Hockenberry wrote in the January 2008 '' Technology Review '' magazine that on the Sunday after the September 11 attacks he was pitching stories on the origins of al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism . He wrote that then-NBC programming chief Jeff Zucker , who came into a meeting Hockenberry was having with '' Dateline '' executive producer David Corvo , said '' Dateline '' should instead focus on the firefighters and perhaps ride along with them à la '' COPS '' , a Fox reality series . According to Hockenberry , Zucker said " that he had no time for any subtitled interviews with jihadists raging about Palestine . " Hockenberry has further claimed that General Electric , NBC 's parent company , discouraged him from talking to the Bin Laden family about their estranged family member . Hockenberry says that he asked GE , which does business with the Bin Laden family company , to help him get in contact with them . Instead , a PR executive called Hockenberry 's hotel room in Saudi Arabia and read him a statement about how GE did n't see its " valuable business relationship " with the Bin Laden Group as having anything to do with '' Dateline '' . In another instance , Hockenberry claimed a story he did about a Weather Underground member would not appear on the Sunday edition of '' Dateline '' unless the 1960s family drama '' American Dreams '' , which followed '' Dateline '' in the schedule at the time , did a show about " protesters or something . " Hockenberry currently lives in New York City and in Massachusetts . He is separated from his wife Alison Craiglow Hockenberry , whom he married in 1995 . They have five children , including two sets of twins : Zoe , Olivia , Regan , Zachary , and Ajax
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
John Hockenberry