Mark Byford, Director, BBC World Service:

As I turned up the volume on the World Service, I was also ringing Phil Harding, the Director of the English Networks and News, who was at a lunch appointment, advising him to return straight away!

Our flagship news programme Newshour was on the air at the time of the first plane crashing into the tower, anchored by one of our highly experienced presenters, Alex Brodie. We decided immediately to bring together all the eight different regional streams of English programming and present a single continuous news and analysis sequence. Andrew Walker, our Economics Correspondent, informed listeners what the World Trade Centre was, when it was built, who worked there. Like everyone else at that time at first we didn’t know what had happened. Had a light plane gone off course and hit the North Tower?

Alex painted word pictures of the scene very effectively and calmly. Our North America Business Correspondent, Steve Evans, rang in from the scene, reporting from just outside the Trade Centre. He’d been leaving the building when the first explosion occurred.

As I went across to the newsroom, Jonathan Marcus, our Defence Correspondent and North American specialist, had entered the studio to become Alex’s “presenter friend” for that extraordinary afternoon providing context, analysis and comment. It was the start of a 45-hour continuous news, current affairs and analysis programme – the longest single news programme produced on the World Service. All 42 language services began providing special programming too.

Meanwhile, Nigel and our New Media team began re-designing our award winning online site, recently judged the best radio website in the world. That day it achieved an eight-fold increase in traffic although the sheer volume meant not everyone could log on. Our servers are based yards away from the Trade Centre and, with the mains supply cut off, standby generators came into operation. We had to keep topping up the diesel throughout the week.

It was a very testing afternoon as the extraordinary events unfolded – the towers, the Pentagon, the fourth plane, the towers collapsing. Our staff were outstanding – calm, professional and focused. Accuracy, reliability, objectivity and expertise are core values of the World Service and that’s what listeners across the world expected from us that day. I remember Barry Langridge, the Head of African Services, ringing me from Luanda later that afternoon saying everyone was listening. It meant a lot.

Chris Cramer, President of CNN International Networks, Atlanta:

As a veteran newsgatherer, my instinctive thoughts that day were how many people do you deploy to cover a tragedy of this size and significance? Where do you send them apart from New York, Washington and Pennsylavia ? And how do you guarantee them safe and keep them sane during, for most of them, the most dreadful few days of their professional and personal lives?

As a more recent President of CNN’s international services – TV channels, websites and joint ventures – how was I to capture the full tragedy unfolding in America’s twin cities, the military responses that went with it and the incredulity felt by America’s allies around the globe? Incredulity is a word that properly captures all thoughts these past few weeks. I was taught to stay detached from what you cover and yet I know no journalist who has maintained that position here in America. Dan Rather unashamedly wept on air during a late night chat show and many TV correspondents broke into tears during their reporting from the streets of New York.

My personal impact was felt when CNN folk approached me to say how moved they had been by the Guardsmen playing “Star Spangled Banner” outside Buckingham Palace, or the moving memorial services held in St Paul’s Cathedral, or the change to the schedule of the Last Night of the Proms. Their expressions of gratitude were a humbling experience. I am more guilty than most of affectionately mocking some Americans for their tunnelled vision of the world and the fact that some, like President Bush, think Africa is a country. Though I believe they have been ill-served by the majority of their media.

And I have stopped counting the number of times I heard the phrase on television “this kind of thing happens elsewhere in the world, not here in America”. It remains to be seen whether the tragedy of 11 September will change the way most journalists think and work here. What is certain is the next Reuters or AP newsflash, the next CNN Breaking News about something horrific overseas, will prompt an inevitable flash-back that it can happen in America also.

David Horovitz, Editor, Jerusalem Report:

I was amazed at the terrorists’ audacity, and America’s vulnerability. How had the hijackers so easily commandeered the planes? Didn’t the Pentagon have any air defences? Why hadn’t F-16s been scrambled when those two planes left their flight paths, to escort them down or shoot them down long before they got near the Twin Towers?

I thought of the psychological impact. The basic trust that underpinned Americans’ daily life had been shattered, just as ours has been. The simple luxury, hitherto taken for granted, that the people with whom they interacted shared their delight in the precious gift of life – that was gone now. Now every stranger was a potential danger – a killer, perhaps, prepared to take his life to end yours. What a dreadful notion. What a dreadful way to have to live. And then – pretty quickly, actually – we got talking about how we’d remake the magazine, two days from deadline. Getting on with the job. The way you have to, if you want to prevail.

Geoffrey Bindman, human rights lawyer:

Promising recent legal developments might not fit the new situation. You can’t put a suicide killer on trial. Hijacking needs few weapons and perhaps little outside support. The groundbreaking Pinochet precedent, which opened up the prospect of arresting and trying brutal dictators in the domestic courts of other states, is of no value unless the perpetrator can be identified and brought to court.

Soon after 11 September, Osama Bin Laden was named as chief suspect but Tony Blair said the evidence was not enough to convict him in court. Nor was it clear what part Osama played, if any, in planning or facilitating the crimes. And how could we put him on trial anyway, and where? The attack on Afghanistan and the Taliban may destroy a highly obnoxious Government, but the legal basis seems tenuous. Self-defence against a current attack is valid but retribution for acts already done is not. The use of force to secure extradition is dubious and could Bin Laden get a fair trial in the US? An international tribunal would carry more credibility but none has jurisdiction. The International Criminal Court does not yet exist. Anyway the US is against it and will probably opt out. The UN could set up an ad hoc tribunal but has made no move to do so.

Does law have any part at all in this affair or in “the war against terrorism”? If not, we are truly back in the jungle.

Robin Lustig, BBC radio broadcaster:

I tried to remain as icy calm as I could as I prepared to go on air. I read the agency reports and watched the TV pictures: I remember feeling disbelief and bewilderment as I tried to grasp the sheer scale of the story. The World Service schedules had already been abandoned; we were, in the jargon, “rolling” – transmitting live, continuous coverage, hour after hour. Just before I went into the studio, first one tower, then the second tower, collapsed. I thought, but did not say, that there could well be tens of thousands people dead.

As the hours passed, we heard that many US radio stations were switching over to our coverage – suddenly, we were covering a huge American story for an American audience, as well as for the rest of the world. At some point, a senior BBC executive sent me a message: “This is the biggest global story for 50 years.” I can just remember the Cuba missile crisis in 1962, and to me, that was even bigger, because it carried with it the threat of nuclear war between the two main super-powers. But it was close.

When I finally emerged from the studio, I found that my daughter had sent a text message to my mobile phone: “Daddy, what’s going on? Are we all going to die?” It was a question I suspect an awful lot of people were asking that afternoon.

Julia Langdon, political journalist:

I didn’t cry until I rang my mother to tell her to turn on the television. I was still crying when the children came home from school. They watched the screen, too, as uncomprehending of what we saw as they were of my tears. We didn’t do any of the things we had planned for the afternoon and evening. I rang my girlfriend in New York. She teaches Logic and Rhetoric at Columbia but that didn’t help her explain anything. She was the first person to say: “You realise, don’t you, that everything has changed now?”

I am 55 years old. Nothing that I have experienced, or seen, or known, not giving birth, nor watching death, has felt quite so much like the loss of innocence.

Prof. Colin Seymour-Ure, University of Kent, Canterbury:

In an era of electronic glut, how good a medium for spreading news of disaster will word of mouth prove to have been in 2001? (For surely someone in America is researching the question.) I learnt of the attacks on 11 September from an international phone call, and I switched on CNN in time to see the towers collapse. Back home some days later, and curious about other people’s experience, I took a poll of 43 students. Four of them had heard by radio, 10 from another person, 12 by phone, and 16 from TV. So word of mouth perhaps remains efficient. It tends to be believable too, while pictures can mislead. One student, confronted with such incredible pictures on TV at an army training centre, thought at first he must have walked in on a training video.

Brenda Maddox:

Sometime after 4 pm I shared a taxi back to Manchester Piccadilly with a Dial-a Ride expert. Only when I entered the station and saw the headlines in the Manchester Evening News did I know that something big had happened. But the headlines about the World Trade Centre being attacked were hardly bigger than those announcing news of a wrestling competition reported on inside pages.

Many of those on the train to Euston passed the journey in ignorance. With a son in Manhattan, I began to try to telephone home, but the Virgin train wouldn't take my credit card. I went to the buffet and bought a BT phone card -- only £5 denominations available --only to be greeted by the telephone's printed message that this card was unacceptable.Finally, thanks to a spare pound coin found in my pocket lining, I got the news, "Bruno's okay". I went into the loo and wept.

Only when I reached home did my husband tell me that a second tower had been struck. To all those who complain "why did they keep showing those horrific pictures over and over again?", I argue that even seven hours later, some people were seeing them for the first time.

Anthony Delano, London College of Printing, former New York correspondent, Daily Mirror:

Soon, I was able to report on a couple of light-hearted challenges to their novel magnitude without leaving home: a loony parachutist wafting down from the top of the North Tower; an even loonier climber scaling storey by storey, hour after hour, up its face.

Until September 11, the assassination of President John Kennedy was undoubtedly the greatest global story since World War II and the echoes of that astonishing event still linger. In terms of dramatic symbolism, the death of a single exotic protagonist may yet outweigh the barely credible deaths of thousands.

There is no scale on which such awful events can be ranked, but the difference in the early coverage was vast. September 11 generated kaleidoscopic saturation from runaway media technology instead of the journalistically mediated narratives which, 40 years earlier, had to be pieced together by a relatively small number of journalists – myself included.

But orderly reporting soon prevailed. The division between the effectiveness of television and newspapers in the first hours after the onslaught (radio belongs with the papers in this comparison) was virtually that between seeing and believing. Television showed what had happened, but it took newspapers to explain why and what it might mean.

Roy Greenslade, media commentator:

I have rarely heard my mother, normally so light-hearted, speaking with such gravity. I soon understood why. As I watched the second plane crash into the second tower, I knew immediately I was witnessing an unprecedented moment in world history. The book was momentarily forgotten. The price war could wait. This was a very different act of war, and I make no excuse for using that word: our lexicon offers no alternative.

My first concern, I admit, was personal. Our daughter had flown from London to Los Angeles the previous day and, despite the time difference, I called our son’s LA home to make sure they were safe. I was relieved when she answered – awake due to jet lag – and urged her to rouse her brother and tell him what was happening. For the following eight hours I was transfixed, switching from channel to channel, rarely taking my eyes from the screen, even when doing a couple of radio interviews.

I answered ridiculous questions about how I thought the press would cover the event with surprising equanimity. I understood that the broadcast media were casting their net wide in order to answer the question we were all asking ourselves: why?

Although I was alone in my Brighton flat, I could sense people’s dark and desperate mood through the unfolding of those scenes in New York, espe-cially the interviews with survivors and eyewitnesses. The cry for revenge was instantaneous and understandable.

I readily admit I felt differently. In an email to a friend in Seattle that evening, I dared to say that America has to come to terms with its Middle East policy. It must now help to restore the rights and the land taken from the Palestinian people. She wrote back: “I completely agree with you, but it’s a little hard to say things like that here.”

Sheena McDonald, broadcaster:

My immediate response holds to this day: what happened had nothing to do with Islam, but was the very foulest of crimes. To call it “an act of war” seems, perversely, to dignify what was mass murder – and, of course, justify what has happened subsequently. While I am not surprised by what has taken place since, I am not sure the desired result will be achieved. It was indeed an attack on civilisation. New York has been a “home” for me for over 30 years, and I now feel a strong need to go back as soon as I can. I am now in a constant low-level state of insecurity, and in gloomier moments feel that retreating to the cellar is the safest option – but I don’t own one. I constantly recall two images: people jumping from the North Tower to certain death; and the face of a fire-fighter climbing the stairs that hundreds were descending. Life has changed.

Bill Hagerty: freelance writer and critic

We retuned to Radio 5 Live. We stood, either side of the bar, as the BBC came into its own with some outstanding reactive reporting.

I called the mobile telephone of my eldest son, a senior production executive at The Sun. He had been enjoying a day off, but was now on his way to Wapping. I called my wife, who was watching the horror continue to unfold on television in her Radio Times office.

I called our young son as soon as he was home from school. I needed to tell him I loved him, but found it difficult because I kept thinking of all those New York children whose mummies and daddies wouldn’t be coming home that night.

Two or three other customers came into Gerry’s and we all listened to the radio while sipping drinks and trying to grasp the enormity of what was happening in the city I love most next to London. It was the biggest story since the war, I said, the biggest of my professional lifetime. Someone said life could never be the same again, the first time I heard the phrase. I think it might have been me.

John Owen, Director, Freedom Forum Europe:

I stepped off the plane, switched on my cell phone, and my colleague, Duncan Furey, who was already there, rang and told me that he was watching in stunned disbelief CNN. At that point, there was even a report that there was an explosion on the mall near the White House.

At our budget hotel, CNN was being translated into the local language – Slav – so we raced to the upmarket Alexandra Palace and rented a dayroom in order get the English language broadcast. I never felt so far away from home. I didn’t want to do anything but watch TV news coverage, mostly CNN.

BBC World early on had intelligent analysis and a detached tone but I craved pictures, all of those horrific, now iconic, images. I had to be talked out of cancelling our own event. But what jolted me back to reality was what Petrit, a local journalist who had done a content analysis of recent coverage of the Macedonian conflict, told me. He had been at a club the night before. They were singing and dancing to “New York, New York.” Macedonians influenced by leading journalists resented the NATO-brokered peace agreement and blamed the US.

The cover of a best-selling weekly news magazine featured a picture of Bin Laden with the headline: “What a shame that this wasn’t done by a Macedonian” I was getting an early dose of “why they hate us!”

Julian Petley, lecturer in Communications and Media Studies at Brunel University, and Chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom

Thus whilst George Bush was busy declaring “war on terrorism’” the British press declared war on itself. In the Daily Telegraph Charles Moore established his “useful idiots” beach-head from which he could regularly open fire on deserters exhibiting what he called “western defeatism” and his columnist Janet Daley perceived as “intellectual decadence”. Elsewhere in the same paper Robert Harris set about the enemy within in the shape of Guardian’s new Comment editor, Seumas Milne, whom he termed “a Stalinist Rip van Winkle”, whilst in The Times Michael Gove evoked echoes of earlier conflicts in his attacks on the “Guardianistas” and the “Prada-Meinhof gang”. This, of course, was just the kind of campaign which Andrew Neil loved to launch at the Sunday Times, so it was hardly surprising to find him using the Sunday Business in order to turn the flame-thrower on the “apologists for terror who dominate the opinion pages of the hard-left Guardian, henceforth better known as the Daily Terrorist”.

Hatred of liberal values, intolerance of dissent and pluralism, rabid ideological fundamentalism ... Hang on a minute, aren’t these the kinds of things on which we’re all supposed to have declared war, or have I missed something here?

Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of Westminster:

It was a day not just dominated but manufactured by television. Some have called the pictures from New York pornographic, which is nonsense: faced with horrific scenes, broadcasters were making instant decisions which tried to balance people’s need to know with some semblance of taste as well as dignity for the dead and bereaved.

But those images created – as they were supposed to – a widespread sense of fear, anxiety and revulsion that far transcended the events themselves. Three thousand miles away, I could not sleep that night and only fitfully the night after. My six-year-old was not the only child who, two weeks later, was woken by a nightmare about people falling out of windows.

While much of the TV journalism that followed was excellent, it could never quite free itself from the straitjacket of those pictures – which perhaps explains why some of the most reassuringly sensible and illuminating analysis came from BBC radio, and in particular from Five Live. Perhaps the civilising quality of that journalism will serve as a potent reminder to policy makers thinking even now about the future of British broadcasting.