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CNN Saturday Morning News

People Mesmerized by Terrorist Incident

Aired September 15, 2001 - 08:58   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you're watching this story you may already be hooked -- horrified yet mesmerized by planes aimed at buildings, buildings that collapse before our very eyes, over and over.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can't really take my eyes off the TV.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I also couldn't stand to watch TV one more minute.

MOOS: "Attack on America" -- "Attack on America" -- "America Under Attack" -- whatever the networks call it.

DR. JENNY HOLLAND, HEAD OF DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHIATRY AT SLOAN KETTERING: It's addicting. I think it's addicting partly because we don't want to miss something.

MOOS: Even if that something makes us sad.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I cry a lot when I hear the stories and see all the people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Has anyone seen my daughter?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think people feel guilty if they're not watching it -- that they feel in some way that they're betraying those that have really suffered.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you feel like you're participating because you're watching that's an illusion.

MOOS: What not an illusion is the way the coverage tends to unite viewers in a shared experience even if what's shared is sorrow. It's easy to OD on crisis TV.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't want to watch it all the time just because it kind of deadens the mind.

MOOS: So how much is too much? We asked Dr. Jenny Holland, Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Sloan Kettering.

HOLLAND: Everybody should ask themselves, "Is this making me feel better or feel worse?" and if it's making you feel worse you probably should limit -- "I'm going to watch an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon."

MOOS: And turn it off ...

HOLLAND: When you get a feeling of being unable to think about anything else.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know what I felt when I saw the smoke coming around the building? I thought, This is a movie.

MOOS: But these are no special effects.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's the image, that's the image that's going to be burned into our brains for the rest of our lives.

MOOS: Burned into our brains from every angle.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then there's this guy standing there, and then all of a sudden, it just rips right through it. Absolutely powerful.

MOOS (on camera): But I could look at that image a million times, and I still find it mesmerizing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know. It's an intimacy with disaster.

MOOS (voice-over): Disaster seen from the safe side of the screen.

Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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