JY&A Consulting
https://jya.co
Is the alleged lack of interest from the public in the US real, or merely a self-fulfilling prophecy? And how should the media deal with coverage of the second phase of the “war on terror”?
Donna Borak1
ON June 11, I had the opportunity to sit amongst distinguished US and international
journalists responding to an American epidemic: the revival of complacency in
the US.2 Nine months after September 11, American
public interest had demonstrably remained unchanged in international affairs.
Reportedly, evidence suggested that the scope of international interest did
not go beyond stories relating to the "war on terror", national security,
the Middle East conflict and Kashmir. At a time when researchers had anticipated
a surge of public interest, their findings are discouraging, leaving the fate
of journalism in much uncertainty.3
In the immediate months following 9-11, the public watched,
and read with surmounting avid interest, carrying with them a sense that there
was never a sufficient amount of information to quell their curiosity or open-ended
questioning. The media was left the task of "decoding the rage" of
jihad and fundamentalism, anti-American sentiment in the Middle East and more
importantly the question of �Why?�
Washington Post columnist Michael Getler wrote on June
2, �Whatever ability we as citizens now have to understand the murky world of
counterterrorism and the pitfalls of insufficient alertness, coordination and
communication by governmental agencies, comes from the news media.�
Journalism consists of developing trust with our audience.
�Trust was crucial. These days it�s sometimes hard to know what is real and
what it not. News broadcasters� reputation rests on truth. And that�s why people
turned to us again,� said Richard Sambrook, BBC News Director.
�Educating the public through hard news digging and learning
to answer the question, "How do they know that?" would benefit our
readers,� said Bill Kovach, Chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists.
Tell them, �Here�s how we know this,� forcing our audience to understand why
this should be important to them and why it matters.
�I think it is a great moment in American journalism. Now,
whether we can make this moment last, and how long we can make it last, these
are the open questions,� Dan Rather told the Columbia Journalism Review
(CJR) three weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
But, a dismaying perception of reader�viewer interest held
by news organizations and owners had fallen under the belief that the American
public�s interest would wane in time and that the public would return back to
its normal readership�viewer habits. Rather predicted in his interview with
CJR, �You just can�t survive, much less thrive, without dumbing it down,
sleazing it up, going lighter, going softer!�
Panelists suggested, at the International News and Media conference
sponsored by PEW, that heavy press on international affairs was only a short-term
goal and would diminish over time for some news organizations. Some argued that,
in fact, Americans had a strong desire for foreign affairs, but, with little
background knowledge or context, didn�t pursue their interests.
�I wonder whether this commonly held view that the American
public is not interested in international news is really true or how much of
it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Tell them less about the world and small wonder
that eventually they cease to ask about it. And they are ceasing to ask about
it,� said Mr Sambrook.
As reported in the study and suggested by panelists, newspapers
and television stations with generally low budgets are having difficultly maintaining
news holds abroad. As a result, nine months later, 56 per cent of the 218 international
news editors and wire editors surveyed rated their own personal international
news coverage as fair�poor. Only two per cent rated their coverage as excellent�good
in the same category. Two-thirds rated US international news coverage in general
as fair�poor.
As the US Administration poses to enter into Phase Two in
"the war on terror", the American public has returned to its residual
disinterest and questioned, �Where is the truth in all of this? Why didn�t we
know this was coming? Why haven�t we heard of Al Quaeda? What has been going
on in the Middle East? Why didn�t we know about the Taliban? And if we did,
why didn�t you explain why it mattered?� said Sambrook on the American public�s
newfound dependency on Broadcasting news after 9-11.
Only nine months later are news organizations beginning to
piece together and uncover the links that connect the US to the rest of the
world. They are learning just how to organize and disseminate that information
effectively and efficiently. But in the last nine months, Americans have lost
a sense of truth and trust in their Administration and "breaking news"-operated
media, in what has become an ever evolving and continuous world of mass globalization.
�I believe there�s a lesson for the media conglomerates�invest
in the truth and you will earn the trust and loyalty of audiences. Not just
for overnight rating, but for the long game,� said Sambrook.
FBI investigations in Washington only lead the American public
further down a road of false reality and misperception of the underlying factors
that brought on the attack against the US. The Administration plays the blame
game against the FBI and CIA, as FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III stands before
the Congressional Committee proclaiming his commitment to refurbish the FBI
and its internal procedures after Attorney Colleen Rowley�s letter stating that
the US had information relating to the possibility of an attack. These changes
will take three years to install.
In its attempts to avoid further national security complications
and investigation, President Bush announced the Department of Homeland Security,
developed under the conception that it would have the capacity to avoid bureaucracy
by creating yet another intelligence department. This department would accomplish
what it had tried to do in previous decades: streamline and filter intelligence
information, improve communication and enhance research databases amongst the
three agencies.
Two weeks into Congressional hearings, FBI Director Mueller,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced
the possibility of further attacks. �It�s inevitable,� Mueller was quoted in
closed meeting of the National Association of District Attorneys. �There will
be another terrorist attack and we will not be able to stop it.�
Even with the could-be politically strategized alerts, the
American public has demonstrated no change of interest in international news.
It is an evident indicator that Americans have not mastered the lessons of global
cooperation and awareness, nor the amount of effect its influence has on the
rest of the world. �I am always struck by how much of what passes for international
coverage here [US] is actually about American interest abroad,� said Sambrook.
�But there can be no doubt after 9-11 that America needs to take a close interest
in the rest of world.�
Foreign policy dictates what will happen in our world. One
panelist, Emad Adeeb, Chairman of Al Alam Al Youm newspaper in Cairo
said plainly, �How much of the globalization is being perceived on our side
on the world�we know more about the US than they know about us.� Mr Adeeb continued,
�What happens in your part of the world is our local news, what happens in our
part of the world is your foreign news.�
Rather than coming forward and accepting the US characterization
of an insular xenophobic society, Americans continue to curtail the issue of
an uninformed public and dismissing the complacency to foreign affairs. Americans
preferably play the blame game on Capital Hill in hopes to control "terror"
well beyond their grasps. They attempt to dislodge any possibility that US foreign
policy might have had a surmounting play in the events that lined up 9-11. Americans�
question ought not to be �Who did it?� but, �Why, did we let it happen?� �
Notes
1. BA. Consultant, JY&A Consulting
(https://jya.co). Copyright ©2002 by Donna Borak. All rights
reserved. Republished with express permission of the author. No part of this
work may be reproduced in any form without the written permission from the copyright
holder.
2. Conference held at the National Press
Club in Washington sponsored by the PEW International Journalism Program. Other
speakers at the conference included: Doyinsola Abiola, Vice Chairman, Concord
Group Newspapers, Nigeria; Emad Adeeb, Chairman, Al Alam Al Youm newspaper,
Cairo, Egypt; Martin Baron, Editor, The Boston Globe; Marcus Brauchli,
National Editor, The Wall Street Journal; Steve Coll, Managing Editor,
The Washington Post; Alex S. Jones, Director, Joan Shorenstein Center
on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy; Kevin Klose, President & CEO, National
Public Radio; Andrew Kohut, Director, Pew Research Center for the People and
the Press; Bill Kovach, Chairman, Committee of Concerned Journalists; J. Gerardo
Lopez, Editor, La Opinión; Dwight L. Morris, President, Dwight
L. Morris and Associates; Robert Rivard, Editor, San Antonio Express–News;
Richard Sambrook, Director, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) News; Najam
Sethi, Co-founder and Editor, The Friday Times, Pakistan.
3. The research commissioned by PEW was conducted
by Dwight L. Morris & Associates. The results of the survey, America and
the World: the Impact of September 11 on US Coverage of International News,
was discussed at a day-long conference (June 11) on the impact of the terrorists
attacks on US coverage of foreign news.