Terrorism and the Media

Throughout this blog I have explored and highlighted how terrorism and the media are interrelated. Terrorism occurs, and the media report. It seems very simple, but it isn’t. Especially during intense events such as September 11, the relationship between terrorism and the media becomes even more complicated. As I have wrote, the media’s reactions during and after September 11 were carried out inappropriately. They became subjective, and the way and contents of their report made us difficult to judge facts and opinion. In this last blog post, I would like to emphasize how the media should react to terrorism as well as how we should respond to the terrorism and the media.

Right after the incident of September 11, both the American and the Japanese media were panicked. Thus their responses to the incident were far from an ideal way of reporting of terrorism as I described. Even though it was understandable reaction, they should not have done it. Instead, the media should stay calm so that they can objectively send information regarding an incident to the public. Also, they should acquire accurate information in order to report a whole picture of the incident. This could prevent misconception from spreading to public.    

The media’s responses a few days after the incidents’ occurrence are also important. In the case of September 11, as I mentioned in previous two posts, they lost their objectivity. The American media perceived the incident subjectively, and thus failed to articulate and send the facts as they were. Due to the American media’s influence, the Japanese media were unsuccessful to integrate an analysis from third-person’s objective view. What we should learn from the major failures of those two media is that they should always be calm and objective regardless of what happens. They must be able to send logically and critically analyzed information to their audiences. For a reasonable judgment of situation and information, objectivity is necessary.   

In addition to the media being calm and seeing and assessing facts objectively, viewers should selectively obtain and judge information by themselves. Our reaction to the terrorism and the media after September 11 was that we automatically accepted all the things the media said. We became patriotic, and antagonized against terrorists. Moreover, many people became hostile against people from Middle East and those who are Muslim, and it was obvious that not all of them were terrorists. Such emotional and attitudinal transition of general public was brought by the media, and this evidently shows we are very susceptible to contents the media send. Such vulnerability is caused by a power balance exists between the media and audience. The media is very strong in terms of sending their opinion and not accepting our opinion. Viewers and readers have far less opportunities to reflect our thoughts on contents that the media send. Thus, we should become able to sort out information to prevent the same reaction we took when September 11 happened. We should selectively take and organize information, and determine what we perceive as facts by ourselves.

It is very difficult to be reasonable and clam during a devastating situation. However, because the media have the power to make influence and shape our perceptions they should be objective so that audiences can form their own perceptions of things, particularly in controversial and intense situations like terrorism.

Media Coverage of 9/11 in Japan

I mentioned how American media reacted to the incident of September 11 in the previous post. They lost objectivity, and that made viewers and readers unable to think and establish their own opinion.

What about in other countries? How did the media in different countries react? In this post, I will particularly write and focus on how the Japanese national TV network, NHK reported the incident. As I researched deeper, I found that the way of reporting was biased, and such attitude was very distant from what the media should have done during intense incidents.

NHK distinguished people’s names to be read for safety confirmation in their programs based on companies they worked for, and that was ethically wrong. NHK, which is Japan's government broadcaster, started reporting after the United Airlines’ aircraft crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) (Katsura, as cited in Ito, 2007). And NHK kept broadcasting about what was going on until the next morning (It happened around 10 pm in Japan). NHK repeated scenes of airplanes crashing into the buildings, as American TV networks did. They tried to let Japanese people know what was taking place. Simultaneously, they kept reading the name list of Japanese people working in Japanese companies which were located in the WTC. It seems there was no problem. It could be natural to worry about its citizens’ safety. However, the problem was that the scope was very narrow. There should have Japanese people who worked for American or other countries’ companies whose offices were located in the WTC as well. There is no difference between those people who worked for Japanese companies and foreign companies, and their offices located in WTC. The formers’ names are read in the national network and the latters’ names were not read. They all are Japanese citizens. It was morally wrong that NHK differentiated the names to read in their programs based on companies people worked for.

In addition to NHK only highlighting Japanese workers during the 9 11 incident, the entire Japanese media did not incorporate third person’s objective view since they were influenced by the American media, and did not know how to react under this kind of situation as well. As I wrote in previous post, the American media became very subjective, and embraced morale against Muslims and patriotism after the incident. American media’s attitude directly influenced the way the Japanese media reacted, and the Japanese media essentially followed the same steps as the American media took. That was the major failure of the Japanese media. Since Japan was not directly attacked, the media should be calm, and able to analyze the situation critically based on a third-person’s point of view. They could have judge and differentiate facts from subjective opinions created by the American media.

The other reason the Japanese media were unable to create and integrate a unique analysis from the outsiders’ view was that they did not know how to react. It could be said for both the American and Japanese media. Their reactions were totally understandable because they did not know what to do or how to react under the intense situation. However, they are the media. The media strongly influences people’s perception, and our thoughts are created based on the ways and the contents they report. The general public needs and wants information during these kinds of disturbing events. The media are the ones who should be composed, able to report facts as they are, and analyze the situation critically. In the case of September 11, it did not happen.

Ito, K. (2007). Recipe of image: Referring to the images of Islam and terrorism. Retrieved from http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/katote/08ito.htm

Media Coverage of 9/11 in America

One of the most devastating events in the history of the United States and the world was September 11. There was huge media coverage of it on the day of September 11, 2001. People wanted to know what was going on in this country, and the media bore the role of information transfer. They had a responsibility to let people know what was happening. At some point during their reporting of the whole incident, the media lost one of their essential factors of function: objectivity.

On the day of the attack, it was just chaos. The only thing TV networks could and did was to show scenes of locations where terrorists attacked.

As you can see, anchors were repeating the same things again and again. It shows how panicked they were.

 
On the next day, September 12, 2001, many newspapers issued special editions with headings saying “Horror”, “Unthinkable”, “Attacked” and similar words that triggered anxiety, fear, and anger to readers. 

(The New York Times, 2001)

 (San Francisco Examiner, 2001)

  
(The Seattle Times, 2001) 

Newspapers were in confusion and chaos as well, and many of the articles were quotes of articles and pictures released by the AP (Associated Press, world's oldest and largest newsgathering organization). That depicted how difficult it was to gather and integrate information of the event.

People were scared and angered. Gradually, a patriotic mood was encouraged throughout the country. Also, words such as “unity”, “God bless”, and “America’s pride” became prevalent everywhere. Such attitude was also present in media, especially TV networks. Major TV network stations had phrases such as CNN’s “America’s new war”, and CBS’s “America rising” (Ito, 2007), and used those phrases to promote unity and exalt people’s will to fight back against America’s attacker. Simultaneously, media started to use words such as “us”, “our”, and “our enemies”. Because they started to use first person, they became involved in the event as part of the country. At this point, the media in America lost its objectivity, which is necessary for fairness and third-person-positioning of media.

Media are indeed part of this country. It is understandable that their reports reflected their emotion because they were angry as well. However, such subjectivity in media would alter our perceptions and create ,misinformation. Simultaneously, it would be an obstacle for us and think and judge by ourselves. Not being subjective is one of essential factors of media because their fundamental role is to give people the facts to form their opinions. In the process of reporting what happened or is happening, facts should be presented as they are. However, during and after the incident of September 11, 2001, such fairness of media no longer existed when they began to use subjective terms. Objectivity and variation of press were abandoned by media themselves. They forgot to be calm and lost ability to judge and report in the way that they supposed to do. However, that was the reality of what was happening in America.

Bastards! (2001, September 12). San Francisco, CA: San Francisco The Examiner. Retrieved from http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr_archive.asp?fpVname=CA_SFE&ref_pge=gal&b_pge=1

CNN live breaking news. (2001, September 11). [Television broadcast]. Atlanta, GA: Cable News Network. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/vfYQAPhjwzA.

Ito, K. (2007). Recipe of image: Referring to the images of Islam and terrorism. Retrieved from http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/katote/08ito.htm

Terror. (2001, September 12). Seattle, WA: The Seattle Times. Retrieved from http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr_archive.asp?fpVname=WA_ST&ref_pge=gal&b_pge=1

U.S. Attacked: Hijack jets destroy twin towers and hit Pentagon in day of terror. (2001, September 11). New York City, NY: The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr_archive.asp?fpVname=NY_NYT&ref_pge=gal&b_pge=1