Four years after planes crashed into the Pentagon and New
York’s World Trade Center, “9/11″ has become a
part of the nation’s vocabulary. The phrase remains a staple
in radio and television broadcasts, and it lines the pages of
newspapers and news magazines. As the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001
approached earlier this year, the Daily Bruin spoke with editors
from 10 college newspapers regarding their views on how the media
has covered events related to 9/11. The conversations centered on
recent coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but other
subjects discussed included reports on the 9/11 Commission and the
anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Below is a critique of the
media from some of the college students who hope to become part of
the next generation of journalists, and who are members of an age
demographic that is widely portrayed to be indifferent to world
events. Common sentiments in their reflections on the media include
disappointment that Afghanistan no longer appears to be a point of
concern; a hope of seeing more stories on people’s lives
““ and not on body counts ““ in war-torn areas of Iraq
and Afghanistan; a realization of the power wire services like The
Associated Press and Reuters have in dictating coverage on war and
foreign affairs; and a desire to learn from and remember Sept. 11,
2001, paired with a recognition that in many ways, it is time to
move on. On Afghanistan “Oh dear God, Afghanistan. Are we
still there?” said Kiyoshi Martinez, editor in chief of the
Daily Illini, the student newspaper at the University of Illinois.
“I think Afghanistan is even more of a lost cause than Iraq
can ever be at this point.” “Afghanistan will never get
the coverage and play it deserves,” said Martinez, a
fourth-year journalism student. “People care less about
Afghanistan than Iraq, even though we have troops over there,
people who have died over there in recent months.” Amanda
Keim, a fourth-year journalism and political science student and
editor of The State Press at Arizona State University, said she was
disappointed Afghanistan was not more prominent in the news,
considering it was the first place the United States attacked after
Sept. 11. One of the U.S. government’s stated intents in
initiating the war in Afghanistan shortly after Sept. 11 was to
locate Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network
responsible for the attacks on the United States. But as the U.S.
military has been unable to locate bin Laden, Afghanistan has faded
out of the news, said Kayla Webley, a fourth-year journalism and
political science student who served as editor in chief and is the
fall features editor at University of Washington’s The Daily.
“The war in Afghanistan. You never hear about that anymore.
That’s the transition the government made, so the media just
followed them. … It’s just vanished,” she said.
Several editors expressed disappointment that the media covers few
stories on the rebuilding process in Afghanistan. While there are
occasional stories out of Afghanistan on the rising quantity of
poppies ““ which are used to produce opium, one of the
country’s largest exports ““ the media’s attention
has largely turned toward the war in Iraq, editors said.
Afghanistan presented a unique challenge to the media, because
whereas the war in Iraq met popular resistance in the United States
from the start, people were largely united behind going to
Afghanistan, said John Carruthers, a fourth-year English student
and editor in chief of The Daily Beacon at the University of
Tennessee. Some polls found support for the American offensive in
Afghanistan to be as high as 90 percent, and it enjoyed
overwhelming bipartisan support from members of Congress.
Carruthers said the start of the war in Afghanistan was “a
really strange time for the media,” with reporters sent to
cover attacks that had the backing of much of the American public.
“Everyone was positive and supportive,” he said.
“The media coverage of the war, prewar and even during the
war was this sick anticipation kind of thing.” Still, any
interest people had about Afghanistan nearly four years ago has
faded, he said. “People just want to move onto the crisis of
the day,” Carruthers said.
The human element While the media has focused on the war in Iraq
more extensively than it has covered combat in Afghanistan,
reporters and editors place too little attention on stories that
add a human element to the news, said most of the college editors
interviewed. They said they would like to see more stories
regarding how the reconstruction process in Iraq affects people who
live there. Few stories provide information about what it is like
on the ground ““ whether schools are open and whether
electricity is running, or what life is like outside the Green
Zone, the heavily fortified area of Baghdad where the Iraqi
government and much of the American infrastructure is housed.
Instead, many articles detail what are popularly seen as landmark
events, such as the writing of the constitution, or list the number
of American soldiers killed in recent days. And while many articles
give body counts, there are far fewer that address what a
soldier’s life is like, or what it is like to be on the other
side of the Atlantic, waiting for a family member or close friend
to come home. “They’re pretty much just covering every
time someone gets shot or blown up,” said A.J. Bauer, a
third-year government student and editor in chief of The Daily
Texan at the University of Texas at Austin. “That isn’t
really telling a story.” “Until you add a human element
to the story, there’s no reason for anyone to read it or
anyone to care,” said Martinez, sitting in his office at the
University of Illinois. “That was the point when I realized
”“ nobody is going to care. No one’s really going
to give a damn and really feel something unless we provide it to
them.” Adeel Iqbal, editor in chief of the Daily Californian
at UC Berkeley and a third-year undeclared student, said he saw a
story recently that detailed the plight of a peace activist whose
son is fighting in Iraq. Each night, the father and his wife light
a candle, wishing their child a safe return. “These kinds of
stories about individual people really appeal to me because I want
to know what people are feeling in this time of crisis on both
sides. I take that back ““ on all sides,” Iqbal said. As
the war drags on and the casualties mount, the media has become
more critical of the government and its stated reasons for going to
war. But, any improvements the media makes now will top off a long
period of ignoring the plight of ordinary citizens in Iraq and
Afghanistan, many editors said. Martinez, from the University of
Illinois, said he understands there are limitations and dangers for
reporters in Afghanistan and Iraq, where at least 64 journalists
have been killed since 2001. Still, it is up to reporters to push
for better stories, since they are the ones who give a voice to
citizens and soldiers living through the war. “The one thing
that really shocked me: This could have been the next Vietnam kind
of thing,” Martinez said. “A bunch of reporters could
have made their name covering Iraq. … So to me, it’s kind
of disgusting that this is kind of our generation’s war in a
sense, but our generation isn’t over there covering it.
“There’s not this Vietnam-era coverage where
you’re just flooded with reporters, people are just coming
out with all sorts of stories, all sorts of footage … that make
it really more visible to the American public.”
The power of the wire services Several college editors also said
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have emphasized how powerful wire
services like The Associated Press and Reuters are. Because smaller
papers with local circulations tend not to have the resources to
send reporters overseas, these news outlets depend on the wires for
international headlines. Bauer, from the University of Texas said
his paper faces such a challenge. Though he would like to see more
stories on people’s daily lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, he
rarely finds the opportunity to publish such pieces because his
organization depends on reports from The Associated Press.
“We don’t have the money to send anyone over there. …
We run (Associated Press) stories from Afghanistan and from Iraq.
Usually the stories are the top story on our world and nation
page,” he said. “We try to mix it up and try to find
the AP stories that are more analytical about what was going on.
It’s hard to say how we’re necessarily doing
that,” he acknowledged. Though using wire stories to cover
Iraq is convenient, it hurts the flow of information in a society,
Iqbal added. When all news is drawn from one source, there is
little room for different perspectives in the press, he said This
goes against the idea that news organizations should maintain
independent voices for themselves, which is one of the tenets of
the industry, Iqbal said. Another danger of news outlets relying
too much on wire services is that mistakes are sometimes repeated
in thousands of broadcasts and publications throughout the country,
Iqbal added. Martinez of the Daily Illini said because so many news
outlets can’t send their own reporters to Iraq and
Afghanistan, much of the responsibility for reporting in-depth
stories lies with the wires. “Whoever’s in charge of
The Associated Press, he or she needs to give that reporter the
time and the resources so they can go do these kinds of stories.
… Smaller dailies, (there’s) nothing you can really do
unless the AP and wire services start to do those kinds of
stories,” Martinez said. “AP editors and people who
make those decisions on what to cover have to start changing their
idea of what kind of news we should be reading and the diversity of
what we want to report on,” he added.
Time to move on “Stuff that’s really turning people
off in the news lately is, “˜We should have known about
9/11.’ It’s not really doing anything because
that’s already happened. You get two or three of those
stories a week. It’s not helping anyone,” said
Carruthers, referring to reports on critiques provided by the 9/11
Commission. Sept. 11 remains an important part of the national
culture. The attacks were the United States’ premise for
going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which to date have claimed
the lives of over 2,100 U.S. soldiers. The terrorism changed
people’s daily lives, as the fall of 2001 marked the start of
longer lines at airports and the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act,
which granted the government extended surveillance powers with the
stated purpose of fighting terror. But four years after the
terrorists hit U.S. soil, it is time to move on, said Seyward
Darby, editor in chief of The Chronicle at Duke University in
Durham, North Carolina. “9/11 is the impetus for various
discussions, for various panels,” she said. “But
it’s not something you have to dwell on so much. “From
my perspective, you do have to move on. You can’t harp on it
every day for the rest of forever. You can’t ““ it would
be a travesty itself to think up a new story about 9/11 every
day.” Iqbal of the Daily Californian said his suspicion is
that few people care about Sept. 11 the way they did in 2001. But
he added that one bit of wisdom the media can take from those
events is that a national or international story must have local
bearing if it is going to catch the attention of people across the
country. “A good way of catching our interest is to localize
international, national pieces,” said Iqbal, who grew up in
the suburbs near UC Berkeley. “The issue with 9/11 … Here
on the west coast, it’s harder for people to relate because
they weren’t there. The local stories were really what got
people connected.” “It’s easy to grow up in a
bubble … Our goal as newspeople should be to break our readers
and our constituency out of that bubble,” he said. “So
we need to be well aware of things that are occurring outside of
Berkeley, California, outside of the University of
California.”