journalism 9/11 & afghanistan war

JOURNALISM DURING 9/11 & AFGHANISTAN WAR 19/11/13 Elena Duch

INDEX

September 11 Attacks ......................................................................................... 2

Attacks of the twin towers ................................................................................ 2

Attacks on the pentagon .................................................................................. 2

United 93 Flight ................................................................................................ 2

Problems Covering The Events From September 11 .......................................... 2

Challenges on how to frame the story .............................................................. 2

George W. Bushc speech as Guideline ........................................................... 3

24h Coverage ...................................................................................................... 3

Reactions To 24h Coverage ................................................................................ 5

Problems With Journalism After 9/11 .................................................................. 6

Trauma ............................................................................................................. 6

Patriotism Or Objectivity? .................................................................................... 7

Reactions to Patriotic coverage ........................................................................... 8

Mistakes & Speculations ...................................................................................... 9

Prizes/ Achievements .......................................................................................... 9

Afghanistan ........................................................................................................ 10

Before the Taliban Regime ............................................................................ 10

During the Taliban Regime ............................................................................ 10

War in Afghanistan ......................................................................................... 10

Violence against Journalists in Afghanistan ................................................... 10

Tweeting a War .............................................................................................. 10

Photojournalism ............................................................................................. 11

Journalists ...................................................................................................... 11


September 11 Attacks

Attacks of the twin towers Various News Channels playing simultaneously while the first 9/11 attacks took place. First one to broadcast the events was the CNN News, followed by the ABC, then the CBS News. Later on the Fox news begin to broadcast the events and finally the last two were NBC and then the BBC. New technologies and citizens eye witnessing the events helped getting a very complete coverage. Many various sources.

Attacks on the pentagon Images on the pentagon being attacked

United 93 Flight Todd Morgan Beamer (November 24, 1968 – September 11, 2001) was a passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked as part of the September 11 attacks in 2001. He was one of the passengers who helped successfully foil the hijacking and reclaim the aircraft, which crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania

Problems Covering The Events From September 11

Challenges on how to frame the story • (News organisations-‐together with their sources-‐lacked a ready made “script”,

a frame to help them and their audiences comprehend the seemingly incomprehensible”

• Need of facts. They didn’t have quantitative data they merely reproduced all the coverage they got and found without any in depth analysis until later on.

• How to react towards the events. Since they were all affected emotionally covering the story in an objective way was very challenging.

• How to report the events As MURRAY (newspaper columnist put it) “I needed facts in the confusion following the attacks, but even more I needed stories, narratives that ordered experience and instructed me on how to behave in the face of tragedy. I found myself reading editorials and opened opinions, background and interpretive articles, poems and letters to the editor as much as hard new. I needed to know what others thought and felt. I needed to be made part if the human community”. Many journalists found themselves looking backwards to figure out how to shape their coverage of Sep. 11. Some recognized the crucial role they had to play not only framing the story but in helping move whole populations from crisis to continuity.


“We want to hold our breaths for a moment, and not get in a mode that the country is under attack” ABC’s PETER JENNINGS. (A Canadian American journalist and news anchor at ABC)

George W. Bushc speech as Guideline “War on Terror”-either with us or against us. GOOD VS. EVIL USE OF RHETORICS: “ A benevolent, democratic, and peace loving nation was brutally attacked by insane evil terrorist who hated the United States for its freedoms and affluent way of life. The US must immediately increase its military and covert forces, locate the surviving culprits and exterminate them; then prepare for a long-‐term war to root out the global terrorist cancer and destroy it” News Papers Headlines were simple, blunt straight to the point in order to catch the attention better and make it seem more powerful and more intense. HOWARD TUMBER “Can a war correspondent ever be a disinterested observer?”

24h Coverage The priorities of news organizations were rapidly rewritten so as to accommodate the trauma and crisis situation created by the events. Competitive priorities-‐ such as commercial profits, sponsorships, or broadcast ratings-‐ were temporarily set aside.

CYNTHIA COTTS was a journalist who began working in the New York publishing world in the late 1980s. She wrote in the Village Voice, “The newspapers and the networks stopped behaving like competing profit machines and stove to be instruments of democracy, producing a high volume of useful news and inspiring a nation under siege” “Journalists scrambled to provide breaking news information, offset panic, and make sense of events that had devastated most existing

interpretive schema”. Differences that usually separated local news from national and global news collapsed, as coverage was shared across media and news organizations. Phillips, a news executive described this as “a convergence story” by which reporters and editors were assumed to be working together across media lines. The four major US television networks agreed to share video and satellite footage. Suspending their programming schedules, they moved to continuous coverage of the catastrophe.


Cable and satellite stations otherwise devoted to entertainment formats revolving around music videos, sports, or films began broadcasting news instead. Commercials largely disappeared. Radio stations also began to broadcast live television And civilians also played an important role by reporting stories since they were witnesses of the catastrophe. Also helped by the Internet, a medium which facilitated sharing all the footage.


Reactions To 24h Coverage Some of the public turned away, unable to cope with the trauma endangered by the events. Others sought to protect their children from the haunting power of such devastating images and so turned off their TV. However a greater number of people scrutinized the coverage intensely, to the point of suspending everyday routines so as to follow every nuance of the unfolding crisis. 24h-‐overwhelming JOHN STACK; Fox News vice president “ I think at first our audience and all the television news were like moths to the flame; we were addicted to the video of the horrific event” Journalists pieced together their coverage. Some news reports likened the unfolding tragedy to a Hollywood disaster epic-‐“it looks like a movie”, said NBC’s KATIE COURIC

“For those of certain generations, it was the most harrowing day of television since the assassination of president Kennedy in 1963” TOM SHALES, Washington Post. (Is an American critic of television programming and operations. He is best known as TV critic for The Washington Post;)


Problems With Journalism After 9/11

Trauma MICHAEL SCHUDSON: is an American academic sociologist working in the fields of journalism and its history, and public culture. He noted that there are three conditions where the ideal objectivity is suspended: Tragedy, danger, and a threat to national security. September 11 represented all three.

• The events of Sept. 11 wiped out the normal boundaries separating the professional position of the journalist from the personal (indeed emotional) position of an American citizen.

• Speaking as a journalist, someone entitled to stand outside the political community, had become a morally hazardous act.

• In the aftermath, the national media have confused the questioning of official policy with disloyalty.


Patriotism Or Objectivity?

ROBERT WATERMAN MCCHESNEY, PhD (born 1952) is an American professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication. His work concentrates on the history and political economy of communication, emphasizing the role media play in democratic and capitalist societies. He sees reporters as stenographers to power (taking dictations,

writing what they were told to) As he observed; “What is most striking in the US news coverage following the 9/11 attacks is how that very debate over whether to go to war, or how best to respond, did not even exist” No skepticism (mistrust)

When a traumatic event takes place like the 9/11 the mainstream media take color; DAN RATHER is an American journalist and the former news anchor for the CBS Evening News. That on the DAVID LETTERMAN show he said: “George Bush is the President, he makes the decisions, and, you know, as just one American, he wants me to line up, just tell me where. And he’ll make the call” This shows the commitment and patriotism he had with Bush and for his country. As a journalist he is not objective, he plainly says he

supports the president and that’s what we should all be doing. (read again pg 5)

Not long after the 9/11, DAVID WESTIN, the head of the ABC News, spoke at the Columbia Journalism School. There he was asked; if he considered the Pentagon to be a legitimate target for attack by America’s enemies. His response was “I actually don’t have an opinion on that… as a journalist I feel strongly that is something I should not be taking a position on” àreaction to this, the right-‐wing attacked him, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network, the Scaife-‐funded Media Research Center, the New York Post,

MATT DRUDGE and RUSH LIMBAUGH all piled on. Later on WESTIN Feeling under pressure capitulated:

"I Was Wrong" for Having "No Opinion" on Whether the Pentagon Was a "Legitimate" Military Target “Under any interpretation the attack on the Pentagon was a criminal and entirely without justification”à we can see how

IMP:


he dropped his objectivity once his patriotism was questioned. Another example of this was when ANDREW SULLIVAN, a British author, editor and blogger, resident in the United States. A former editor of The New Republic and the author or editor of six books, attacked the Nation columnist KATHA POLLITT because she wrote that war is

the wrong way to solve the problem. Instead of dealing with her argument he accuses of supporting the Taliban and thus claiming they are disloyal to their country and their president. Anyone who disagreed with the press/ president was thought to be left wing.

Reactions to Patriotic coverage It was in seeking out alternatives to this “Tunnel vision”, James argued that the importance of the BBC World News and other foreign-based programmes became over more apparent. FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting); “The BBC’s coverage was found to compare favourably against that provided by US newscast” “Not only there is broader range of opinion, but the BBC presenters and reporters are often more professional, ask tougher questions and seem to have a greater level of knowledge about news subjects than their US counterparts” Mark Jurkowitz: “ The BBC is known for crisp on-scene reporting” “ BBC fans find refreshingly objective, and that is considered by many US individuals to be down-right anti-American”. BBC was reluctant in using the word “Terrorists”, they didn’t have a problem saying they committed terrorist attacks but they never called them terrorist in order to remain a objective as possible. As Mark Damazer, deputy director of news at BBC world service defended the policy insisting “However appalling and disgusting the attack was, there will nevertheless be a constituency of your listeners who don’t regard it as terrorism. Describing it as such could downgrade your status as an impartial and independent broadcaster” “someone’s terrorist, is someone else’s freedom fighter”


Mistakes & Speculations ABC found itself criticized for broadcasting a report that an explosion had taken place at the capitol, an error which CNN turned into a “Breaking News” headline: “Explosion on Capitol Hill” A report appeared in CBS news that a second plane was being aimed at the Pentagon. Fox News announced to its viewers that it had received a report that hijacked airliner was on its way to the US Capitol. Robert Bianco: “News divisions excuse such mistakes by saying they were just passing along reports as they were received” Given that in this situation “reality was frightening enough”, more care should have been taken to ensure that television did not compound the problem.

Prizes/ Achievements They managed to frame the story in a way that also “helped move whole populations from crisis into continuity” Patriotism played a huge role in helping citizens overcome this tragedy since it brought the nation together and it reinforced the idea of how strong and united they were and how they would all fight together in order to put an end to Al-‐Qaeda. The Wall street Journal’s Office was also a great example of formidable capacity to get to work, since their offices were located at the World Financial Center on Liberty Street, directly across the World Trade Center. In 2002 the coverage of 9/11 received a lot of recognition by its performance. In broadcast journalism: The PEABODY AWARDS went to ABC and NPR for their coverage. The New York Times, received a winning record of 6 PULITZER PRIZES. One for their work on “A Nation Challenged”, one for the Time’s website and two for photography. (IMP) “A Nation Challenged” Was a section in the newspapers, which was created when they realised they had to start reporting and covering other stories than the 9/11 attacks. So they decided to create this section in order to keep posting and covering the attacks without leaving aside the new upcoming reports. This section continued until the end of the year.


Afghanistan

Before the Taliban Regime Photographer Mohammad Qayoumi took and recollected a series of pictures were we can clearly appreciate how the country used to be before hand. Women wouldn’t wear burkas; they received an education and even studied important careers.

During the Taliban Regime Formed by Afghan Mujahideen who fought against the soviet invasion in the 1980’s The Taliban emerged as a force in national politics in 1994 in the midst of the country’s civil war. The Taliban’s captured Kabul in Sept. 1996 ousting the gov. of Burhanuddin Rabbani. The Taliban applied a severe Islamic law requiring women to wear head-to-toe veil, banning music and television. The Taliban’s are portrayed as evil through a video of an explosion of a Buddhist sculpture. The Taliban’s destruction of the colossal ancient Buddha statues in Bamiyau 2001 was an indicative to the regime’s intolerance.

War in Afghanistan Al-‐Jazeera is a Qatari broadcaster owned by the Al-‐Jazeera media network and headquarters in Doha, Qatar. This news agency received a lot of attention during the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban’s after Sept. 11. It aired videos it received from Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, deeming new footage of the world’s most wanted fugitives. A lot of criticism because they said the network was “Giving a voice to terrorists” Many other TV networks were eager to acquire the same footage. CNN international had exclusive rights to it for six hours before other networks could broadcast.

Violence against Journalists in Afghanistan (Screen recording of the webpage) Many assaults, murders especially later on in 2011.

Tweeting a War Mustafa Kazemi was one of the journalists who began tweeting in order to report a war. This was a great innovation since it was instant and efficient.


Photojournalism Afghan girl, one of the best-known pictures feature in 1988 in the National Geographic. They were only capable of identifying the identity of the girl after the Taliban regime, they identified her a Gula. She was initially living as a refugee in Pakistan during the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when she was photographed. Afghanistan remained largely closed to western media until after the removal of the Taliban Gov. Another example of Photojournalism is the picture of a woman without her nose, titled “what happens if we leave Afghanistan. The statement they make: “The rights of Afghan women would be destroyed”

Journalists Michael Hastings: American journalist Won the George Polk award for the “Runaway General” posted in Rolling Stone Magazine. On the Runaway General, it talked about Stanley McChrystal a US army general who was appointed to lead forces in Afghanistan. In this book, we could see how he criticized and mocked civilian government officials. Sebastian Junger: Author, journalist and documentarian He was the author of the best-selling book “The Perfect Storm”. He also directed the documentary film on Afghanistan war named Restrepo. (also directed by Dexter Filkins) Dexter Filkins: Journalist. Known for his coverage in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the New York Times He won a Pulitzer award as part of a team of Times reporters for their dispatches from Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is also referred to s “Premier Combat Journalist of his Generation”.

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