On October 7, 2001, the Arab television network al Jazeera broadcast footage of Osama bin Laden (second from left) and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri (second from right). Taped at an undisclosed location, bin Laden praised God for the September 11 attacks. The graphics at top read "exclusive to al Jazeera" and "recorded." The al Jazeera logo appears on the bottom right. AP / Wide World Photos; al Jazeera

The media coverage, in particular the television coverage, also raised far more important questions about the role of the media in society. Foremost is the issue of the bin Laden videotapes. The al Qaeda organization made these tapes available to al Jazeera, an Arab television network. Al Jazeera in turn provided them to American media organizations, television networks in particular. It was quite remarkable that on October 7—shortly after President Bush had announced in a live, televised statement that the United States had launched military strikes on targets in Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks—all the television networks showed bin Laden responding to the American actions. The networks basically granted the terrorist leader all the access to the American public that he could have wanted.

Eventually the U.S. administration protested, asking the American television networks to refrain from showing the complete videotapes. The administration offered all kinds of explanations for this request. First, they stated that the tapes might contain coded messages signaling terrorists already in the United States or elsewhere in the West to undertake new attacks. This did not seem to be a particularly strong argument. Even if the American television networks never broadcast the statements, the terrorists certainly would have had other means to learn of any body language or word signals used by bin Laden. After all, the tapes were certainly broadcast in the Middle East and other parts of the world. Terrorists located outside the United States would then have had the means to communicate those messages to their fellow U.S.-based terrorists.

	The first mistake of the television networks was to relentlessly play portions of the bin Laden tapes. Their second mistake was to never broadcast the tapes in full.

I think the stronger argument by the administration was their statement that the American television networks were basically accommodating the propaganda of an enemy of the United States during wartime. Bin Laden and his spokesperson both made explicit threats of additional acts of terrorism, of more hijackings. They even warned Muslims who lived in certain regions not to be in skyscrapers. These drastic threats certainly increased the fear and anxiety felt by the American public. Eventually the networks declared they would not show the full videotapes that they expected to (and soon thereafter did) receive.

A similar controversy arose over the question of whether or not CNN should submit written questions to bin Laden. Some critics argued that written responses to questions from a news organization was not the correct way to decipher information from a terrorist leader. I have to agree with them. In addition, one would have to insist on a face-to-face interview in this situation. Otherwise, there would be no way to determine who actually answered the questions. Luckily for CNN, the issue faded away. They never received answers to the questions they submitted and the public more or less forgot about the controversy.