It’s hard to name a media outlet that isn’t in some way commemorating the ten-year anniversary of 9/11. “Some specials are so niche-sensitive that they almost sound like humor-magazine parodies,” writes Alessandra Stanley in the Times. “CNBC, which has a series called ‘American Greed,’ came up with ‘American Greed: 9/11 Fraud,’ about the scams and profiteering that followed the disaster. Showtime offers ‘The Love We Make,’ about Paul McCartney’s journey through New York after Sept. 11.” Such a delicate topic means that “viewers become hypersensitive to the misplaced word or self-serving gesture.” Though most of the editors and writers undoubtedly mean well, good intentions do not always translate into quality journalism. Here, a roundup of some of the highs and lows of the print media’s 9/11 coverage.
image via esquire.com
Even after eight years, Tom Junod’s Esquire article about the iconic “Falling Man” photo stands head and shoulders above anything else written about the attacks. Junod recently published an update on the families he interviewed for the 2003 story, but it doesn’t add much to the outstanding original.
If you only read one newspaper’s coverage of the anniversary, make it the Times’ special “9/11: The Reckoning” section, which includes previously unreleased audio recordings of the flight controllers and FAA officials monitoring the hijacked planes on September 11. Two slideshows, one of possessions saved by New Yorkers and the other of 9/11-inspired artwork from across the world, are well worth clicking through. In the Sunday Magazine, a roundtable of former contributors epitomizes the paper’s elite liberal reputation. It’s the only conversation, for example, in which you’ll find a participant exclaiming “Good God, man!” with complete seriousness. Bill Keller, who just stepped down as the paper’s executive editor, offers a belated mea culpa for his part in giving the liberal seal of approval to the war in Iraq.
Businessweek offers its typical cynical take on the anniversary, running an article in the Sept. 2 issue about the reinsurance industry. Between terrorist acts and unprecedented flooding, the companies that foot the bill for reconstruction must attempt to balance risk and reward. A few weeks ago, the magazine devoted a feature-length story to Larry Silverstein, the developer building an office tower at 7 World Trade Center. If the apocalypse arrived tomorrow, Businessweek would undoubtedly be advising its readers on how to sell muni bonds to the anti-Christ.
image via newsweek.com
The most charitable thing one can say about Newsweek’s coverage is that Tina Brown has not Photoshopped an age-advanced Dick Cheney into the ceremonies at Ground Zero. Andrew Sullivan, who seemed like such a catch when Brown lured him away from The Atlantic earlier this year, takes a dismal look at the American response to the attacks, writing that “Bin Laden hoped to provoke a civilizational war between Islam and the West. And we took the bait.” Unfortunately, Sullivan continues to take the bait, trotting out the hoary cliche of Al Qaeda as “a few religious fanatics living in caves.” It’s an accurate description, to an extent, but it elides the seriousness of the threat posed by radical Islamists. A handful of fundamentalists can be dealt with — bombed back to the stone age, as the theory went before the war — but Bin Laden’s violent ideology and the deep-seated rage at the U.S. that permeates much of the world are less tractable issues. Sullivan also overstates the degree to which ordinary Americans have suffered over the past decade. Of the victims at the World Trade Center, he writes, “Their terror ended quickly. Ours had just begun.” Pat-downs at airports, two wars as foreign to most people as the moon — these are not comparable to having one’s life snuffed out on 9/11.
image via thenation.com
The Nation and Mother Jones both engage in standard liberal hand-wringing over America’s lost civil liberties. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but . . . how predictable can you get?) At The Nation, David K. Shipler writes that “Obama has perpetuated so many of the Bush administration’s policies that even Republicans might take heart.” That Mother Jones chooses to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11 with an issue dedicated to the FBI’s extraordinary rendition program gives even the casual reader an idea of its priorities. This is hardly the first time the tragedy has been misused — the Bush administration’s elevation of terror threat levels to correspond with election dates comes to mind — but it is particularly classless to run a scathing critique of post-9/11 intelligence without also acknowledging the victims of the attack. Adam Liptak of the Times actually offers a more nuanced — albeit less popular — interpretation of the Patriot Act, noting that “By historic standards, the domestic legal response to 9/11 gave rise to civil liberties tremors, not earthquakes.”
One of the more compelling stories is not from a national magazine or a New York publication but from the Boston Globe, which gives its coverage a parochial angle by recounting the stories of the ticket agents and security personnel at Logan Airport, where two of the hijacked flights originated. “They are the rarely noticed casualties of the terrorist attacks,” writes the Globe’s Eric Moskowitz. Ordinary details are twisted into life-changing, haunting memories: “Two men in their 20s approach, Middle Eastern, hair carefully trimmed, clothes so new they are still creased from the store.”
At The Atlantic, Andrew Cohen offers a fairly standard timeline of 9/11’s effects on the checks and balances of divided government. His argument, that the executive branch gained power at the expense of a fairly submissive Congress and judiciary, is familiar, as is his contention that such a concentration of power can only lead to abuse (see: Iraq, wiretapping, extraordinary rendition). The most interesting thing about this piece is Cohen’s recognition that the scales have not remained weighted in favor of the president. During George W. Bush’s second term, when a handful of Supreme Court decisions invalidated lower courts’ pro-administration rulings on indefinite detention and military tribunals, Congress mainly worked around the restrictions and allowed executive authority to grow unchecked. Since the election of Barack Obama, however, the legislative branch has rediscovered its voice, moving to place restrictions on an administration with which it disagrees. Cohen writes:
[L]awmakers blocked with great relish and fanfare the Obama Administration’s efforts to prosecute 9/11 planner Khalid Sheik Mohammed in federal civilian court. Such meddling in the discretion of the Justice Department’s charging decisions would have been unthinkable during the Age of Fear.
Apparently, the unitary executive theory was just fine as long as Dick Cheney was the one advocating it. Only when a Democrat moved into the White House did the war hawks in Congress begin to reevaluate their deference. A king is only popular among those who benefit from the palace’s largesse.
image via fastcompany.com
From across the pond, the Financial Times checks in with some of the families who had posted “missing” signs across New York after the towers collapsed. The stories are not all hopeful, but they are honest in revealing the different ways people deal with the death of a loved one.
Finally, if the TV networks’ incessant stream of 9/11 programming seems just a little crass, take a look at this Fast Company slideshow of taste-challenged advertisements. The worst offenders are from Europe, where the advertising industry as a whole is much more accepting of graphic, risque content.
. . . So Well Read. . . 