They knew what they were doing. They took their time and used money, contacts and connections to devise a scheme of unparalleled proportions. The attacks on New York and Washington and the crash in Pennsylvania made their mark in history.
The scope of the damage, the magnitude of the number of innocent lives cruelly and painfully wiped out and the effect on this country is almost incomprehensible. To us.
But not to them. This was what they wanted. This wasn’t “just” a terrorist act. This was a willful act of deliberate cruelty. The plan took the final perpetrators willingly to their deaths. Those who helped them with the scheme, survive to watch and join with others to celebrate our torment.
It was car bomb to the millionth power. It was sniper to the nth degree. It was an act of sick, cruel, contemplated evil. To call it terrorism is almost inadequate, but it’s the only word we have to describe this war. All other examples of this devil’s work pale in comparison to the carnage of Sept. 11.
Since then, virtually the only story in the news has been this. From a news point of view, it was the best and worst of challenges. This was a story that played out in front of the cameras and presented every medium with a challenge never before encountered. It began with what appeared an unbelievable accident – a plane flying into one of the World Trade Center towers – but quickly turned into a nightmare of horror. It had all the elements of a soul-chilling movie. But it wasn’t a movie and we saw every moment.
They didn’t teach how to do this in journalism school. All the usual ways of covering a story suddenly didn’t work quite right. Not only did events continue to happen – another plane into the twin tower, a third into the Pentagon and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field. It was difficult for the mind to comprehend as the first, then the second tower collapsed.
It happened so fast that the anchors in the studios didn’t have time for scripts. They only needed to watch the live monitors and follow the events as they occurred.
It was impossible to avoid the naked human terror playing out before the eye of the news cameras. We saw bodies falling from the buildings and terrified people huddled against the windows and standing in the broken-out panes in the highest stories of the towers as they faced the realization of their choice. Stay and die or jump and die. Either way, they died. Many had the presence of mind to call loved ones by cell phone with haunting last messages.
Others made their way down darkened, dangerous stairwells meeting brave firemen making their way up in an effort to save lives. Too many of these died.
Outside, thousands ran for their lives as the debris of the wreckage billowed through the streets in smoke that carried, in ways more accurate than one would prefer to contemplate, pieces of the lives of thousands.
Death was everywhere and the news cameras, still and video, captured it all. The events in Washington and Pennsylvania were as horrific in their wanton cruelty and destruction
It was terrorism; in fact, a declaration of war. The killers may have intended the destruction and death but they surely did not contemplate the resultant surge of patriotism. The Stars and Stripes moved front and center across the country. Three of New York’s finest firemen raised a flag on the rubble – a moment captured in a news photo that is this century’s companion to the Iwo Jima flag raising.
So how did some of the news media get it wrong? Some said wearing a flag lapel pin on camera would compromise reporter “objectivity.” Cable 12 in New York forbade it, as did stations in Florida, Missouri and New York state. Peter Jennings said the same as did Tom Brokaw and Barbara Walters. Sinclair Broadcasting wanted its stations to support the fight against terrorism but staff at its Baltimore station objected.
Then Reuters and CNN each decided not to call the terrorists “terrorists.” CNN would call them “alleged hijackers” and Reuters wouldn’t use the word at all!
If the mass murder of more than 6,000 innocents in a deliberate act of destruction isn’t terrorism, what is? If major news outlets refuse to use an accurate word to describe an undisputed event that millions witnessed, how can we believe anything they report?
If American reporters, protected by the First Amendment, can’t report fairly if they wear a small symbol of their own country, how can we trust their honesty about anything?
News outlets did a magnificent job in covering the breaking news and many reporters and crews risked their lives. Every person involved in the 24-hour coverage deserves credit.
But there’s an ugly cancer below the surface of news that needs to be examined and removed. The public already suspected the media have a hidden agenda. Unfortunately these craven stands on patriotism are not only cowardly, they are dangerous. They just confirm what many people already suspected about news and the people in it. And it isn’t good.
