As the first anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks approaches, reflection and commemoration are certainly appropriate. The planned media tributes will ring hollow, however, unless they also offer the public substantive discussion of where the “war on terror” has taken us– Is the world safer now? Are we more free and secure?
Unfortunately, many media outlets seem ready to exploit America’s grief by replaying the trauma of the attacks, instead of honoring the date with a serious debate over where the country is headed. Here are just a few of the 9/11-related issues that urgently need further attention from the press.
Civil Liberties Under Attack
A recent Human Rights Watch report argues that since the September 11 attacks, “the country has witnessed a persistent, deliberate, and unwarranted erosion of basic rights against abusive governmental power that are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law.” HRW provides 95 pages of documentation showing that by subjecting people to arbitrary, secret detentions and violating due process, the Department of Justice has “run roughshod over the presumption of innocence.” Such allegations should be fodder for serious investigation by any democratic press. Yet according to a Lexis-Nexis search, HRW’s findings sparked only two stories in the country’s major newspapers, magazines and television news shows.
Much of this erosion of rights stems from the USA PATRIOT Act, which– thanks in part to mainstream media’s failure to cover its provisions in any depth– was rushed through Congress in October 2001 with virtually no public debate. The Act granted law enforcement vast new powers for wire taps and secret searches, and redefined “domestic terrorism” as any activities that “involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of criminal laws” and which seem intended to influence government policy (or the public) through “intimidation or coercion.”
Mix this dangerously broad definition of “terror” with USA PATRIOT’s sweeping reduction of judicial checks on law enforcement, and you’ve got a surefire recipe for the political prosecution of dissent. The recent FBI “restructuring” has also increased the government’s ability to covertly monitor the activities of law-abiding citizens. Despite all this, media have shown little inclination to scrutinize the long-term impact of sacrificing freedoms in the name of the “war on terror,” or to aggressively challenge the intensified government secrecy that has accompanied these changes.
Unresolved Questions in Afghanistan
Is Afghanistan better off thanks to U.S. military operations? Is it a more stable, law-abiding place, and less of a haven for terror? In the last year, the mainstream media have too often passed over these questions, assuming that the answer is an uncomplicated “Yes.”
In fact, there are many outstanding questions about the impact of the ongoing U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan. At a minimum, media have a responsibility to fully investigate the civilian toll of a war which, by and large, they presented to the public as an attempt to bring to justice the murderers of U.S. civilians. But while there have been a handful of in-depth investigations into civilian casualties, there’s been relatively little follow-up, even though many of the early reports were admittedly incomplete. In some cases, the failure to address the issue seems to be politically motivated, as when CNN chair Walter Issacson ordered his news staff to “balance” all images of civilian devastation in Afghanistan with pointed reminders that the Taliban harbored terrorists, saying it “seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan” (Washington Post, 10/31/01).
One exception to this reluctance to focus on the less righteous aspects of the war was the August 26 Newsweek story, “The Death Convoy of Afghanistan.” In it, Newsweek documented war crimes committed by the U.S.’s Afghan proxy troops, and asked what responsibility the U.S. bears for them. Newsweek‘s investigation into “one of the dirty little secrets of the Afghan war” found that “many hundreds” of prisoners were suffocated to death in sealed container trucks under the orders of Afghan forces with close ties to the U.S. This horrific account should inspire the media to investigate the behavior of U.S.-backed forces throughout Afghanistan.
Environmental Fallout in NYC
The fires at the World Trade Center burned for nearly four months, filling New York’s air and water with a mixture of toxic substances that included mercury, benzene, lead, chlorinated hydrocarbons, dioxins, PCBs and asbestos– quite possibly the largest urban environmental disaster in U.S. history. Yet authorities downplayed the risks, failed to warn rescue workers to take basic health precautions, and encouraged people to return to contaminated neighborhoods. Many rescue workers and residents now suffer from serious respiratory problems.
Amazingly, mainstream media have aggressively ignored the story, giving politicians and public health officials a free pass to keep quiet about it as well. One of the only reporters to pursue it, the Daily News‘ Juan Gonzalez, faced intense hostility from his own paper after his reporting exposed cover-ups by local and federal officials. According to Gonzalez’s book, Fallout, the political backlash was so severe that the lone News editor who supported his investigations was removed from his post “without explanation” after attempting to expand the paper’s environmental coverage of Ground Zero. The full extent of the environmental damage and its long-term health impact remain uncertain.
If media really want to craft a meaningful response to the September 11 terror attacks, they must ask some of the tough questions they have been avoiding, and provide the public with rigorous, independent scrutiny of the Bush administration’s response. Simply put, there is no better way for journalists to mark this anniversary than with good journalism.
For more information, check out our resources on Afghanistan and the War on Terror.
