From: "Shawn Ewald" <shawn-AT-wilshire.net>
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 19:58:17 -0400
Subject: A Media Day In Infamy


http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11471

A Media Day In Infamy 
Geov Parrish, AlterNet
September 11, 2001

Historically, when national and local media respond to a breaking 
emergency, speculation and hyperbole take over. On Tuesday morning we 
witnessed, again, how powerful media images can electrify a world 
instantly; and, how we in the media sometimes use our power 
irresponsibly.  

For hours in the morning, Tom Brokaw and NBC were reporting that the 
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- along with Hamas, one 
of the two groups responsible for many of the suicide bombings in Israel -
- had claimed responsibility for the attack. That unsubstantiated claim 
turned out to be based upon one anonymous phone call to Abu Dhabi 
television, but it lasted for hours, until a DFLP spokesman could call 
and explicitly disavow it.  

That was just the tip of it. Speculation was rampant, on absolutely no 
evidence, that someone Islamic -- usually Osama bin Laden -- was 
responsible, but that speculation often broadly invoked "Islam" as 
responsible -- using every adherant of one of the world's largest 
religions, with a couple of billion believers, as shorthand for 
"terrorist." Pat Robertson was on the 700 Club within an hour, blaming 
Islam itself, and later, on Fox, talking about Satan and Arabs. It was 
reminiscent of what turned out to be grossly inaccurate reports, in the 
first few hours after the Oklahoma City bombing, that "Arabs" were behind 
it. If I were Arab-American, I'd be scared.  

As it became clear that the immediate attacks were over, the talking 
heads moved in. Across the country, media localized the story by 
reporting on our communal fear. It not only recited the local closings 
(done either out of prudence or panic), but, also, as the hours and 
repetition wore on, trotted in "experts" who offered speculation as 
truth. The cacophony itself added to our communal fear.  

Mercifully, no New York official was foolhardy enough to immediately 
speculate on casualties. Had anyone put out a number, particularly a 
fantastic number, it would have been stripped of caveats and instantly 
bandied about as a received truth, adding to the public's sense of panic. 
Both national and local media also deserve credit for avoiding excessive 
speculation on the numbers of casualties.  

But while speculation on who was responsible ran wild, without exception, 
not one talking head I saw or heard wanted to touch on the why, except 
for occasional references to madmen. But it was, and is, worse than that. 
The attackers were not insane; they were engaging in a cold-blooded, 
premeditated mass murder of another country's civilians to achieve 
political ends. Some of the networks' talking heads -- former secretaries 
of state Henry Kissinger and Al Haig come to mind -- had, in the past, 
overseen the same things.  

Haig, interviewed by CNN's Judy Woodruff, decried that those who might 
"quibble," based on "a misguided sense of social justice," with a U.S. 
response that takes innocent lives abroad or denies constitutional rights 
at home. Woodruff did not question this remarkable assertion.  

Our collective, emotional public response is to want vengeance. Who would 
feel differently? It's hard to say why this happened, but there has been 
so much bloodshed around the world that the U.S. has been associated with 
-- often with much higher death tolls than this attack but with fewer 
cameras present -- that it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that the 
same feelings we have this week -- of fear, vulnerability, rage -- are 
the feelings that motivated this cowardly attack in the first place. That 
was territory no media reports dared venture into.




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