arianna ...yes!

[telebob x]

The Gary Conditization Of The Terror Story
Filed October 24, 2001
We interrupt our regularly scheduled column for the following fast-breaking 
public safety alert: Watching the news may be hazardous to your health -- 
and may be damaging the well-being of our entire nation. In much the same 
way that the terrorists hijacked our airplanes and turned them into flying 
bombs, they are now on the verge of successfully hijacking our airwaves.

What we are witnessing is the Gary Conditization of the most important story 
of our time.

We all know the recipe by now: Take 10 minutes of actual news, mix in 
heaping portions of breathless reporting, rampant rumors, baseless 
speculation, twitchy, nerve-racking crawls and hours-old "breaking news," 
stir repeatedly, overheat for as long as possible and, voila, there you have 
it -- enough toxic filler to feed the 24-hour news beast. Broadcast 
immediately (definitely don't let it cool). Serves 280 million.

After a slow news decade during which the media became addicted to 
overhyping trashy, insignificant stories, they now have an unprecedented 
opportunity to inform and enlighten us on a truly significant one. Sadly, 
they can't seem to wean themselves off the tactics they resorted to in the 
dark days of stained dresses, shark attacks and, yes, Gary Condit.

Take the anthrax story. Last week, we were told so often about the 31 people 
-- now down to 28 -- in the Hart Senate Office Building who had "tested 
positive" for exposure that you couldn't help but wonder if these were the 
same 31 folks or a fresh batch. You also couldn't help but wonder how many 
Americans were clear that "testing positive" did not mean "infected."

The correct military and diplomatic response to terror can -- and, I assure 
you, will -- be debated endlessly, but the correct media response is beyond 
dispute. The news outlets have a patriotic duty not to fan the fires of 
terror and spread bio-panic across the country just to fan their own 
ratings.

As Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said last week, anthrax "is not a weapon of mass 
destruction, it is a weapon of mass confusion." And if the news media 
mandarins don't curb their appetite for sensation, mass confusion can easily 
become mass hysteria.

After their commendable performance in the days immediately following the 
attacks, the media are falling back on their old, familiar, monomaniacal 
ways. Like a binge drinker who gives up booze but takes up chain smoking, 
the media have traded their addiction to Condit for an addiction to terror.

The same media that neglected the terrorism story for years are now acting 
like there's nothing else to report -- or to be concerned about. But, of 
course, there is. For instance, while we've heard endless details about the 
cutaneous infections suffered by Tom Brokaw's and Dan Rather's 
soon-to-be-once-again-fully-healthy assistants, there has been almost no 
coverage of the victims of the sharp increase in violent crime since Sept. 
11 in many cities across the country. Philadelphia, for example, has seen a 
28 percent increase in homicides while the murder rate in Washington, D.C., 
is up 35 percent. And Baltimore has had 19 homicides so far this month.

"Police can only be in so many places at the same time," explains Jack 
Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern 
University. Fair enough -- but what's the media's excuse? They, it seems, 
can only be in the same place at the same time.

Their newly minted obsession with all terrorism all the time has also 
exacerbated the media's already-troubling habit of running with the hot, new 
story. "1,000 civilians have been killed" by U.S. air strikes, CNN 
repeatedly reported last week, while adding that "there's no way to verify 
that 1,000 number." Then why report it? Just because there is airtime to 
fill?

Paradoxically, with All Terror TV, the more you watch, the less you know. A 
kind of news tunnel vision sets in. And then there is the hypnotic quality 
of today's frantically busy TV screens. "Headline News," with its restless 
news tickers and compressed video screen ("News! Sports! Weather! Anthrax! 
All at one time!"), has begun to look more like the heads-up display of an 
F-15 than a television show. As the frenetic factoids race across the bottom 
of the screen, the impression you are left with is that there are simply too 
many important things happening to report by conventional means.

It's ironic that this apotheosis of flash over substance comes at a time 
when the public is hungering for greater perspective and deeper 
understanding. When the focus of the coverage has become as narrow and 
repetitive as it currently is, there is no room left for any reference 
points beyond the immediate and the episodic.

"It is like the beam of a searchlight," wrote Walter Lippman in the 1920s, 
"that moves relentlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of 
darkness into vision. Men cannot do their work by this light alone."

Nor can the American people remain strong, brave and hopeful if our public 
square remains dominated by a media culture that trivializes whatever it 
touches and, on a daily basis, weakens our collective immune system with 
shallow, obsessive, toxic reporting.

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