By Danny Schechter
Like everyone in New York and most in the media world, the events of
September 11th galvanized me into a flurry of activity. Most of us wanted to
contribute something to help a shocked public make sense of the cataclysmic
events. Everyone on the TV networks talked about how the world had changed
forever. But as I watched the coverage in as many outlets as I could keep up
with, I quickly saw that for the most part, the media did NOT change in their
fundamentals. What I came to see is how many of these outlets had not
prepared us to understand the quickening pace of a global threat. Suddenly,
we all realized that we needed to know about issues that had been barely and
badly covered.
Yes, suddenly, there was more coverage, dramatic coverage, commercial-free
news and round-the clock-reporting. But was it better coverage? Certain
problems began to manifest themselves, as tensions between jingoism and
journalism became obvious, as government information management asserted
itself, and as a failure to offer context and background disappointed many
who had hoped that the coverage would illuminate the whys as well as the
whats. I decided to try to write about the coverage every day. Our weblog
technology made it easy to post in a timely way, sometimes as events were
unfolding. Here are excerpts from six weeks of my weblog.
SEPTEMBER 11
Reports of disaster pumps adrenaline throughout the news business. Here we
are in the morning in New York listening to reports on planes crashing into
the World Trade Center, as if they were coming from Edward R, Murrow during
the blitz in London. Unconfirmed reports. And then rumors. And then more
alarming news. First one plane, Then another. A tower collapses. The Pentagon
is hit.
This is what we call a developing story.
This is a catastrophe.
The consequences are not known.
Watch how it develops. Remember that truth tends to be the first casualty in
war.
We need accurate information. And we need truth
The BIG MEDIA is in action with graphics, music and a drumbeat of urgency.
News ratings are up at last.
Already ABC and others have packaged the disaster as a sitcom called "AMERICA
UNDER ATTACK." Conjuring up: AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE. Conjuring up: AMERICA WINS
IN THE GULF. And reminding me of all the trivialized packaging of so many
important stories in the past. (At last, a break from Gary Condit stories!)
In the bar around the corner, workmen guzzle beer and stare at the TV. All
you see is smoke billowing. The same shot over and over. Disbelief is the
dominant emotion. Cut here, Cut there. This cavalcade of horror and paralysis
and fear and tears is on every channel, and will be for weeks.
In these first minutes, reactions of all kinds are flooding my e-mail box
along with expressions of concern from friends and family all over the world.
Crises like this make us realize the importance of community and friendship.
And yes, life!
Today, we can see the abyss. Can we find the light?
SEPTEMBER 14
One issue not getting the attention it deserves involves how this painful
moment of national crisis is being maneuvered politically to the point that
the Congress gives the President a blank check and the authorization to do
whatever he and his "team" decide. The New York Times' headline this Friday
leads with a Bush aide's call for "ending" states that harbor terrorists, R.
W. Apple's front page analysis says "No Middle Ground." No dissent on p 1 is
cited this morning.
This is not unusual in mainstream media, report Russell Mokhiber and Robert
Weissman of, respectively, the Corporate Crime Reporter and Multinational
Monitor. Open the Washington Post to its editorial pages, and war talk
dominates.
Henry Kissinger: Destroy the Network.
Robert Kagan: We Must Fight This War.
Charles Krauthammer: To War, Not to Court.
William S. Cohen: American Holy War.
There is no column by Colman McCarthy talking peace.
From 1969 to 1997, McCarthy wrote a column for the Washington Post. He was
let go because the column, he was told, wasn't making enough money for the
company. "The market has spoken," was the way Robert Kaiser, managing editor
at the Post, put it at the time.
McCarthy is a pacifist. "I'm opposed to any kind of violence — economic,
political, military, domestic." But McCarthy is not surprised by the war talk
coming from the Post. He has just completed an analysis of 430 opinion pieces
that ran in the Washington Post in June, July and August 2001. Of the 430
opinion pieces, 420 were written by right-wingers or centrists. Only 10 were
written by columnists one might consider left.
SEPTEMBER 17
Pro-war cheerleading in the tabloids is achieving new levels. If their words
could kill, everyone in Afghanistan would be dead already.
SEPTEMBER 19
NOT MUCH TRUTH FROM DAVID LETTERMAN: The late night talk show host was
applauded last night when CBS newsman Bryant Gumbel praised him for being on
the air to restore "normalcy." Letterman confided that he had wished for
"mayhem" to be the U.S. response to the attacks on the World Trade Center. He
asked if the attitudes of the terrorists should be considered a form of
mental illness. During the election, it was revealed that as many as a
quarter of young people were getting all their news from late night TV shows
like his.
OCTOBER 8
SIMULATE THIS!: On Sunday morning, ABC News trotted out one of its
state-of-the-art, made-for-this-war graphic simulations. It was like a video
game, showing the shape of a bomber gliding over the brown rocky topography
of what is supposedly Afghanistan. Anchor Peter Jennings described what the
graphic was illustrating, then paused. You could almost see his brain
clicking away. "You know," he said, "I don't really trust simulations like
these even though you are supposed to use them in television." He had clearly
deviated from the script by commenting on his own presentation. He reminded
viewers that when the Reagan administration first proposed its antiballistic
missile defense system, every TV station ran a simulation that showed a
rocket knocking out an incoming missile. It worked every time. Of course,
that was totally deceptive, and no test the Pentagon has done since has
demonstrated that the system is quite so infallible. Thank you, Mr. Jennings,
for a rare moment of candor and appropriate skepticism. I first learned about
this bit of graphic trickery from Cathe Ishino, then the art director of the
McNeil-Lehrer News Hour and Globalvision. She actually made a presentation
exposing the issue at a conference of Broadcast designers. Sadly, many
networks continued to use that expensively produced flimflam.
OCTOBER 11
Today is the one month anniversary of the tragic events of September 11. A
moment of silence and reflection is in order to mourn for the dead and
missing, and to mark that catastrophe, and the catastrophes that seem to be
unfolding. We live in scary and dangerous times. An independent media is more
important than ever to help us all know what's happening, why it's happening
and what it means.
OCTOBER 12
THERE IS AT LEAST ONE "MEDIA HERO" IN THE MADNESS: Yesterday, I was given a dose of media hope in an unusual place. To get there, you had to walk through
a National Guard checkpoint in the "exclusion zone" not far from Ground Zero,
where the stench of death can still take your breath away. There, in what was
once a firehouse, is the home of veteran TV producer Jon Alpert's Downtown
Community Television Center which for a quarter of a century has housed
independent media in New York. The firehouse is now hosting a radio studio
and ancillary cable TV operation for the program "Democracy Now," anchored by
the tenacious and super-competent Amy Goodman. Along with a team of dedicated
volunteers, Amy is offering a daily two-hour "War In Peace Report," which is unrivaled anywhere in the world, to my knowledge.
OCTOBER 13
ANTHRAX AIMED AT MEDIA: So far, there have been no articles in the U.S. media
about "why they would attack us (in the media)" but judging from the many
inquiries I am getting from overseas, many journalists elsewhere don't seem
to see much of a distinction between the U.S. media and the U.S.
government — a challenge that we in the media must take seriously.
These excerpts may add a certain coherence to a weblog that is written with
dispatch, drawing on material sent to me and media I monitor. Of course it
can't claim to be comprehensive or "objective." But it does try to offer more
diverse perspectives than I am seeing in the U.S. press. I don't agree with
them all, but it is important to recognize that the world media is often far
different from the dominant worldwide of the American press, which is itself
a reflection of a "global news gap" that needs closing. Reader comments keep the
weblog process interactive, and 800 MediaChannel affiliates offer lots of
content to choose from. I am going to try to keep going.
— Danny Schechter is the executive editor of MediaChannel.org. His latest book is "News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics, 1960-2000," from Akashic Books.
HOME
