9/11 & The War on Terror through Media Manipulation
Intro:
In this history research project, I will be discussing how media manipulation played a part in broadcasting 9/11 and the after math where the war on terror began. I will be discussing three different broadcasting outlets and how they communicated the main events after 9/11 regarding the war on terror. ABC, CNN, and FOX news outlet. The differences and similarities on their broadcasting angles. Several broadcasting networks portrayed and interpreted the terror attack from several angles. This changed the way Americans looked at the war and how we were attacked. Feeling, emotions, and thoughts were high for good reason.
Background of Terrorist Attack:
The historical event of 9/11 was the most consequential terrorist attack on US soil. Terrorism is defined as the “unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims” (Oxford Languages). The attack was a highly tactical and long thought out plan that was carried out by Al-Qaeda. The terrorist group was founded by Osama Bin-Laden and their homeland territory is based in Afghanistan. Where 85% of the country is controlled by The Taliban (Turning Point). That is just to give a little insight on the terrorist attack and the group affiliated.
Breaking News:
As soon as the first WTC tower was hit at 8:46 am EDT, NBC, CNN, and FOX news communicated the same view of the towers burning. “Breaking News,” “plane crashes into World Trade Center,” “World Trade Center,” etc. (The Age & Sydney Morning Herald) This was just the initial phase of what started to unfold. Moments later at 9:03 am EDT the second plane had hit the second WTC tower, where the media had made an educated guess that this was deliberate. Informing that this was a place of danger. “We are under attack.” Another plane had crashed into the Pentagon in Washington DC, and a fourth plane that had crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. This was clearly a deliberate terror attack on America which was not wrong to believe. Journalists and reporters all having the same reaction on broadcast television. Expressing no words and broadcasting minute by minute of the disaster unraveling. (Kellner, Douglas. “9/11, Spectacles of Terror, and Media Manipulation.”)
“9/11, spectacles of terror, and media manipulation”, explained how “images of the planes hitting the World Trade Center towers and their collapse were broadcast repeatedly.” The repetition was seen as necessary to constantly portray the highly traumatic event. This constant repetition conveyed the message that the US was vulnerable to terror attacks. Conveying that terrorists can strike at multiple places at any given time. And create great harm to Americans. We were the target and enemy as conveyed through broadcast television. The suffering, fear, and death that many people endure on a daily basis in violent and insecure situations in other parts of the world was brought home to US citizens. Suddenly, the vulnerability and anxiety suffered by many people throughout the world was also experienced deeply by US citizens, in some cases for the first time.
September 14, 2001:
Three days later, President bush had gone down to ground zero where the towers collapsed. Bush was standing on the tower debris with an FDNY firefighter cleaning up the rubble. This is where Bush gave his famous speech: “I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will from all of us soon.” This was broadcasted on television and this immediately set the stage for American response to the people who attacked us. It was anger for what had happened. This would stand as a very prominent moment on American broadcast television. Another media spectacle that was shown on television was a documentary film that aired in May of 2002 called, In Memoriam. The HBO documentary was shown for three days no commercial breaks, to be able to document and show the human suffering of people and what people were doing to save others (if they even could). It unfolded the events of 9/11. The September 11 terror attacks, were claimed to be “the most documented event in history” (Kellner, Douglas. “9/11, Spectacles of Terror, and Media Manipulation.”) Spigel states in Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11, “USA canceled its prime-time run of The Siege (which deals with Arab terrorists who plot to bomb New York). At TBS violence-packed films like Lethal Weapon were replaced with family fare like Look Who’s Talking.” These two examples are just prime examples of the entertainment war of media driven fear and the replaying of September 11, 2001. This is shown in a way where it is repeated consistently through our TV.
The Ground Zero Mosque:
In 2011, Fox News had manipulated the development that was originally envisioned as
an Islamic community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan, New York City that would be a
13- story building. This development was going to be named “Cordoba House.” The developers were two muslim men, one an real-estate developer and the other imam (a person who leads prayer in mosque). “The two men had hoped to promote an interfaith dialogue within the greater community.” Its proposed location, and its serving purpose it was widely controversial. And with it being two blocks from the World Trade Center site it was referred to as the “Ground Zero mosque”. Wiki source Park51
Fox had called this the “Ground Zero Mosque” through broadcast television. This is a transcript from Fox news “The Five,” July 14, 2011. BOLLING: “A New York court has the paved the way for the Ground Zero mosque to be built at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. We all know this project has seen major pushback from families of 9/11 victims because they feel the mosque lies on sacred ground. And who can blame them? There are bone fragments from 3,000 innocent people there” Fox News transcript. This was a widely false impression by Fox News and manipulated the entire project and spin it in a very negative light.
Authorize use of Force
Moreover, the Bush Administration has used many fear tactics in its political agenda. Reacting to September 11 with declaring war on a terrorist group/organization. But, could we
even do that? The reason this problem emerged was because of how vague the authorization the use of force was. The stipulations of wagging war on a terrorist group was not stated, so this was an internal secretary of defense problem. ABC actually had broke this down the “authorizing use of force” in a news cast. ABC had also gotten Americans opinions of what the. U.S. should do now after 9/11? What the citizens feelings were towards what happened. Many of them said “I
think we should bomb them back,” “The enemy needs to be eradicated, and you don’t talk with the enemy,” and “They need to clean their clock into the stone age this is ridiculous,” etc. These were broadcasted on ABC television which only grew the anger strong and people wanted revenge. An invasion of Afghanistan was a call out for a war on terror that included Al-Qaeda.
The Bush administration passed the “executive use of force” by the president that fights any organization that poses a threat. Wagging war against a terrorist group with using the presidents executive use of force. The fear that we could be attacked again, but in a far worse way. This Idea started to engrain in Americans minds and that was shown by the Bush Administration through broadcast television. Authorize use of military force as explained to the public on how the Bush admin would use force against Afghanistan/ Al-Qaeda.
September 20, 2001: State of the Union Address.
In Bush’s September 20 talk to Congress, Bush made it very clear that those who were not with us were against us. Stating, “You’re either with us, or against us,” (Kellner, Douglas. “9/11, Spectacles of Terror, and Media Manipulation.”) This televised address to Congress was a smart move for reassuring America. Bush’s popularity soared in a grieving and angry country that demanded Osama bin Laden dead or alive. On September 18, 2001, The New York Post ran a picture of Osama Bin Laden on the front page of the paper. A wanted poster of Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive. (ICP.org source) A picture of the man who murdered 3,000 innocent people just helped American’s fill up with hatred and rage even more. This could be seen as another media spectacle that made headlines on TV news casts. There was no greater and larger
manhunt in the world than for Bin Laden and finding any affiliated terrorists. On the contrary, this spectacle can be seen as just media journalism. Some may say that this is what journalism is, this is our job, and this was justified in the current national climate.
Guantanamo Bay
The United States had made an effort to find and capture Taliban/ members of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Once those individuals were detained the U.S. had decided to bring them to
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The U.S. has a lease of the land and decided to try and prosecute these terrorists on this far away land. The U.S. was very particular with not giving these individuals prisoner of war status, rather citing them as detainees. Where they would not be protected under the Geneva Conventions where that protects prisoners of war. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday the captives were considered “unlawful combatants” and have no rights under the convention(CNN source). (This source is old in the sense of technological media video and images, videos may not play or be seen). This is an excellent source from CNN, due to the fact that this news outlet is showing the twenty detainees in the video and images of what it looked like inside Guantanamo. This was a prime example of what the world was watching the U.S. do to people that were being accused of being terrorist’s.
The first days shown in Guantanamo Bay in January of 2002 were brutal looking through the media. The pictures that were released from the pentagon of “terrorists” or Al-Qaeda members on a military jet flying them to Guantanamo were anything but humane. Strapped to the jet like cargo, and forced to wear oven mitts, goggles, sound proof head sets, blind folded, and shackled.
The Invasion of Iraq: Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
I will be using the acronym WMD for regarding weapons of mass destruction.
CNN host Howard
Kurtz, commented on how the
media failed with televising
the war on weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq after 9/11.
“What it conjures up for me is
the media’s greatest failure in modern times,” said Kurtz. This short CNN website article outlines how “major news organizations aided and abetted the Bush administration’s march to war on what turned out to be faulty premises.” And CNN takes responsibility for their part in airing the famous U.N. Security Council meeting on February 5, 2003.
I will be outlining the specific broadcast video shot that was aired where powerful people were strategically placed within the video shot to convey a powerful message. This is a link to the council meeting using this C-Span source. The meeting was over three hours but it gives the particular media shot I am explaining. Secretary of State Colin Powell, gave his informed address to the United Nations meeting on how Iraq was hoarding weapons of mass destruction. George Tenet was the former CIA Director and he is placed on the left side of Colin Powell. This particular tactic was to show that the CIA was behind the intelligence that was being put forward
Picture taken by: Petty Officer First Class Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Navy. January 11, 2002. Picture derived from: Guantanamo Bay NYT. The Pentagon photos.
to to the U.N. The media frenzy had fueled this entire meeting that portrayed how scary and serious this issue was to the well being of the world. The Bush Admin. Wanted to convey the importance of the information they had received on this national security problem. Throughout this entire on-going skepticism of these WMD, the US invaded Iraq. Shaky and unnamed sources were automatically claimed as fact. The outcome of the invasion? There were no WMD found. There was nothing found that The Bush Administration claimed there was in Iraq, and that was one of the biggest failures seen in media at this time after 9/11.
CNN — “The 10th anniversary this month of the invasion of Iraq will remind most people of a divisive and dubious war that toppled Saddam Hussein but claimed the lives of nearly 4,500 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians” ( March 11, 2013). This acknowledgement by CNN is a good example of how the media has failed in checking such massive allegations at the door. I want to usher in an academic source that outlines how the media covered WMD: “The public relies on the media to separate facts and tangible realities from assumptions and spin. Media Coverage of Weapons of Mass Destruction evaluates how well the media has performed this task in regards to the issue of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The study assesses how the coverage of WMD has changed over time and across geographies — especially since the launch of the “War on Terror” and the positioning of Iraq as the “big” international story,” Cemter for International & Security Studies at Maryland.
To conclude to the war on terror and post 9/11, the United States invaded two countries where we did not fulfill our duties like we promised we would. We spent twenty years in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan we did not fix and rebuild. And Invaded Iraq for weapons of Mass Destruction
that were not there at all. And the media was there for it all. The media helped stir this war on terror idea. We speculated the after math of 9/11 as well as move into a swift war where we only made things worse. The media could be seen as a part of this dramatic and deadly invasion of another country.
“As we act let us not become the evil that we deplore”-Reverend Nathan Baxter at the 9/11 memorial.
MLA citations:
Source 1:
Kellner, Douglas. “9/11, Spectacles of Terror, and Media Manipulation.” Taylor & Francis, 15 Aug. 2006, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17405900410001674515.
Source 2:
Spigel, Lynn. “Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11.” American Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 2, 2004, pp. 235–70. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40068195. Accessed 17 Oct.
2022.
Source 3:
Pfefferbaum, Betty et al. “Disaster media coverage and psychological outcomes: descriptive findings in the extant research.” Current psychiatry reports vol. 16,9 (2014): 464. doi:10.1007/s11920–014–0464-x
Source 4: (This is only in a PDF version)
Jetter, Michael. “Terrorism and the Media: The Effect of US Television Coverage on Al-Qaeda Attacks.” SSRN Electronic Journal, Apr. 2017, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2960517. Accessed 18 Oct. 2022.
Source 5:
Moeller, Susan. “Media Coverage of Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, 9 Mar. 2004, https://cissm.umd.edu/research-impact/ publications/media-coverage-weapons-mass-destruction.
Source 6:
“Newspaper: Wanted Dead or Alive: Osama Bin Laden for Mass Murder in New York City.” International Center of Photography, The New York Post, 25 Feb. 2016, https:// www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/newspaper-wanted-dead-or-alive-osama-bin-laden- for-mass-murder-in-new-york.
Source 7:
Kurtz, Howard. “Media’s Failure on Iraq Still Stings.” CNN, Cable News Network, 11 Mar. 2013, https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/11/opinion/kurtz-iraq-media-failure.
Source 8:
“Shackled Detainees Arrive in Guantanamo.” CNN, Cable News Network, 11 Jan. 2002, https:// edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/central/01/11/ret.detainee.transfer/index.html.
