COMMENT
9/11/03
The Press Moves On, for Better or Worse
 |
| By Marcellus Hall |
As the conventional wisdom had it at the time, the events of 9/11 would transform American journalism. "Indeed," announced Howard Kurtz in his Washington Post media column six days after the attacks, journalism was already "changing before our eyes." In a September 18 business article, USA Today concluded that "the heyday of soft news … appears to have ended." That same day, on CNN, Jeff Greenfield suggested that the hot reality shows would have a tough time competing with the new reality of news. Ron Insana, a co-anchor on CNBC, opened an October 17 interview with Norman Pearlstine, editor in chief of Time Inc., by observing that September 11 was "forcing writers and reporters and editors to take a new approach to their craft." Katie Couric's September 18 confession of feeling "embarrassed" by all the trivia on previous Today shows offered promising support to the view later expressed by the media scholar Roy Peter Clark, who in an interview published on October 20 told the Toronto Globe and Mail, "This single event might actually restore the paradigm of serious news."
The optimism was not without foundation: 9/11 had handed the press an unimaginable assignment, and the press had risen nobly to the immediate challenge. And, to be sure, much impressive work has followed. As 9/11/03 draws near, however, those rosy prognostications of 9/11/01 seem to have been, in large part, wishful dreams. Katie has clearly put her fleeting indiscretion behind her. Coverage of reality shows is as inescapable as the shows themselves. Talk radio is as rabid as ever. Gossip, just as Liz Smith said, is back.
Of greater consequence than what's returned to journalism's outer edges, of course, is what has not returned to its central core. In the early days of 9/11, one of the gloomier observations was made by Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, who famously pronounced irony dead. It wasn't, really, but Carter may have been onto something. The continued absence of the hallmarks of the ironic perspective - detachment, distance, an awareness of incongruity - from serious mainstream news has indeed transformed American journalism, in ways that it, and the democracy it serves, can ill afford. Without detachment, identification with the nation's leaders becomes the order of the day, unmarred by discomfiting questions about the state of the emperor's clothes (or, say, of the enemy's weapons). Without appropriate distance, aggressive digging for the dark facts of war becomes passive transmission of the Pentagon line (à la the rescue of Jessica Lynch). Without the awareness of incongruity, what might have been a clamorous crusade against Justice Department injustices becomes a timid knock on the attorney general's barricaded door, while the imperative demand for a reasonable number of presidential press conferences becomes mere muttering.
Why have journalists, who still stand ready to lay down their lives in covering foreign conflicts, shown such a want of courage in reporting on the home front? Some suggest that the press is reluctant to alienate the viewers and readers who, in time of war, subscribe to the notion of "my country (and my president and his administration) right or wrong." A more likely explanation is that journalists are citizens, too, with the same fears for themselves and their families, the same need to have confidence in their government, the same fervent wish to see America prevail, that move their readers and viewers. Like them, they're not eager, consciously or unconsciously, to know of - let alone chase after - facts that could call into question the competence or motives of those in charge, could possibly aid the enemy, could possibly add to the oppressive dread.
But the choice is not between being a loyal citizen and being a dedicated journalist, and attempts to disconnect journalism and citizenship must be regarded with suspicion. Ironically, it was a leak from inside the Bush administration that drove home the point this summer. The leaker tried to impugn an ABC News story about the plummeting morale of coalition troops in Iraq by planting a story on the Drudge Report saying that the reporter was (Horrors!) a "Canadian." The implication was clear: had the reporter not lacked the credentials of his true-blue American colleagues, he would not have gone after such an unfavorable story. What self-respecting journalist would swallow that?
As it happened, by then - almost two years after the terrorists struck - the press, pursuing the matter of the president's use of long-discredited intelligence in persuading the country to go to war, was already awakening to the stirrings of its unawed, pre-9/11 self. And, tellingly, those stirrings were soon prompting the administration to dust off the familiar, all-purpose, pre-9/11 response: "Media Frenzy!" Just like old times.
So maybe, here at the second anniversary of 9/11, America's independent
press is beginning to make a comeback. And not a moment too soon.
Enjoy this piece? Consider a CJR trial subscription.
