How attacks have shaped media
New city exhibit documents how media report on terrorism

By Michael Kimball

Published: April 14, 2008

A new multimedia exhibit featuring interviews, pictures and reporting tools related to media coverage of terrorist attacks opens today at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.

"Reporting Terrorism,” which will remain open during the museum's normal operating hours through Dec. 31, focuses on how the media covered the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, and how the media's coverage of terrorism has evolved in the years since.

"We have a responsibility at this place to keep the memory alive (of those killed in terrorist attacks) and to educate,” said Kari Watkins, the museum's executive director. "Those were not faceless Americans killed in that building. They were all doing a job. As (NBC Nightly News Anchor) Brian Williams said, the only crime they committed was they showed up to work that day, and their lives were taken.”

Also on display in the exhibit are reporters' notebooks, cameras and press passes used during coverage of the Murrah building bombing. Video from Oklahoma City television stations broadcast live on April 19, 1995, rolls continuously on a monitor.

An interactive display also lets visitors choose among famous photographs of the bombing, deciding which one would best be used on the front page of a newspaper. When a visitor selects a photo, excerpts from interviews of newspaper editors, including The Oklahoman's Ed Kelley, are played explaining why a newspaper did or didn't run that particular photo.

Planning for the exhibit began about a year ago, and most of the interviews were conducted and display items were collected over the past six months.

"We know that for many of the members of the media, both locally and nationally, they talk about how the bombing changed their lives and changed how the media covers things,” Watkins said.

"We feel like that's an important part of the whole story of the bombing.”

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