A year ago Wednesday, the United States was attacked; about 3,000 were killed. It’s an especially tough anniversary because what happened that day affected each of us. Even if no one you knew or loved died in the attacks, events thousands of miles from San Diego remain personal to every single one of us. We can’t forget Sept. 11.
Nor should we.
Many of you may be wishing you could. Here it is only Monday and some, I’m sure, already are suffering from sorrow fatigue the result of a sorrow that has been with us since the enormity of Sept. 11 shocked us to the core. Some of you already may have seen more than you can absorb about the sad anniversary. You may have turned off your TV or are carefully screening programs. You may be skipping all Sept. 11-related remembrances, including the Union-Tribune’s special 18-page section Sunday on “ONE YEAR LATER,” other articles and even letters to the editor that deal with the aftermath.
If you thought you already knew everything there was to know about Sept. 11, Sunday’s special section showed how wrong you were. It touched on untold stories about how the events that day affected your friends and neighbors.
If you read every word of the section, you may be among those who are mesmerized by the events and are listening, watching and reading everything about them. Each of us has a personal threshold for what we can handle. How much you can read or watch or listen to today and in the days ahead is as individual as each of us.
But, for the newspaper and for the media in general, there was no choice when it came to remembering Sept. 11. It is a date, like Pearl Harbor, “which will live in infamy.”
To let Sept. 11 pass without remembrance would be unacceptable, unbearable, unprofessional. And foolish.
Not one day has passed since Sept. 11 that the events of that day have not been acknowledged in some way in the Union-Tribune in stories about the devastation and horror of the event itself, the terrorists’ local connections, our military waging war in Afghanistan, the fight against terrorism, the impact on business. Sept. 11 changed this country forever in ways big and small.
It also changed the way news is covered and how much access the media and you have to information, and this should worry you. More than ever, the government shrouds its conduct in secrecy. Those who are willing to go along “for the good of the nation” are consenting to conduct that could undermine this nation’s freedoms. The threat from the inside when the lid is put on information is as serious as the threat from external forces.
Last month, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati declared that the Bush administration unlawfully held hundreds of deportation hearings in secret on the basis of the government’s assertion that the people involved might be linked to terrorism. A New York Times News Service story in the Union-Tribune Aug. 27 said: “The decision, which was laced with stinging language questioning the administration’s commitment to an open democracy, is the first major appellate ruling on the government’s legal tactics concerning Sept. 11.”
Judge Damon Keith, who wrote the unanimous decision for the three-judge panel, said: “Democracies die behind closed doors.” The Bush administration was criticized for seeking to place its actions “beyond public scrutiny.”
“When the government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people,” the panel said. “Selective information is misinformation.”
What’s insidious about the government’s actions is that the media are seen by too many as the problem when they try to gain access to information that has been sealed. Some of that is the media’s fault. Newspapers and others in the media need to show they are working for the public interest.
As the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said, the public has deputized the press “as guardians of their liberty.” It’s a responsibility this newspaper does not take lightly.
Gina Lubrano’s column commenting on the media appears Mondays. It is the policy of The San Diego Union-Tribune to correct all errors. To discuss accuracy or fairness in the news, please write to Gina Lubrano, readers representative, Box 120191, San Diego, CA 92112-0191, or telephone (619) 293-1525. Send e-mail to:
readers.rep@uniontrib
