Marcy McGinnis, Former Senior Vice President News Coverage, CBS News
- Jerry Bell, KOA NEWS Radio Managing Editor
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
It was the darkest nightmare of every parent come to life - and it happened in the land of “It can’t happen here.” The setting was Littleton, Colorado, a comfortably middle-class suburb of Denver, a place where people come to raise a family, and where the arch over a hallway at local Columbine High School is inscribed with the motto: “The finest kids in America pass through these halls.” But on April 20, 1997 - the halls of Columbine suddenly became the scene of a murderous reign of terror. Coverage of the shootings was intensified by the ubiquity of 24-hour cable news, and its constant need to come up with fresh information - often incorrect. The media quickly realized they simply had no protocols for a mass casualty incident of such dimensions.
Broadcast audio courtesy of KOA Radio, Denver, CO, ABC News Video Source, CBS News
Contributors:
- David Bernknopf, Former VP CNN, A founding employee of CNN
- Jayson Luber, Former KOA Radio and KUSA TV Traffic reporter
- Kathy Walker, News Director, KOA Radio, Denver
- Marcy McGinnis, Former Senior Vice President News Coverage, CBS News
- Jerry Bell, KOA NEWS Radio Managing Editor
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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The War of The Worlds: The original ‘deepfake’ of 1938
“War of The Worlds” is a phenomenon of a bygone era, and of a medium a hundred years old, yet its lessons resonate to this day. It’s the original “deepfake of 1938.” A radio drama about an alien invasion but presented as “breaking news,” scared the daylights out the nation. On the evening of October 30, 1938, radio listeners across the U.S. heard a startling report of mysterious creatures and terrifying war machines moving toward New York City. But the hair-raising broadcast was not a real news bulletin—it was Orson Welles' adaptation of the H. G. Wells classic. This episode goes behind the scenes of the making of Welles' famed radio play and its impact. Welles's broadcast became a major scandal, prompting a different kind of mass panic as Americans debated the bewitching power of the radio and the country's vulnerability in a time of crisis. When the debate was over, American broadcasting had changed for good, but not for the better.
Written by Joe Garner and Brian Williams
Contributors:
A.Brad Schwartz, broadcast historian and author of BROADCAST HYSTERIA: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News (Hill & Wang, May 2015)
Orson Welles
Howard Koch
John Houseman
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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