Word: launchful
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Like most Americans, television news editors had begun to treat space shuttle flights as routine. Cable News Network, the Atlanta-based all-news channel, was the only network to carry live coverage of the shuttle launch. Correspondent Tom Mintier, narrating the spacecraft's ascent, retreated into shocked silence for several seconds following the blast. Then, after the explosion was confirmed by Mission Control, he announced "what appears to be a major catastrophe in America's space program...
Still, all three networks performed with admirable sensitivity and restraint. Some viewers were offended at the oft-repeated shots that had been taped by WNEV-TV in Boston of Schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe's parents viewing the launch at the Kennedy Space Center. But interviews with grieving relatives were refreshingly absent. Though NASA had immediately sequestered the crew's families following the accident, network executives insist they would have avoided such interviews in any case. "We had our chance at the time of the accident," says Jeff Gralnick, vice president and executive producer of special programming for ABC. "The first rule...
...immediacy, newspapers across the country also responded with extraordinary efforts. The New York Times devoted its entire front page and nine more advertising-free pages to the disaster, virtually unprecedented coverage. More than 80 staff people contributed to the package, including a Times technical manager who witnessed the launch while on vacation in Cape Canaveral. The paper departed from its traditional discursive headline style for a stark opening line: THE SHUTTLE EXPLODES. Said Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal: "I didn't want just another headline. Using 'the' was the most important decision. It gave almost a biblical quality...
Because the Challenger flight was to send the first schoolteacher into space, some 800 journalists were on hand for the launch, about five times as many as for the previous shuttle flight, and the number grew to nearly 1,200 in the hours following the explosion. But most reporters were hard pressed to uncover ; scraps of news, as NASA officials at both Cape Canaveral and the Johnson Space Center in Houston refused all comment. "By midafternoon there was a circling of the wagons," said a NASA employee in Houston. "There was a feeling of overwhelming revulsion toward the media vultures...
That reaction was shared by many in Concord, N.H., McAuliffe's hometown. TV crews had been allowed to film inside Concord High School as students gathered to watch the launch; when the tragedy became apparent, the principal asked the press to leave. But more than 250 journalists soon invaded the town looking for stories. At a memorial service Tuesday night at St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, cameramen swarmed into the front pews, obscuring the view for many parishioners. When a group of Concord students stepped off a bus on their return from Cape Canaveral, they were greeted by photographers...