Covering Terrorism: The Media and 9/11




Unlike previous crises, the media did not need to force people to talk—creating an uncomfortable "pornography of grief."

The reaction after the events of September 11 was very different. People voluntarily went in front of the cameras and microphones, or spoke freely with representatives of the print press. Even those people who had been directly affected by the crisis—who had been in the buildings that were hit and survived, or who had lost members of their families, friends, or neighbors—spoke openly with the press. People seemed not only willing to talk but even to have a need to share their stories, emotions, and grief in front of large audiences. I think this represents a dramatic turnaround in the popular culture of the United States. Fifteen or twenty years ago it would have been unimaginable that people overcoming a tremendous grief would willingly share their innermost feelings with the pubic. The media have not changed; the shift has basically occurred in the general public.

The Wall Street Journal published an article that criticized the broadcast media for replaying recorded exchanges between people trapped in the World Trade Center towers and the police's 911 center. On these calls, people were crying for help and realizing that there would be none. The tapes are heartbreaking, and they were played again and again by the broadcast media. In response, the Wall Street Journal spoke of prime-time pornography in an October 8 editorial:

"Can there be anybody on the planet who failed to immediately grasp the full horror of what went on Sept. 11 that they need to hear, over and over, the emotional mayhem of ordinary people trying to cope amidst overwhelming disbelief, fear and terror—not to mention grief? But in our show-and-tell-all culture, there's nothing so private and sensitive that it can't be exposed and sensationalized—especially where ratings are involved."




	On September 12, Jean Trost, whose brother was in the World Trade Center during the attack, spoke to a television reporter outside Bellevue Hospital about her search for her brother and her hope that he survived. ABCNews VideoSource

In one respect, I think, the commentator was right: Journalistic ethics should require consideration for the privacy rights of people. Yet I also think that the general public as well as the media may have become desensitized to public displays of pain and grief, resulting in an overall cultural change. Today, people commonly watch entertainment shows in which individuals bare their innermost feelings and reveal the details of their private life. Many, if not most, people in the public now find such behavior to be normal.