Berlin Wall Newscasts 20 Years Later: Watch Brokaw, Jennings & Rather Report The News (VIDEO)

Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which provides a nice opportunity to look back at the coverage of the historic event.

Below, relive the coverage from Tom Brokaw (NBC), Peter Jennings (ABC), and Dan Rather (CBS) — and vote for who you think delivered the authoritative Berlin Wall broadcast.

Share your memories — or reflections on just how much has changed in the media since then — in the comments section.

Tom Brokaw

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Comments

[erichnorse]

Talking about broadcast, try to find the video of TVE, spanish public TV that captured the moment the first gate opened.

They were doing a report from the east side as the gate opened and people noticed and started going through. There is a woman and you can just see in her face whats she thinking...did that gate just opened, and she just bolted through and people just followed.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

[gearhead01]

Oh yes , and the marines in Lebanon, like I said he wasnt perfect. How many did we loose this year. How many will we loose next year. How long would it take Mcarthur, or Patton to be done with this and back home already.

[gearhead01]

Reagan was a great leader, he wasnt perfect by any means but I always knew his heart and efforts were with his country, Leaders are dispised , often when one leads in a certain direction, will be hated .As Reagan was, the press hounded him daily and he shrugged it off, honestly and this administration gets a little bad P.R. and there circleing the wagons. Reagan rarley used the words I or Me, as most really great men dont. To me he was a great president and a great speaker. Coming out of the Carter era. Where Americans were held hostage and kidnapped around the world, the U.S. was the laughing stock of the world.You couldnt even buy gas for youre car. Weaknes is not respected anywhere.this country was made strong, and had a robust economy for 20 some odd years and it was due to one man. Ronald Reagan.

[brady61995]

yeah sure it was

[DasBoot]

Quite a scoop for Brokaw to get Schabovski for an interview. He admitted during the interview that the regime had only planned for emigration, not travel. People didn't know that night that they were not supposed to be allowed to come back. Thank god events overtook the devious plans of the regime.

What a night, what a year. Wonderful!

[JFD8]

Democrats want re-erected
The Wall that Berlin rejected;
For they need a redoubt
To be sure to wall out
Lieberman since he defected.

News Short n' Sweet by JFD8
http://twitter.com/JFD8

[CintiBlue]

I remember carrying an after work cup of coffee into the den and stopping in my tracks, trying to grasp what I was seeing.

Having grown up in the duck and cover 50's/60's it took me more than a minute to realize what I was seeing. That wall terrorized me as a kid - I couldn't get my brain around the building of it.

Happy Anniversary, Freedom.

[Gasparilla]

Don't believe all the hype about Ronald Reagan. Opposition to the Soviet Union was a bipartisan effort that extended back to the end of WW2. Truman had the Berlin airlift after the Russians cut the overland supply routes to West Berlin in 1948. Kennedy went to that city and said [or tried to] "I am a Berliner". The Soviet system was challenged repeatedly through the years by uprisings in Hungary, Czechslovakia and Poland. It fell because of it's own bloated economic and political failings. The idea that it was because of Reagan only is nonsense. All Reagan did was spend a lot of military money to oppose a system that was already doomed. Of course, Ronnie ran out of Lebanon after we had 200 plus Marines killed there, who he had stupidly sent in. The Republicans never get around to that little situation.

[ZombyWoof]

Everything in your post is absolutely true.

Except the republican attiude towards the 200 Marines in Lebanon,
That was wiped from their memory banks.

[kate99]

while I agree with most of what you say it was his defense spending that ended it because it broke the ussr they could not compete but in truth I wonder how close they came to choosing war instead of making peace as I read some where people were advising Gorbachev that war was the right way glad he did not listen to them

[JTHC75]

If you check out the correspondence between Reagan and Gorbachev (posted here on HuffPost), you'll see that neither was close to choosing war. It's strange, but both were on the same page when it came to disarmament and opening ties.

[texhall00]

I was taken aback today when newscaster Andrea Mitchell (MSNBC) said when interviewing Tom Brokow on his broadcast 20 years ago from the Brelin Wall. At the end she said, yea well, I'm glad you didn't screw it up. What is this? Mitchell who is up in years spoke like some kid reporter to Mr. Brokow or to anyone for that matter is undignified and unprofessional. Isn't there any sense of social grace or decorum? Mr. Brokow is a well manner gentlemen who didn't deserve to have that remark thrown at him.

[triplesevens]

my god that old 80's american bias. nobody hears it.

[lendtolease]

Read today's WSJ.

[marcain]

Reagan said 'take down that wall' and Gorbachev listened. He loved and respected Reagan.

[zerepas]

it was mutual. I believe both were closet Christians.
Combine that with Pope John Paul II's followers in Poland, the seat of an underground collective consciousness; thats what brought down that wall.

[miranche]

As they say,

it took 10 years in Poland
10 months in Hungary
10 weeks in East Germany
10 days in Czechoslovakia
10 hours in Romania

And btw of the superpower leaders Gorbachev did more to bring it about than Reagan... But mostly the system just did itself in, and the Poles led the way.

[Calblue]

I respectfully disagree with your statement that "the Poles led the way". The whole system started to unravel when the east Germans were allowed to escape through Hungary, because the Hungarians decided to remove the barb wires at their border with Austria. East Germans went to visit Chekoslovakia and from there into Hungary in their Trabants.....look it up if you don't know what a Trabant is........ and from Hungary to Austria and than to West Germany.

I saw it with my own 2 eyes the hundreds of thousand east Germans migrating trough Hungary. The east German government demanded from the the Hungarian government to closed the borders both at the Check and Austrian borders, but the Hungarians refused....the rest is history.

But the real credit should go to Gorbachev, without that man I don't think communism would have crumbled as fast and as peacefully as it did. ....and I think he got he Nobel for it in 1991.

[Independent1969]

Poles led the way. Hungary next. Germany was a few months behind. Nice try though.

[mona C]

That is exactly how it happend.Gorbachev could have stopped it, but he did not.
As a Berliner, we all credited him for the eventual fall of the wall.
I remember Honecker not knowing what to do. The East German Government was
totally lost. It was incredible.

[dems08]

I miss Dan Rather reporting on a nightly basis.

[niblik]

Yeah, watching this is reminding me of a time when I had at least some trust in the News.

I can't believe how quickly our Newscasters have fallen from the standards of even 10 years ago.

[lendtolease]

I miss him also, especially after he trumpeted the fake documents on Dubya. He was very amusing after that.

[Scribe57]

You do realize that those documents were never proven to be fake, right?

[Growup22]

RIP Peter Jennings, I could trust the words coming out of your mouth. That was an absolutely awesome day in 1989. I remember watching and thinking that thinks could only get better. The naiveté of youth.

[caveman1313]

here, i will mention it, since no one in the Left Stream Media is going to:

Ronald Reagan.

America, under his leadership, won the cold war.

[littlepuffycloud]

Oh yeah...the USSR's decade in Afghanistan; financially breaking them, had nothing to do with it, right?

[01202009]

Please! Tell me exactly what Mr. Reagan did except read his script? The wall came down in spite of him and so the Republican Party has had to find a new enemy and it happens to be the American people. Look around you at the economy. A direct result of trickle-down voodoo economics that Mr. Reagan adopted, a result of his deregulation and union busting. Now millions of people suffer thanks to him.

[dems08]

what, exactly did he do?

[Independent1969]

East Germany freed itself from communism after Poland, Hungary and possibly the Czech Republic which would make it about 3rd or 4th in line. East Germany is incorrectly given credit for ending the Cold War. That's definitely not what happened.

The Cold War was over when the Polish people, with the help of Pope John Paul and the Solidarity Party fought for more rights and free elections and got them both. Once they got their elections on June 4th 1989 they voted out the Communists from power. That was the beggining of the end for Communism in Europe. If you want to know how to make huge changes in government then study what happened in Poland during this time.

Poland's victory inspired other Communist countries to fight for their own freedom and to use Poland's strategy as a template. It worked. Within a few months of Poland's victory most of Europe was free from Communism and the Soviet Union was soon gone.

If it weren't for Poland's success it's very possible that the Soviet Union might still exist today and Central and Eastern Europe still Communist nations. Scary.

So for the sake of historical accuracy let's tell the real story and give credit where credit is due.

Solidarnosc!

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4809509,00.html?maca=en-aa-pol-863-rdf

[DasBoot]

Like it or not, the Wall as the supreme symbol of the Cold War, so when it fell that was widely seen as the end. Nevertheless, you are right about Poland. Solidarity was the beginning of the end for communism, and the fall of the Wall was the end of the end, so to speak. No reason for competition, or demands to tell "the real story." Nobody can retell what exactly happened during that wonderful, turbulent year 1989.