J201 Intro to mass communication Journalism before 9 11 Newspapers only devoted 2 of the news hole to international coverage ABC News had closed 10 of its 17 foreign bureaus CBS basically no longer has bureaus overseas Most stations of the giant radio conglomerates Infinity and Clear Channel had all but eliminated news from their formats Evening news programs of the television networks had reduced their international coverage from 40 to as low as 8 Journalism before 9 11 continued The US had about 350 newspaper and broadcast correspondents working abroad fewer than 1 3 of the number of correspondents that foreign nations send to cover the United States Only a few weeks before 9 11 CNN had announced plans to replace some of its international coverage with more profitable entertainment news Only the New York Times and CNN had journalists in Afghanistan at the time of the attacks Why the cutbacks in international news before 9 11 Why the cutbacks in international news before 9 11 End of the Cold War end to international interest Rise of the Internet more direct channels for foreign news Entertainment news is cheaper than foreign news Media executives think audiences want entertainment news rather than foreign news do we Broadcast media and 9 11 Vanderbilt Univ TV news archive http tvnews vanderbilt edu ABC News broadcast for ninety one hours the longest continuous report in its history CNN ran multiple text lines across the screen to accommodate multiple story lines TV networks agreed to share video satellite footage Radio cable and satellite stations otherwise devoted to entertainment began rebroadcasting news instead especially from ABC CNN BBC NPR Changes to traditional media after 9 11 Commercials disappeared from the air for September 11 and 12 costing media outlets hundreds of millions of dollars Newspapers filed special late editions while news magazines printed special mid week vignettes CNN had 3 4 million viewers ten times its normal audience The New York Times sold as many copies more than 1 2 million across the country as it did in the city Frontline pulled a 2 year old investigation of bin Laden from the shelves brought it up to date and aired it within two days MSNBC and CNN started Arabic language online versions Online media and 9 11 Internet Archive http www archive org Major news web sites were overburdened with traffic Google warned surfers to turn on the TV or radio NYT removed masthead advertising graphics Non news sites stepped up to relay the news Weblogs began to provide eyewitness accounts More surfers explored foreign news Emailed I m OK messages What was the most popular Internet search term in the week after 9 11 The Nostradamus effect www lycos com Nostradamus most popular search term from Sep 17 20 was second on Sep 12 average of 140 000 daily unique visitors to Nostradamus repository org for the week ending September 16 Based on a university student essay and later email hoax Nostradamus The complete prophecies was the best selling book on Amazon com four days after the attacks 3 spheres of journalistic style Michael Schudson sphere of legitimate controversy sphere of consensus sphere of deviance After September 11 journalists felt thrust into the sphere of consensus and sought to provide comfort or reassurance not just information or analysis Critiques of post 9 11 reporting Questioning US policy was seen as aiding the enemy eg Media Research Center Linking 9 11 to historical US actions in the Middle East was seen as pardoning the murderers Terrorism is strategic communication The dance of death What was the frame for 9 11 reporting A benevolent democratic and peace loving nation was brutally attacked by insane evil terrorists who hate the United States for its freedoms and affluent way of life The United States must immediately increase its military and covert forces locate the surviving culprits and exterminate them then prepare for a long term war to root out the global terrorist cancer and destroy it Other possibilities The media s responsibility for 9 11 Between the 1998 terrorist attacks on the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and 9 11 a period which included the Oct 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen only the New York Times 60 Minutes and Frontline offered major indepth investigative reporting of the terrorist threat Without functioning news offices abroad the networks have lost their capacity to track the trends and daily politics that often indicate when conflict is coming and their reporting can no longer be used to help to head it off by alerting the public Donald Shanor A failure of imagination 9 11 Commission Report http www gpoaccess gov 911 index html Remembering 9 11 September 11 Digital Archive http 911digitalarchive org
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