June 15, 1995 - a day where priorities in news coverage got tested. Beginning with news that the long-anticipated and much-dreaded Battle of Sarajevo had begun caused and that NATO forces were in that uncomfortable place of being peacekeeper and defender all at the same time. It would prove to be Topic-A in conversation at the upcoming G-7 Summit, which President Clinton was heading for on this day.

News also, with reference to G-7, of the threatened trade war between Japan and the U.S., mostly centered around the newly-imposed 100% tariff on imported Japanese Cars into the U.S.

A rescue effort was underway in Greece, which had suffered a 6.1 earthquake overnight and a growing list of casualties from collapsed buildings was reported.

But the biggest news, the news that occupied the most "air-time" on this broadcast, was the reported first interview with Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley on the occasion of the release of Jackson's latest album HIStory in which he answers allegations of Child molestation and the controversy surrounding anti-Semitic lyrics.

Buried in the rest of the news was report of the Senate, set to vote on a sweeping overhaul of Telecommunications Laws, in effect for over 50 years, and deregulation of Cable TV.

Also in there were reports of the continuing Timothy McVeigh/Oklahoma City Bombing and OJ Simpson murder trials.

And last, but not least - news on the Houston Rockets clinch of the NBA title in a 113-101 win over the Orlando Magic. Something they went nuts over in Houston.

And that's pretty much what happened, and what you may not have noticed amidst the noise of Pop Culture, on this June 15, 1995 as reported on The CBS World News Roundup.

Hard to imagine it was 17 years ago this day, but within minutes of the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the country stopped and watched as the story slowly unfolded and became more grim and horrifying with each fresh report.

And there was other news happening. But somehow it just didn't seem so important as the day went on.

Here are news reports just shortly after the bombing was reported, as casualties rose over the next few hours and on-the-spot coverage of the event as it was happening via CBS Radio for April 19, 1995.

(results of the unhinged)

As talk of our fractured society enters the realm of the extreme, I'm reminded of how, after the first few hours of the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma city on April 19, 1995, no one really wanted to believe this was something homegrown. One of us, a seemingly adjusted functioning human being, bent on destroying lives, most of them children, bent on proving an abstract incomprehensible thought might be responsible.

Gov. Keating (Oklahoma): “I know of no threat and I know of no warning. The size of the explosion indicated, I think, to many of us who have been in this business is that it had to be more that a utility blast, and apparently that’s what occurred and it’s, you know, a terrible, terrible thing that these innocent people could be savaged like this.”

As this compressed recording of the first 3 hours shows, from roughly 9:30 to noon, thoughts were geared towards some terrorist group from another country, much like the ones who tried to blow up the World Trade Center only two years earlier, or the ones earlier that day in Japan who set off poison gas in the subway system, fashioning themselves after the Tokyo subway attacks only a month earlier.

Even an early report linking the bombings to an erroneous phone call linking the Nation of Islam, seemed more credible than the real story that was unfolding. And it wasn't until almost two hours later that it occurred to someone in Oklahoma City that maybe, just maybe this bombing was some form of revenge for Waco - that this day, April 19 was an anniversary. And this, as twisted logic goes, was a good excuse even as the casualties rose on a minute by minute basis.

So I'm reminded how easily the unhinged can operate, how easily they are goaded into acts of extreme violence by manipulators to prove an abstract point even they aren't quite sure of. They are only sure of nameless hate and faceless fear.

And the propagators of hate and hate speech and hate media like that just fine.