Issue No. 603
Heritage
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12 - 18 September 2002 Issue No. 603 Heritage |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
A year in the news
9/11 should have alerted the US media to the urgent need of providing its public with a better understanding of the rest of the world. It did the opposite, writes Danny Schechter*
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the American news media spoke of a world that had changed forever. For a brief period, there were introspective looks at "why the world" hates us and even some acknowledgement that we as Americans live in a "bubble" unaware of the political debates on, and criticism of, US polices overseas.
There was a feeling that maybe, just maybe, the US media would heed the demand for more diverse coverage and more attention to international affairs. In that period hits on Web sites around the world multiplied as ordinary Americans searched and surfed for information they sensed (correctly) that the US media was not bringing them. Even South African journalists told me that their "hits" went up exponentially in that period.
But why would people think they could get better informed in Africa than in their own country? What a commentary.
As it turns out, the US public knew something that many in the US media would not acknowledge, the fact that many news outlets had cut back news coverage from the rest of the world by as much as 80 per cent. Bureaus had been closed and newscasts reformulated to cover sensational topics as news biz and show biz merged. Just a few weeks before the attacks, two former US senators with a report on an "imminent" terrorist attack could not get airtime to discuss it because the networks were busy reporting shark attacks and sex scandals. A world that is worried about weapons of mass destruction should also be alarmed when major media outlets turn into weapons of mass distraction.
I have just published a book about this called Media Wars which chronicles the coverage after 9/11, It is based on the reporting of myself and others on mediachannel.org; journalists who followed the way the media was enlisted as a megaphone for the military and the administration. I included a piece by an Al-Ahram Weekly reporter because it is important for readers in the West to know that media outlets in the Arab World are looking carefully at what is being covered and not always through the lens of a conspiracy theory that often confuses corporate power with ethnic origins.
News organisations and prominent journalists are finally acknowledging what the hypesters of our "free press" rarely admit -- that there is censorship and self-censorship. A top executive of CNN recently told a news business (and yes, it is a business) conference in Singapore that CNN muzzled the news so as not to offend the audience. She said many news organisations did so. Her comments were not quoted in the US media to my knowledge.
News anchor Dan Rather of CBS went further in an interview with BBC News Night. He said: "limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war is extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted. And I am sorry to say that, up to and including the moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people, and the current administration revels in that, they relish that, and they take refuge in that."
Rather's remarks were page one in London. They were not widely reported in the US. While his comments may be seen as brave, he is a realist. More recently he spoke of the pressures on American newscasters from within their own industry. "If you lead foreign, you die" he said referring to the conventional wisdom that Americans don't care about the world. In-depth surveys show that this is not true, but the myth is widely believed and guides coverage.
Our challenge as journalists, no matter where we live, is to struggle to tell the truth, respect diverse perspectives and form our own ideas. See the Globalvision News Network (gvnews.net) for one new initiative in this regard.
9/11 challenges all of us to connect with the aspirations of people who feel abused and silenced in this world -- and unfortunately, the American people are among them.
* The writer is the executive editor of mediachannel.org, a prominent online media issues network. His latest book is Media Wars: News At A Time Of Terror.
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