Media coverage of attacks examined at Elon forum

About 150 people attended a seminar Sept. 20 titled "Good News, Bad News: Media Coverage of the Terrorist Attack," in Yeager Recital Hall on the Elon campus. The seminar was sponsored by the Elon School of Communications.

Steve Beckner, a financial journalist who lives in Mebane, N.C., was in New York City Sept. 11 covering an economic conference at the Marriott Hotel adjacent to the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks. He told the audience of the "indescribable carnage" wrought by the attacks. "Seeing it in person is something I'll never forget." Beckner said he was in his room at the hotel at the time of the attacks. Not realizing the gravity of the situation, Beckner said he took a shower before leaving his room. "When I got outside was when I realized what was happening. There were police and firemen, and they were yelling at us to run and not look up, because there was glass and debris falling from the sky."

Faculty members from the School of Communications also participated in the forum. Ray Johnson discussed television's coverage of disasters and other monumental events, including Pearl Harbor and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Johnson pointed out that television networks did not have the capability to provide live coverage of breaking news stories in 1963. "The networks found out from the Associated Press," about Kennedy's assassination, Johnson said. Brooke Barnett discussed the role of pictures and video in today's coverage of news. She noted that "pictures and images often are an entry point for a story," attracting potential readers or viewers. She noted that news organizations often make judgments on whether or not to use a particular image, because "video can make viewers angry, feel fear, or induce disgust."

Barnett also acknowledged the syndrome of "compassion fatigue," where viewers become numb to images because they have seen them so often. "We've seen so many atrocities, it seems the more we see, the less we're affected."

Connie Book addressed the media's responsibility in covering major events such as the terrorist attacks. She explored the possibility that the media "are a terrorist's best friend" by providing the coverage they seek. She said the terrorists knew that crashing a second plane into the World Trade Center approximately 20 minutes after the first would allow television networks enough time to set up cameras, so that they would capture the second plane crash live. In these attacks, the media became the terrorists' unwitting partners, Book says.