Lessons from Ground Zero offers a collection of essays on US news media coverage of the attacks of 11 September 2001. Following a brief introduction, the book's opening chapters trace the media stories and frames that dominated presentations of the unfolding events across network and cable television. This analysis is then extended with discussion of issues including the selection of sources by journalists in crisis coverage, the importance of nonverbal communication, and the emotional and practical challenges facing media broadcasters working in such unusual conditions. The final chapters add context to the study by contrasting newspaper coverage with television's outputs, and comparing media reporting to the public-opinion ratings received by then President George W. Bush. The chapters in the book draw primarily on two methodological techniques: content analysis and interviews with reporters, news anchors and producers, amongst others.

Lessons from Ground Zero does contribute to a number of existing studies of the relationship between terrorism and the news media. In recent years, these have included Norris et al.'s Framing Terrorism (2003), Zelizer and Allan's Journalism after September 11 (2002) and the work of Brigitte Nacos. Aimed at a broad audience, and presented as “neither a normal scholarly book nor a standard journalistic or historical chronological accounting” (viii), the conceptual discussion here is far sparser than that provided by alternative texts. That said, the book does contain interesting efforts to reflect on such themes as the emergence of journalistic norms in crisis reporting (chapter 5), inadvertent biases of sex and race in the selection and use of sources by journalists (chapter 6), and the limited relationship between government officials and media representatives in the very immediacy of 9/11 (chapter 3). The news media's nonreliance on then-current political elites in sourcing information and commentary, in particular, stands in contrast to many accounts of a more firmly imbricated media/political establishment.

Keeping in mind the book's accessibility and aims, there are, however, three areas that may leave readers desiring a little more than that on offer in Lessons from Ground Zero. In the first instance, the focus here is overwhelmingly oriented towards the first twenty-four hours that followed the 9/11 attacks. While this emphasis is useful in assisting an understanding of journalism's response to breaking news events, this coverage would benefit, I believe, from extension in two ways: first, to a more refined contextualization of the findings presented here as they relate either to similarly tumultuous historical events or, perhaps, to the normalcies of news coverage under less frenetic circumstances; second, and more importantly, to subsequent coverage of the attacks and their aftermath in the weeks, months and years that followed. As we know, 9/11 was endlessly recycled, remediated and repackaged across media outlets long beyond its occurrence. Reflection on how this coverage changed in style, content and tone would have greatly enhanced the book's impact and value.

In the second instance, the emphasis here on traditional sources of news, with no sustained discussion of new media outlets, is also a little surprising. Despite references to a relationship of historical decline between audiences, their newspapers and televisions (e.g. 4), the book contains no discussion of 9/11's coverage on the Internet – either by established media outlets or in self-generated form – or of the challenges faced within this media environment. Finally, the collection's privileging of description over analysis is likely to leave many of its readers with questions unanswered. Efforts to understand findings and correlations identified by the authors are, in the main, cursory and do little justice to some of the more interesting empirical detail that readers will encounter. This is a pity, given both the research effort clearly underpinning the volume, and the potential of findings therein to expand further our understanding of the terrorism/media relationship.