Media
Responses to Terrorism
by Ken
Freed.
.
Hijacked
airliners flown into U.S. symbols of power challenge
American news media to stand up for democracy.
Journalists with global sense are advocating calm and
clear thinking while resisting calls to sacrifice freedom
for
security.
Words and images on
television have defined for us the terrorist air attacks
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, September 11,
2001. The attack is being labeled in the press as " a 911
for America," "the new Pearl Harbor," "a declaration of
war on America," and "the first war of the 21st Century."
Consider the implications.
Work in America halted as we sat with eyes glued to
the screen, mouths agape on Day One. Newscasts looped the
camera shots from every angle of the second hijacked
airliner being swallowed up by the south WTC tower, and
then, a heartbeat later, a ball of fire. Reporters
choking on smoke and emotion told tales of people jumping
from flaming office tower windows, hand-in-hand by
unconfirmed stories.
The planes sliced through the square of redundant
steel girders at the core of the towers, we later
learned. The structural integrity of the building likely
was weakened from the 1993 parking basement bombing by
the same culprits. The outer shells of the towers kept
the upper floors intact until burning jet fuel gutted the
floors taken out on impact, then the upper floors
collapsed into the opening, the weight falling on the
floors below, starting a vertical domino affect, like
holding a stalk of wheat and stripping off the grains
with your fingers. Lives stripped away that fast. We
witnessed on TV each tower collapsing, floor by floor,
cascading downward in a reverse mushroom cloud of debris
that one if hit the street and fanned out out overturned
emergency vehicles as flying office paper sliced into
rubber tires and God alone knows what else. Under
wreckage that would smolder for months lay the lost body
parts. Rage and horror alternately enflamed and froze our
blood and bones as we watched history unfold on live
TV.
Now that our numbing shock from the terrorist attack
is beginning to wear off, now that the tears have begun
to flow, now that a war against terrorism has begin at
home and abroad, the mass media networks need to help the
public slow down, take a breath, deal honestly with our
grief and stress, yes, our terror. Mass media must help
the masses think through the choices facing us in the
weeks and months ahead as free people living in an open
democracy. People need informed minds for rational
decisions. The media massage: Don't Panic. Stay Real. Get
facts. Understand our deep global interactivity, act
accordingly.
Now that "Ground Zero" cleanup has begun with
reconstruction to follow, now that Congress has
authorized Presidential use of armed force to put the
terrorism industry out of business, now that the White
House has notified America and the world us to expect
"endless" world war instead of "business as usual," now
that the decision to wage war has been made without any
public vote beyond opinion polls and an emotion-driven
Congressional vote, a crisis of conscience now faces the
media.
The mission of a free press in the modern age of
global interactivity is not to beat the patriotic drum
for battle like Hearst driving war with Spain a century
ago. The challenge facing media now is resisting the
public's blind rage and demands for instant revenge. Our
free press needs to give reason and critical thinking a
fair chance. Our free press needs to make sure we have a
clearly defined culprit to pursue and punish, solid
courtroom proof, and a clear "exit strategy" for this war
when civil liberties are restored,
Mass media further needs to make sure the masses in
America and around the world are fully informed about the
terrible consequences on the ground of waging this war,
let alone the perils of pitting military forces against
an undefined underground enemy at home and abroad, a foe
in hiding and on the run, a foe willing to die for a
cause, who any given moment may deploy weapons of mass
destruction, from fire bombs in restaurants to germ vials
in subways.
The only way to guarantee total security from
terrorism in America is to impose a police state that
wipes out the very democracy we're struggling to protect.
Tightening airport security in a responsive instead of
reactive way is sensible now, but does a brazen terrorist
act justify a federal surveillance order covering all the
email traffic on AOL, EarthLink and every other Internet
access provider? A free watchdog press reporting the
complete story can help educate the public on
little-known public policy decisions already effecting
our daily lives.
We
need to debate policy options now from clear heads and
not aching hearts. There's a real difference between
justice and vengeance. An eye for an eye leaves everyone
blind and groping in the dark. The blindness to fear most
is the darkness of public ignorance.
Too many of us on earth still do not yet realize that in
our interactive world, what we do to others we do to
ourselves. Please avoid "Us or Them" thinking - because
everyone is "us". We need the kind of global thinking
that inspires us to balance freedom and responsibility in
our lives.
History teaches us that the
public's right-to-know always is curtailed during
wartime. Loose lips sinks ships. Sadly, freedoms lost are
seldom recovered without public outcry. After the
military secrecy necessary during W.W.II came Joe
McCarthy's witch hunt for "un-American activities" as Mr.
Hoover's FBI ran amok, cowing free Americans until
journalists like Edward R. Murrow took a stand in defense
of democracy. Two decades later, after the US lost an
unwinnable war against a guerrilla army in Viet Nam, a
pair of journalists, Woodward and Bernstein, exposed
Nixon's assault on the Constitution, the illegal break
ins and buggings, the enemies list and the FBI running
amok yet again. Could such abuses occur today? Not if
laws are obeyed and agents remain true to their own
reason and conscience and eternal souls, but laws have
changed.
The USA Patriot Act that sunsets in four years
contains eleven permanent provisions that forever rescind
civil liberties we once took for granted. The same
senators and representatives intoning rhetoric about not
letting terrorists take away our way of life then voted
for this legislation that takes away our way of life. But
what if there are more attacks on U.S. soil? Could a
presidential decree for martial law suspends our rights
for the duration in this declared "national emergency"?
What if the pursuit of terrorists in our midst undergoes
"mission creep" and expands into a hunt for unpatriotic
dissenters? Could those prisons built for millions of
drug offenders suddenly find new uses? Think it can't
happen here? I sure do hope not, but read the story of
the news editor in the 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis,
It Can't Happen Here.
A free press is our best defense against any tyranny,
at home or abroad, now more than ever.
There are hopeful signs, such as the reporters who
jumped on the story of Midwestern gas stations jumping
prices to $5 a gallon without cause on Day One. Another
case that day was ABC News anchor Peter Jennings asking a
female reporter in the street to hug a sobbing woman
being interviewed, but the reporter had three requests in
her ear before at last giving that devastated witness to
horror a light pat on the back. At least somebody in TV
news showed concern for something more than hairstyle and
talented phrasing. That's a human interest story. Print
and electronic journalists also deserve praise for
reporting the racists attacks against Americans of Middle
Eastern descent or Moslem faith, framing the stories (and
thus the public perception) of such backlash reactions as
both unthinking and un-American.
As for media technology in this crisis, I'm
disappointed the news industry in America was not
prepared to offer "enhanced TV" let alone true
interactive TV news coverage of the crisis. I was glad to
watch the networks using "picture-in-picture" screens
with overlays and scrolling text. Often, a live "talking
head" guest was being interviewed in one window while
another window displayed disaster scene video from news
and amateur sources. Sometimes early on Day One,
directors did not turned off background video sound
during studio interviews, so talking heads were drowned
out by screams or undeleted expletives from the street.
That's a natural slip, yet when DC politicians were being
interviewed on one broadcast network later that
afternoon, sure did seem that background sound volume
fell for one party but not for the other. Sure do hope I
was mistaken. Sure does raise issues about the influence
of political bias on public manipulation by the mass
media massaging our minds in our mass consumerism
culture.
The challenges are tough enough for print journalists
in an era when fewer people read newspapers or buy books
than ever before, but for TV journalists whose jobs
depend on ratings, beware of temptations to give way to
jingoism and demonizing. There are strong pressures from
above and below, within and without, that affect
editorial decision-making. In this respect, the current
crisis is business as usual for working journalists, but
now the stakes are amplified beyond normal. Journalists
risk story overwhelm, also caving in to peer pressure to
conform. I urge my fellow journalists to avoid taking
this path of least resistance. The very last thing we
need today is media-induced "groupthink" lockstepping us
into any war without a clearly defined enemy or
ending.
For all the journalists who read this essay, please
have the courage and faith to ask the hard questions.
When answers are vague or elusive, go digging for the
truth. Our free press needs to support vigorous debate
among differing viewpoints about how the world responds
to terrorism -- for respond we must. The tyranny of hate
that drives airplanes into buildings cannot stand
unopposed, yet the true home front is in our own hearts.
if we want robust democracy to succeed in our world, we
need to ensure freedom of speech survives here at
home.
No one of good conscience can permit mass murderers to
escape. But let's not kill democracy in pursuit of
justice. Now more than ever, mass media has a duty to
help educate the masses. Now more than ever, the public
needs to recognize and appreciate the power of mass media
shaping public opinion. The news networks, in turn, must
accept their urgent responsibility in this new "war on
terrorism" for making sure tour individual freedoms and
rights are never sacrificed on the exalted alter of
national security.
Journalists of good will and open minds need to refute
cynicism and demonstrate real faith in the capacity of
free people to make intelligent choices about public
policy, if given reliable information for reasoning. I
invite the news media today to exercise global sense and
help us all practice responsibly self rule. 
.
