- You ever get sick of eating in restaurants? After a while
it doesn't really matter how good the food is, or how impressive the surroundings.
It doesn't even matter if the food's for free. You just get sick of eating
away from home " but, you don't get sick of eating. It's probably
an awful analogy, but that's sort of how I feel about the coverage of 9/11.
I want to know more about 9/11 and its aftermath. But I'm getting sick
of the way it's served up.
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- Some of the coverage is very good. Some of it is plain
awful. Most of it lies somewhere in the middle. And yet all of it is starting
to grate on me. The souped-up graphics, the well-practiced stiff upper
lips, the various victims who've shared their tragic testimonies so often
they've taken on an unfortunate polish " all add up to an expertly
prepared dish I find just a bit too clever to be palatable.
-
- Obviously, the worst are the television networks which
constantly promise to be the place where America grieves or remembers or
just talks about 9/11 " like the high-school guidance counselor too
intensely interested in "being there" for "the children"
to know when to shut up. The anchors may be in a no-win situation, but
the constant straining and yearning to be somber-yet-uplifting, modest-but-reassuring,
invariably turns them into parody. When I listen to Jennings and Rather,
for example, I can almost hear the network staff buzzing about, like so
many Hollywood carpenters hammering up the clapboard façades of
a "real" Potemkin village, in order to get the authenticity "just
right."
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- HIT MUTE
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- I've spent much of the morning wading through a sea of
hand-wringing media stories, all of them fretting over the press's wall-to-wall
coverage of the 9/11 anniversary. And it will be wall-to-wall. Long thought
to be a sign Hell had arrived on earth, The Today Show will be expanded
to six hours. CBS will restrain itself with a mere five-hour-long Early
Show. On ABC, Peter Jennings will host a special Answering Children's Questions,
which will no doubt feature plenty of Mr. Jennings's intriguingly anti-American
barbs for the children " and parents " to swallow as distilled
wisdom.
-
- But to their credit, at least ABC is distinguishing which
programming is for children and which is not.
-
- On NPR this morning, Marvin Kalb of the Center for Journalists
" who thinks journalism is God's Holy Writ (I'm paraphrasing) "
sagely agreed with Susan Stamberg (a High Priestess of the Faith), who
then returned the favor by agreeing with Kalb that the networks could go
overboard showing the World Trade Centers collapsing too much. Kalb warned,
and Stamberg concurred, that networks had a responsibility not to show
the footage too much because, well, it could have a numbing effect. They
further agreed with each other that we've already seen such footage too
much and that showing it much more might make for desensitizing overkill.
-
- The first problem with this appraisal is that it is based
in a lie. The networks have not shown the footage of the Towers collapsing
over and over again during the last year. They did show the footage of
the crash and implosion a great deal in the first days and weeks after
the collapse, but then all of the networks agreed to sharply curtail the
use of it. Perhaps one reason we think we've seen it so many times is that
the event and the image were significant enough to stay fresh with us all.
-
- In fact, within 48 hours of the 9/11 attack, the American
networks collectively agreed to ban footage of men and women leaping to
their deaths from the World Trade Center (see "Bring Back the Horror"),
believing such footage was too emotional " an argument which was sorely
lacking during the Rodney King episode, when those same networks deliberately
ignited passions night after night after night after night. Perhaps when
the video "shows" America as barbaric, the press see nothing
wrong with stirring up passions, but when America is attacked by barbarians,
responsible restraint is required. Around the world, men and women of good
will rose in solidarity with the United States largely because they saw
images few Americans had seen.
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- "I hope that television and others who are presenting
these memorial anniversary services in September would keep their sense
of balance about it all," Walter Cronkite told reporters. "It
seems to me it's the thing to do, and I think we'll have responsible people
in charge of the coverage."
-
- I agree. But what do the "responsible people in
charge" believe needs to be balanced? Is it ideological balance, between
Left and Right? Between jihadist lunatics and sober Americans? Between
those who believe America "invited," i.e., deserved, this attack,
and those who don't?
-
- In the hundreds of hours of coverage there will undoubtedly
be plenty of that sort of thing to look for. But the real need for balance
will be in the one area where I can guarantee it will be lacking: emotional
balance.
-
- It seems that when it comes to weeping and hugging, there
is no such thing as too much. Perhaps because the networks believe that's
what their predominantly female audiences are looking for, they see no
problem with an endless parade of grief. Or perhaps wallowing in remorse
and self-pity is simply all the rage in the self-help culture that dominates
newsrooms.
-
- But the one thing that's not all the rage is rage itself.
We will be, and already are being, subjected to countless hours of grieving
and mourning, and heartbreaking stories of fathers who never met their
sons and mothers who outlived their daughters. But when " as is the
natural and correct way of things " we try to translate this grief
into righteous rage, we are told that such feelings are unproductive, unenlightened,
or, most likely, simplistically "patriotic."
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- "So overwhelming is the sheer volume of this anniversary
coverage," writes Charlie McCollum in a recent and typical front-page
article about 9/11 anniversary coverage for the San Jose Mercury News,
"that questions have been raised about whether what should be enlightening
or inspirational will instead become emotionally numbing or even traumatizing
for the American TV audience."
-
- To back up his worry that that "American TV audience"
might be traumatized, McCollum cites the reaction of the widow of an NYC
firefighter: "Watching this footage over and over again " for
me, very personally, it re-traumatizes me," says Marian Fontana, president
of the 9-11 Widows and Victim's Family Association. "I don't sleep
after I watch the towers fall. It reawakens the terror." That's understandable,
of course. But " the networks' best efforts notwithstanding "
the American public is not comprised of 270 million grieving widows.
-
- Regardless, what will be numbing, I assure you, will
not be the images of the events themselves. What will desensitize viewers
is the "balance" or context the "responsible people in charge"
will provide. We will watch, in awe, the bravery and the sacrifice and
the suffering on display a year ago " and then some guidance counselor
with important hair will come on the screen to put everything in "perspective,"
which is to say they will tell us that wallowing in grief is a permanent
entitlement. But doing anything about it " that's a complicated question
for a country with such a troubled past as ours.
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- Ideally, C-SPAN would do what makes it such an invaluable
contribution to American civic life: It should run 9/11 footage with no
commentary whatsoever (and it may be doing something along these lines).
No balance. No experts in the studio. No answers for the children, be they
actual children or simply the nation of widows we are imagined to be. Let
people draw what they want, how they want, from the actual events of that
day. We have 364 other days of the year for balance and arguments and context.
-
- But, if C-SPAN won't do it (and to borrow a line from
PBS: if C-SPAN won't do it, who will?), there's another option: your mute
button. The networks will have amazing stories to show and tell. But the
moment we hear Peter Jennings or Dan Rather or anyone else tune in, I,
at least, will tune out. That's the best balance I know how to provide.
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- http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg090602.asp
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