So far I've focused on the positive points of the media coverage following 9/11, but there were negative aspects as well. Twelve days after the events, Marvin Kidman of Newsday wrote the following:

I think Kidman is right. After the initial excellent news coverage, the media were faced with the problematic reality that there was simply not enough to cover. There was certainly not enough new information to fill 24 hours of television or radio news for days. The producers wound up playing and replaying the images and voices that we had seen and heard before. I think that this constant rebroadcasting magnified the impact of the fear factor.

During this time, the media did abandon the trivial stories that generally make up a great deal of what we call news programming but are in fact infotainment programs. A few days after the events of 9/11, one journalist stated that the press was changing before our eyes. I think he was wrong. No fundamental or lasting change occurred in the media. The media gradually fell back into their habit of focusing on more trivial stories, rather than telling people how the contextual story was unfolding.