Back in Studio, Brokaw Looks Back on NBC’s Anthrax Scare

NEW YORK — When it’s time to broadcast the “NBC Nightly News,” Tom Brokaw no longer has to trek across the street to the “Today” show: He and his colleagues returned to their own set Thursday.

He calls it a “baby step” in the return to normality, after weeks of being displaced when his work space was contaminated by anthrax spores that infected his assistant and another staffer.

Being part of the story and still reporting it was “tricky,” he says, because his first concern was for “my assistant’s health and well-being and then making sure the staff was secure in their minds about the environment they were working in.” Anthrax also hit other media outlets, but it was NBC where investigators first made the link between the infections and the mail.

The veteran news anchor says NBC became “the poster children for anthrax,” with authorities finding their way through everything from identifying a cause to antibiotics protocol “to some degree at our expense.”

Of the debate over whether journalists can or should also be patriots, he says the same discussion happened with Vietnam and Watergate.

He believes “one of the essential roles of American life is the role of journalism. You can be both faithful to your country and your profession.”

His definition of patriotism, he adds, is “Love your country and always think it can be improved.”