September 11’s Never-Ending Story
Remembering the Last US Retaliation Against Terror
by Jeff Cohen (Column, 9/14/01)
“Outrage is the natural and appropriate response to the mass murder of September 11. But media should not be glibly encouraging retaliatory violence without remembering that US retaliation has killed innocent civilians abroad, violated international law and done little to make us safer.”
Nightly News Glosses Over Anti-Terrorism Act
(Action Alert, 9/27/01)
“The report–which ends by saying that ‘no one really knows how much authority the new security czar will really have’–suggests that to stay safe, Americans must surrender liberties without even pausing to ask which ones.”
When Journalists Report for Duty
by Norman Solomon (Extra! Update, 10/01)
“Restrictive government edicts, clamping down on access to information and on-the-scene reports, would be bad enough if mainstream news organizations were striving to function independently. American journalism is sometimes known as the Fourth Estate—but Dan Rather is far from the only high-profile journalist who now appears eager to turn his profession into a fourth branch of government.”
Retaliation: Reality vs. Pundit Fantasy
by Jim Naureckas (Extra! Update, 10/01)
“One non–Boy Scout the CIA worked with in the 1980s was none other than Osama bin Laden (MSNBC, 8/24/98; Atlantic, 7–8/91)—then considered a valuable asset in the fight against Communism, but now suspected of being the chief instigator of the September 11 attacks.”
Why They Hate Us: Looking for a Flattering Answer
by Jim Naureckas (Extra! Update, 10/01)
“Even before investigators identified Arab militants as the apparent hijackers, the media assumption was that the terrorists had ties to the Mideast. But rather than a serious examination of what political realities might contribute to an anti-American climate there, many media commentators offered little more than self-congratulatory rhetoric.”
Extra! (11-12/01)
Patriotism and Censorship: Some Journalists Are Silenced, While Others Seem Happy to Muzzle Themselves
by Seth Ackerman and Peter Hart (Extra!, 11–12/01)
“War fever in the wake of the September 11 attacks has led to a wave of self-censorship as well as government pressure on the media. With American flags adorning networks’ on-screen logos, journalists are feeling rising pressure to exercise ‘patriotic’ news judgment, while even mild criticism of the military, George W. Bush and US foreign policy are coming to seem taboo.”
Us vs. Them
by Jim Naureckas (Extra!, 11–12/01)
“It’s still ‘us’ versus ‘them,’ in other words, and we are told to care very much when ‘we’ are in danger and are explicitly warned not to worry too much about ‘their’ lives. Saying that it ‘seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardships in Afghanistan’ (Washington Post, 10/31/01), CNN chief Walter Isaacson even announced that the network would air some kind of disclaimer whenever footage of dead or wounded Afghans is shown.”
Are You a Terrorist?
by Rachel Coen (Extra!, 11–12/01)
“The legal definition of ‘terrorism’ is crucial because the USA PATRIOT act gives law enforcement broad new powers to be used against ‘terrorist’ individuals and groups. The American Civil Liberties Union (10/23/01) warns that this new definition will ‘sweep in people who engage in acts of political protest’ if those acts could be deemed dangerous to human life.”
‘No Spin Zone’?
by Peter Hart (Extra!, 11–12/01)
“FAIR activists sent hundreds of letters to O’Reilly after his September 17 program, urging him to consider the ramifications of his rhetoric–and the fact that bombing civilian targets and using starvation as a weapon are war crimes.”
As if Reality Wasn’t Bad Enough: Dan Rather Spread Alarmist Rumors on September 11
by Jim Naureckas in Extra!, 11–12/01)
“But is it really inevitable that anchors will pass on uncorroborated stories to the public—and portray them as fact, not rumor? For days, New Yorkers expressed surprise that the George Washington Bridge story was not true—victims of a needless panic that Dan Rather had helped to spread.”
Network of Insiders: TV News Relied Mainly on Officials to Discuss Policy
by Seth Ackerman (Extra!, 11–12/01)
“No experts on international law appeared, even though a lively debate among international jurists has been brewing since September 11 over how the United States could respond legally to the attacks. Very few university-based experts on the Middle East appeared. (The main exception was [Fouad] Ajami.) This absence contributed to the networks’ striking lack of explanation of what United States’ policies in the Middle East have been in recent years.”
The Op-ed Echo Chamber: Little or No Space for Dissent From the Military Line
by Steve Rendall (Extra!, 11–12/01)
“Whether the mainstream daily op-ed page was ever a true forum for debate or for ‘nontraditional voices’ is questionable. But during the weeks following September’s terrorist attacks, two leading dailies [New York Times and Washington Post] mostly used these pages as an echo chamber for the government’s official policy of military response, while mostly ignoring dissenters and policy critics.”
The New Blacklist: The Nation’s Largest Radio Network’s List of ‘Questionable’ Songs
by Tom Morello (Extra!, 11–12/01)
“When the horrible attacks of September 11 are used as a pretext for squashing the opinions of dissident artists, people who are not beating the blood-lust drum feel alone and isolated. It’s in times like these when we most need intelligent, thoughtful discussion and debates about the issues of the day.”
‘This Isn’t Discrimination, This Is Necessary’
(Extra!, 11–12/01)
“Leave it to Ann Coulter—whose racism was too much even for the Arab-bashing National Review—to reduce the pro-profiling argument to its fallacious core: ‘Not all Muslims may be terrorists,’ she allowed, ‘but all terrorists are Muslims’ (Yahoo! News, 9/28/01).
“That’s just wrong, of course, as Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber and decades of clinic-bombing, doctor-shooting Christian extremists can attest. The fact is that ethnicity has never been a reliable indicator of who might be involved in terrorism, making racial profiling not only discriminatory but ultimately ineffective.”
Patriotic Shopping: Media Define Citizenship as Consumerism
by Janine Jackson (Extra!, 11–12/01)
“A number of pundits and politicians offered Americans a simple solution to the helplessness and anxiety they were feeling in the wake of the September 11 attacks: Go shopping!”
Covering the ‘Fifth Column’: Media Present Pro-War Distortions of Peace Movement’s Views
by Peter Hart (Extra!, 11–12/01)
“The distinction between ‘peace with terrorists’ and a peace movement rooted in justice and international law was blurred by the media in general, which rather than airing the views of anti-war leaders generally had pro-war pundits explain–and belittle–those views.”
Internet Samizdat Releases Suppressed Voices, History
by Jeff Cohen (Extra!, 12/01)
“A free press would be debating the issue of Washington’s relations with Islamist extremists in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and whether such movements are bred by US policy committed to suppressing secular reformers and leftists in Islamic countries. When the CIA funded the Afghan Mujaheddin in 1979 before the Soviet occupation, it hoped to destabilize a secular, Soviet-friendly government (initially led by Nur Mohammed Taraki and Hafizullah Amin), which supported land reform and rights for women.”
Extra! (5-6/02)
From Bozo to Churchill: George W.’s Post–September 11 Reinvention
by Mark Crispin Miller (Extra!, 5–6/02)
“Countless leaders have been deified by national emergency, but few have been remade as quickly and completely as George W. Bush. In many cases, those who had misread him as a simple tool, braying automatically at his most trivial mistakes, now automatically revered him. Such converts suddenly agreed with those who had seen Bush’s flaws as signs of latent greatness—thitherto the notion only of a large plurality, but now the common wisdom.”
9/11 Anniversary Coverage Plans Fall Short
(Media Advisory, 8/26/02)
“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”
Saddam and Osama’s Shotgun Wedding: Weekly Standard Beats a Long-Dead Horse
by Seth Ackerman (Extra!, 1–2/04)
“Hardline officials have spent the last two years leaking stories, writing op-eds, holding private briefings and making public insinuations, all intended to convince the country that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda worked hand in hand.”
The Media Politics of 9/11
by Norman Solomon (Media Beat, 3/25/04)
“On September 12, Bush’s media stature and poll numbers were soaring. Suddenly, news outlets all over the country boosted the president as a great leader, sometimes likening him to FDR. For many months, the overall media coverage of President Bush was reverential.”
A Record of Journalism in Crisis: Out of the Buzzsaw,Into the Fire
by Francis Cerra Whittelsey (Extra!, 3–4/06)
“Not only was good reporting unusual and largely out of sight after September 11, it was also overwhelmed by the Bush administration’s public relations effort…. These journalists see themselves fighting an unrelenting public relations machine, whose effectiveness comes in large part from constant message repetition and automatic coverage of the president every day, even when he makes no news”
Gullibility Begins at Home: NYT Accepted False Reassurances on Ground Zero Safety
by Julie Hollar ( Extra!, 11–12/06)
“It’s not just the government that failed the workers and the public with misleading assurances; the New York Times itself must share that burden. Shortly after the attacks and into the ensuing years, the Times—as both a New York paper and a national paper—failed to mount a functional degree of skepticism toward city and federal government pronouncements about the safety of the air and dust around Ground Zero. They by and large dismissed fears of residents and workers about their safety—even as troubling studies and voices of dissent cropped up in the public and private sectors, and in other media outlets.”
Extra! (5-6/07)
The Media’s Mayor: Mythologizing Giuliani and 9/11
by Steve Rendall (Extra!, 5–6/07)
“[Jonathan] Alter dubbed Giuliani ‘the new Mayor of America,’ which soon morphed to ‘America’s Mayor,’ a moniker used by journalists as if it were a matter of public acclamation rather than a symptom of press corps hero worship.”
‘America Was Safer Under Bush’: Journalists Accept GOP’s Screwy Terrorism Scorecard
by Steve Rendall (Extra!, 3/10)
“That George W. Bush kept America safer from terrorism than Barack Obama is a conservative article of faith these days—and corporate media seem little inclined to challenge the blatant falsehoods used to advance this childish GOP talking point.”
The Uses of September 11: To the Right, Terror Attacks Are Theirs to Exploit—or Dismiss—as They Like
by Steve Rendall (Extra!, 3/11)
“But the hallowed memory of September 11 is a conservative sham. While the attacks may be the gift that keeps on giving for GOP politics—when politically useful—the right frequently permits itself to diminish or deride the memory and symbols of the attacks for its own convenience.”
Extra! (7/11)
‘Waterboarding Worked’?: After bin Laden’s Death, Media Push Pro-Torture Message
by Peter Hart (Extra!, 6/11)
“Despite Bill O’Reilly’s assertion that his show was a lonely pro-torture voice, there were many media voices suggesting a reevaluation of whether torture should be an accepted practice for the U.S. government. Bin Laden may be dead, but the corrosive effect on public discourse of the “war on terror” lives on.
Losing the Plot: The Afghan War After bin Laden
by Jim Naureckas (Extra!, 7/11)
What was missing from these and most other corporate media discussions of bin Laden and Afghanistan was any recognition of the part that country played in the Al-Qaeda leader’s strategic vision. For bin Laden, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was not a threat to his plan for the triumph of his brand of right-wing Islam—it was the central element of that plan.
Fox’s Eric Bolling Fans on Terror Facts—Twice
by Steve Rendall (FAIR.org, 7/15/11)
“Glenn Beck’s temporary replacement in the 5 p.m. slot on Fox News, Eric Bolling, has started out with a bang. On the July 13 edition of his new show the Five, the host declared: ‘America was certainly safe between 2000 and 2008. I don’t remember any attacks on American soil during that period of time.'”
Extra! (9/11)
The Forever Wars: Media Enlist to Promote Unending Military Adventures
by Peter Hart (Extra!, 9/11)
“The shift from the US’s time-limited military adventures since the Vietnam War—in conflicts like Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Kosovo—to today’s seemingly interminable and endlessly multiplying military commitments is one of the most notable, yet little noted, features of the post-September 11 landscape. And corporate journalists seem all too willing to encourage Washington’s new ‘permanent war’ footing.”
The ‘Worst of the Worst’?: 9/11, Guantánamo and the Failures of US Corporate Media
by Andy Worthington (Extra!, 9/11)
“On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, media bear a large responsibility for having allowed cynical lawmakers to portray Guantánamo as a prison holding ‘the worst of the worst,’ despite so much evidence that Bush administration officials were lying when they first coined that phrase.”
Whistling Past the Wreckage of Civil Liberties: Watchdogs Slept Through a Decade of Rollback
by Janine Jackson (Extra!, 9/11)
“Media submerge the reality of the assault on civil rights every time they report the state’s overreaches as being about ‘terror-fighting tools,’ as the AP (5/26/11) described Patriot Act provisions. Under a system of civil liberties, people are regarded as criminals after being convicted of crimes—not deemed to be so beforehand to facilitate stripping them of rights.”
Richard Cohen Is Sorry You and He Got It Wrong
by Peter Hart (FAIR.org , 9/6/11)
“Someone who was really sorry for stoking war fever would be honest enough to point out that not everyone was on board. And of course Richard Cohen knows this—he was writing columns attacking those who weren’t ‘going along with it.’ As he wrote about Dennis Kucinich, ‘How did this fool get on Meet the Press?'”
‘Terror Returns’—but When Did It Go Away?
by Jim Naureckas (FAIR.org, 4/16/13)
“The fact that journalists assigned to cover this story could fail to remember that political violence has been part of the United States landscape for the past decade and more is testament to a narrow definition that dismisses right-wing domestic violence as not really terrorism—and to a will to believe, for partisan or psychological reasons, that George W. Bush ‘kept us safe‘ after 9/11. The reality is not so comforting.”
License to Kill: Little Scrutiny of Resolution That Greenlighted ‘War on Terror’
by Norman Solomon (Extra!, 5/13)
“While the Obama administration considers how to reorganize its war efforts, we should ask why the US media establishment took more than a decade to begin asking basic questions about the Authorization for Use of Military Force—and why the underlying premises of perpetual war continue to elude concerted journalistic scrutiny.
“The consequences of such media evasions have persisted in tandem with Washington’s political machinations. Rather than handling 9/11 as a crime committed by criminals, the ‘war on terror’ under the AUMF umbrella propelled US military actions that have killed hundreds of thousands in at least six countries.”
They’ll Be Watching You: Mass Surveillance Uses New Media to Track Every Move You Make
by Jim Naureckas (Extra!, 5/14)
“After the September 11 attacks, which reignited a xenophobic backlash against immigration, the Department of Homeland Security began recruiting local law enforcement agencies as the next front in the detection and apprehension of undocumented immigrants. What followed was a massive wave of deportations that increased under the Obama administration to over 2 million (Politico, 3/4/14).
“Like immigration, the ‘War on Terror’ is now being shifted to local law enforcement agencies who, in exchange for federal dollars, are deploying powerful surveillance tools with little oversight and applying these tools to everyday policing, not just ‘counterterrorism.’”
Forgiving Al-Qaeda in Pursuit of a New Enemy
by Jim Naureckas (FAIR.org, 3/18/15)
“There are indications (as noted by the blog Moon of Alabama—3/11/15) of a shift in the Western foreign policy establishment toward seeing groups like Al-Qaeda—that is, far-right terrorist groups who espouse a violent strain of Sunni Islam—not as the main targets of US military operations but as potential allies against the governments Washington has identified as more important enemies, namely Shi’ite-led Iran and Syria.”
NYT Recalls Media’s ‘Journalistic Detachment’ Before Iraq War
(Extra!, 9/16)
“In his retrospective (7/19/16) on outgoing Fox News chief Roger Ailes, who lost his job amidst numerous charges of sexual harassment, New York Times media reporter Jim Rutenberg included this remarkable sentence:
It was Mr. Ailes who, after the September 11 attacks, directed his network to break with classic journalistic detachment to get fully behind the war efforts of the George W. Bush White House, which jarred the rest of his industry.
“Of course, Fox News was far from alone in abandoning ‘classic journalistic detachment’ (such as it is) in the lead-up to the Iraq War—the New York Times certainly not excepted. Timesreporters like Michael Gordon and Judith Miller helped get the nation ‘fully behind the war’ with front-page stories touting ‘evidence’ of WMDs that did not exist, while others wrote ‘news analysis’ like ‘All Aboard: America’s War Train Is Leaving the Station’ (2/2/03) and ‘US Plan: Spare Iraq’s Civilians’ (2/23/03).”
After 1,379 Days, NYT Corrects Bogus Claim Iran ‘Sponsored’ 9/11
by Adam Johnson (FAIR.org, 7/6/17)
“In its reporting on a dubious lawsuit alleging Iranian meta-involvement in 9/11, the New York Times badly misunderstood the case and maintained for more than three years, in the paper of record, that the government of Iran ‘sponsored’ the September 11, 2001, attacks. The belated correction, issued late Wednesday night on two widely spaced articles on the topic, unceremoniously noted that Iran did not, in fact, help commit the 9/11 attacks.”
On 18th Anniversary of 9/11, Media Worry About ‘Premature’ End to Afghan War
by Josh Cho (FAIR.org, 9/11/19)
“The New York Times (8/2/19) gave a platform to retired generals Jack Keane and David Petraeus to lobby for keeping thousands of “Special Operations forces” in Afghanistan:
“US troops in Afghanistan have prevented another catastrophic attack on our homeland for 18 years,” General Keane said in an interview. “Expecting the Taliban to provide that guarantee in the future by withdrawing all US troops makes no sense.”
“The Times might have pointed out that the September 11 attacks were carried out by militants based in the United States and recruited in Germany.”
Actually, Giuliani Has Always Been Like This
by Ari Paul (FAIR.org, 10/10/19)
“Giuliani was heralded as a hero when the United States was desperately looking for one after the WTC attacks—despite the fact that his actions on the day of the attacks contributed to the deaths of emergency responders, and his insistence that the air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe without filtration no doubt led to the deaths of many more (Extra!, 11–12/06, 5–6/07).”
Krugman Recalls 9/11’s Silver Linings
(Extra!, 10/20)
“’Overall, Americans took 9/11 pretty calmly,’ New York Times columnist Paul Krugman tweeted on the 19th anniversary of September 11 attacks. ‘Notably, there wasn’t a mass outbreak of anti-Muslim sentiment and violence, which could all too easily have happened.’ Anti-Muslim hate crimes increased 17-fold after 9/11, the FBI reported (Human Rights Watch, 11/02)—but apparently that doesn’t qualify as ‘mass.’
“Krugman, after praising George W. Bush as someone who ‘tried to calm prejudice, not feed it,’ did acknowledge that he used 9/11 to ‘take us into an unrelated and disastrous war’—the almost 19-year-long occupation of Afghanistan, apparently, not qualifying as a disaster. Before alluding to Iraq, Krugman mentioned that in the wake of the attacks, “my wife and I took a lovely trip to the US Virgin Islands…because air fares and hotel rooms were so cheap.”
As Kabul Is Retaken, Papers Look Back in Erasure
by Gregory Shupak (FAIR.org, 8/19/21)
“In addition to the Taliban signaling that it could be open to extraditing the Al Qaeda leader in October 2001, according to a former head of Saudi intelligence (LA Times, 11/4/01), the Taliban said in 1998 that it would hand over bin Laden to Saudi Arabia, the US’s close ally; the Saudi intelligence official says that the Taliban backed off after the US fired cruise missiles at an apparent bin Laden camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, following attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania attributed to Al Qaeda. The outlets thus failed to inform their readers that, had the US pursued negotiations for bin Laden’s extradition, Afghans may have been spared 20 years of devastating war.”
https://fair.org/home/september-11s-never-ending-story/
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten