Many Americans felt a loss of personal security and safety after the attacks of Sept. 11. The news media, including this newspaper, should put events in perspective and not exacerbate fears, especially fear of the unknown.
There are ways the newspaper — and its readers — can stay levelheaded.
Do not try to predict the future. The strongest articles about the events of Sept. 11 have been those that tried to explore what occurred — who the perpetrators were, how they prepared for the attacks and where the lapses in U.S. intelligence and airport security lay. These included discoveries by The Courant’s own investigative team about money that was wired just before the attacks and about the lack of control over airline employees’ security badges.
Not so successful were some large front-page headlines that purported to foretell the future — a quote from President George W. Bush a few days after the disaster (“WE’RE AT WAR”) and a headline at the top of the front page Monday (“Where Could They Strike Next?”). The headline was above an article about the Internet and one that actually concluded that the nation’s water supply would not be vulnerable to contamination.
“We have enough to deal with with what already is and what has happened,” a Bloomfield reader said, without having to worry about “what might be or what could be.”
Be aware of events in other parts of the world. In the past 10 days, a former Colombian minister of culture was killed after being kidnapped by guerrillas. (Four presidential candidates and 11 Supreme Court judges have been among those assassinated during decades of political violence in that country.) The first journalist in 30 years was targeted and murdered in Northern Ireland. Dozens of people were killed when state legislatures in India and Switzerland were attacked. The Basque separatist movement took responsibility for a car bomb that went off outside a Supreme Court in northern Spain.
The United States is not alone in experiencing terrorism and political violence. Americans have simply discovered that their country and institutions may be as vulnerable as those in other parts of the world. More coverage of events abroad would lend perspective.
Viewing the United States as protagonist as well as victim — in Latin America, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East — also might help explain some of the resentment toward this country in less economically privileged parts of the world.
“Too many people on this planet have lives which are not worth it, humiliated lives, with no future. They feel like toys in the hands of the superpowers,” Genevieve Guicheney, an ombudsman for French public television, wrote to me last week. “Enough of not knowing the rest of the world. I do think we can help people to understand. It is among our responsibilities.”
Be cautious in evaluating purported threats. Rumors were reported last month, including in The Courant, that Boston had been targeted for attack on Sept. 22. Attorney General John Ashcroft had issued a warning, based on flawed intelligence information — a mistranslation of a conversation in Arabic.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times had to retract its report last month that hundreds of Islamic militants had entered the country in August. The newspaper’s anonymous source had based his information on a faulty British newspaper article.
Government and law enforcement officials have an obligation to explore every conceivable threat, notes Managing Editor Clifford L.Teutsch. “The problem is when it becomes public. We’re not used to dealing with raw, uncorroborated evidence. You have to be really rigorous in what you report.
“Is something a fact or is something an assertion and if it’s an assertion, who’s making it?”
Readers need to raise similar questions in approaching the newspaper — to distinguish between fact and assertion and evaluate who is making an assertion or claim.
The newspaper needs to separate rumor from reality and provide enough information about its sources so readers can make their own judgments. Rather than mirror and amplify public fears, it should serve as a guide to an uncertain world that most people would prefer to inhabit without fear.
