The Saturation of Media Coverage Surrounding the Events of September 11, 2001 - Essay Example

The Saturation of Media Coverage Surrounding the Events of September 11, 2001 and the Effect it Had On the Public On the morning of September 11 2001, the United States was suddenly plunged into emotional turmoil as terrorists used jet airliners to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Those on the East Coast were just arriving at work, on the West Coast people were just waking up. But even before the second plane hit the WTC, televisions blared out the news of the attacks, which came out of nowhere. In the hours and days following the event, viewers watched the same horrific scenes over and over again. Was the continual coverage helpful or harmful? The overwhelming shock and incomprehension of the attacks took time to sink in with most people. The entire first day of coverage unfolded live; journalists and news anchors scrambled for information. The entire country was riveted. Not since the attacks on Pearl Harbor had America seen a direct attack of such proportions on U.S. soil, and the notion of terrorists using commercial aircraft as weapons was inconceivable. As the following days brought more information regarding who was responsible for the attacks, the images of people jumping from the burning buildings and detailed images of the planes hitting the buildings were replayed repeatedly. According to a study by Rand Health (2001), adults watched an average of 8 hours of coverage on the day of 9/11, and a significant number of people reported watching as much as 13 hours. Younger children watched much less coverage while older children watched more, as would be expected. For the most part, viewers watched continuously in order to try to absorb what was happening, where it was happening, and what might happen next. Since the attacks were multiple over a fairly wide area, the normal reaction of the public would be concern for their own safety and the safety of loved ones. While many media honors were given out long after the day of the attacks, as time wore on, the public began to get restless about learning anything new. The same scenes were playing over and over again while analysts tried to address the event and why it occurred, and why the United States had no preparedness. In the meantime, the same footage of the burning towers, people jumping from the buildings and the impact of the planes repeated themselves several times a day; this is where over saturation occurred, prompting criticism towards the television media. Anecdotal stories from the viewing public in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Great Britain (collected and recalled from my own contacts) said that while all were stunned, no television news coverage showed as many horrific images repeatedly as the stations in the United States. The trauma experienced in other nations involved anxiety of knowledge that loved ones were in the New York area during the time of the attacks. Studies of stress analysis were conducted following the 9/11 attacks, with varying results depending upon how soon after the event the studies were undertaken. One study reported that within three hours, 97% of the country knew of the attacks (Stacey Frank Kanihan and Kendra L. Gale, 2003). This report did not address the effect of saturation but did measure the reported stress levels of respondents who watched the events on television. Interestingly, the way people found out about the attacks affected the stress responses; predictably, those who watched the live coverage experienced more stress than those who heard it on the radio or saw it on the Internet; those on the West Coast experienced less stress than those on the East Coast, and the highest stress levels overall were from urban areas. While criticism was aimed at the media following the recovery of shock and the statements that repeating the scenes so often was unnecessary. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post put it quite bluntly on the eve of the first anniversary of 9/11, anticipating the next days news coverage: “The feeling out there is that the media know only one mode – overkill – and that this is one subject on which it's kind of offensive” (Rusty Foster, 2002). There is no doubt that 9/11 was a day of paramount importance, and millions of people looked on in horror as events unfolded over the days and weeks to follow. But was the impact necessarily negative? It must be remembered that this event occurred suddenly, with no warning (known to the public), and the people reporting the event are human and were experiencing their own levels of trauma. Nothing of this proportion had occurred before in the U.S. media, and in all fairness, no one was prepared for it, not the media, the government or the public. In viewing different televisions on the day, I informally recall therapists discussing how repeatedly seeing the images were actually helpful in desensitizing people and helping them come to terms with what had happened. In hindsight, the public began to criticize the media for repeating the images and showing “exclusive” footage as it came in from private camcorders and cameras (Matt Nisbet, 2001). The news organizations that got favorable responses from those more interested in historical perspectives and international reactions were NPR, the New York Times and PBS who, according to Nisbet, “rose above the human drama.” While an assessment such as the above may seem to be reasonable to some, most of the public was caught up in the drama itself. While the appropriateness of showing the people jumping from the WTC so immediately after the event, before the loved ones of the victims could even conceive of what had happened or find out whether or not they were alive, 9/11 proved to be an event of such enormous proportions to the United States that it was obviously very difficult for the media to deal with. When events happen so quickly and it is unknown what is going to happen next, the relay of information is critical. In times of that kind of pressure, appropriateness is likely the least priority; the media was transmitting just how great a tragedy the event was. How can a negative aftermath be assessed? A better question may be, how did the viewing public cope with the event? The Rand Health study yielded these results regarding how people dealt with what they had seen and heard from 9/11: Nearly 100% felt better taking about their thoughts and feelings About 95% utilized prayer and spiritual feelings About 65% participated in a public activity About 40% avoided watching television and other reminders All one can do is estimate whether or not the media coverage of 9/11 had a negative impact. In general, the coverage was of high quality and accessibility. The images shown and the frequency of the images repeated are more a question of taste than a direct introduction to trauma, except in the special circumstances of those who were directly involved in the attack. Understandably, those people would not want to be reminded. It has come to be accepted that media coverage has changed from being strictly factual (as in the days of the Kennedy assassination) to sensationalistic (the O.J. Simpson trial and the Michael Jackson debacle). But on the day of 9/11, journalists and the media companies acknowledged having done their best to simply get their stories straight rather than attempt to overtly compete with each other or show unnecessarily graphic images that were surely obtainable from Ground Zero. What seems to be emphasized in hindsight following 9/11 is the strong reaction of the public in terms of being more patriotic and also trying to understand why. Saturation doesn’t really seem to be an issue (MIT, 2003). In a forum of guest speakers at the MIT auditorium on November 13 2003, an audience member expressed dismay over the media taking its cues from the White House rather than addressing the question of why America was targeted for the 9/11 attacks. Censorship was discussed as well as the nature of the news to focus on encouraging patriotism rather than directly enquiring why the attack occurred in the first place. Rather than focus on the days of and immediately following the attacks, it seems that the viewing public is possibly more dismayed by films such as Fahrenheit 9/11 as well as still emerging facts surfacing about the days following 9/11 and the quick policy changes that occurred afterward, not to mention that the families of the 9/11 victims have not been adequately served without fighting for their rights (Danny Schechter, MIT, 2003). In looking at public behavior on the first anniversary of 9/11, a study by Pew Internet & American Life Project revealed a growing trend in use of the Internet to supplement news covered by television media (Jonathon Dube, 2000 – 2003). More amateur journalists have entered the news scene in the form of weblogs (“blogs”) and while the information is plentiful, it is not always credible or accurate. While we look at public response regarding 9/11, we must also compare that news with subsequent coverage of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. In the minds of many, the graphic images of floating bodies were much more disturbing than anything that came out of 9/11 coverage. Why? Partly because after 9/11, people could still go home in New York. Even on the day of this writing, many Katrina victims are still living in tents, unable to recover their lives before the hurricane. In covering traumatic events, the entire world can know of a major event in a matter of minutes. Embedded journalists, satellite TV, video phones and advanced communications technology can transmit events in record time. Yet even with this technology, it takes people to report it and to take it upon themselves to inform the public to their best ability. The difference between Katrina and 9/11 in terms of stress and trauma levels is simply that we knew that Katrina was going to be terrible. We did not know that 9/11 was going to happen. This brings the point of the human perception of loss of control, probably the single most disturbing story to have to bear from anywhere in life. We tune into events to learn, to experience, to know what should be done. By the time Katrina had come along we had already seen the 9/11 attack, two wars, the London bombings, the Madrid train bombings, hostages being executed in Iraq, and other forms of fallout from 9/11. Over time, the public has become divided over the purpose of being at war in Iraq, while initially it seemed that the public expected the Bush administration to do something. Part of the trauma of 9/11 was the shuttling off of the White house administration to undisclosed places of safety while a terrified nation experienced an unprecedented feeling of helplessness, rapidly followed by anger. Four years following the 9/11 attacks, bits of human bone are still being found on the tops of buildings, the public seems to be ever watchful for another attack to come, and the level of general fear has increased in terms of changing policies such as the Patriot Act and the shifting of emergency management departments to the Department of Homeland Security. As the media continues to cover the aftermath of 9/11, it seems that the common agony now is the loss of rights along with increased security, along with a sense of resignation that the times have changed since the attack. Each anniversary is marked, and less people tune in, which is also predictable. But the level of trauma experienced on 9/11 is emblazoned in our minds, media saturation or not. Unlike the days of JFK, news is now practically instant; those who turned on the news to see simply that a plane had hit the World Trade Center only to watch the second jetliner fly into the second tower while hearing reports of another plane that had hit the Pentagon and yet another plane reported hijacked over Pennsylvania, it is difficult to determine where initial trauma of the events themselves ended and saturation began. In the immediate coverage of 9/11, journalists simply did what they had to do. In the days and weeks following 9/11, it seems that as more information emerged, the level of fear transformed into outrage. Media saturation is nothing new; it has been going on for years. The viewing public has come to expect it and knows it has the choice to turn away from it. But on that day, it seems, very few people could. References “After 9/11: Stress and Coping Across America.” Rand Health. 2001, 11 December 2005. http://www.rand.org/publications/RB/RB4546/ “Covering Iraq: American Media vs. the World? MIT Communications Forum.” MIT. 13 November 2003, 13 December 2005. http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/forums/covering_iraq.html Dube, Jonathon. “The Post-9/11 Rise of Do-It-Yourself Journalism.” Cyberjournalist.net. 2000 – 2003, 13 December 2005. http://www.cyberjournalist.net/features/pew0209.html Foster, Rusty. “Online and looking away on 9/11: Is this the future of news?” The Media Center. 1 October 2002, 11 December 2005. http://www.mediacenter.org/content/p1446_c1382.cfm Kanihan, Stacey Frank;  Gale, Kendra L. “Within 3 hours, 97 percent learn about 9/11 attack.” Newspaper Research Journal. Winter 2003, 12 December 2005. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3677/is_200301/ai_n9224301#continue Nisbet, Matt. “Media Coverage After the Attack: Reason and Deliberative Democracy Put to the Test.” GenerationSXeptic. October 1, 2001, 12 December 2005. http://www.csicop.org/genx/terrorattack/ Read More