Bombing coverage struck a balance of accuracy, compassion, panelists say

By Susan Parrot

Published: April 19, 2005

Journalists who covered the Oklahoma City bombing 10 years ago said compassion and accuracy were more important than hype.

Speaking at a symposium Monday, a panel of newspaper and television editors and reporters said they balanced coverage of the devastation and criminal investigation with stories of hope and helping.

"We were Okies first and then journalists that day," KWTV NEWS 9 anchor Kelly Ogle said during the luncheon at the Petroleum Club.

Local television stations reported on the bombing and aftermath around the clock and without commercials for weeks after April 19, 1995. When rescue workers needed supplies like booties for the search dogs, viewers responded with hundreds.

"We were more or less a community bulletin board for what people needed," KFOR-TV anchor Linda Cavanaugh said.

Cavanaugh was in Vietnam on April 19. Traveling back to the United States, she said well-wishers stopped her at airports to offer support and say they were impressed with the strength of Oklahomans.

"The way Oklahomans came together in the days that followed to take care of our own became known as the 'Oklahoma standard,'" she said.

Terri Watkins, investigative reporter for KOCO-TV, said journalists also set the standard by working beyond exhaustion to keep the public updated.

"Nobody complained," she said. "Everybody worked 20 hours a day."

The Oklahoman published "profiles of life" for each victim, stories that told the life of each individual.

Executive Editor Sue Hale said the paper had a central mission.

"How can we do this and pay respect to each one of those individuals, so they don't become a number, so they don't become a statistic, to put a face on this?"

David Page was more than a journalist that day. He was a victim.

Page, editor of The Journal Record newspaper, was injured by flying glass that swept through his office, which faced the federal building.

The business newspaper's offices were destroyed, but the paper only missed one day of publishing, moving to temporary work space the next day and publishing a two-page account of first-person stories.

Journalists achieve the extraordinary to keep the public informed, said Anthony Shadid, who spoke about his work as Islamic affairs correspondent for the Washington Post.

The Oklahoma native reported on the war in Iraq and the aftermath, winning a 2004 Pulitzer Prize.

Amid the horror and destruction, Shadid found stories of everyday lives forever changed. He wrote about the diary of a 13-year-old girl who feared she would die, and the grief of a man who was forced to kill his son, an informant to the Americans.

"You try to understand lives and bear witness to them," he said.