Orange agents

During a week of war fever, the news media gave rein to hysteria -- and, critics say, let color-coded terror alerts serve the White House agenda.

By Eric Boehlert

Feb. 15, 2003 | With the run on duct tape apparently subsiding for now, Americans may look back on the week past as their most unnerving since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Osama bin Laden, or someone who sounded very much like him, issued a new call for suicide attacks against Western targets. Top intelligence officials told Congress that new attacks may be imminent. Missile launchers were deployed around the nation's capital. The White House declared an orange alert, one step short of the most urgent red alert.

With all of the threats and warnings and alerts, with all the talk of war, no wonder an anxious nation was obsessed with defending against a biological or chemical attack. Today, 82 percent of Americans believe a terrorist attack is "likely" in the next few months, according to a CBS/New York Times poll.

The emotional turmoil was dutifully captured in the press, and then some. Cable outlets went wall-to-wall with coverage of a disaster that hadn't happened yet, as if the news had been transformed into the reality show "Fear Factor."

"We may very well get hit, let's hope we survive it," said Morton Kondracke on the Fox News Channel. "With terrorists out there, how scared should you be?" asked CNN. Suddenly, experts displayed the hottest models of gas masks, the way toy gurus usually run down the must-have gifts during the Christmas buying season; endless what-if chatter about possible terrorist attacks replaced the kind of hype that usually comes with the approach of a Category 5 hurricane.

Dozens of papers nationwide last weekend used the orange alert as their lead story, even though the government offered only vague reasons for raising the alarm. And through the week, news radio urgently reported that a suspicious truck had been stopped on the Whitestone Bridge in New York, or that a suspicious small boat had been spotted in the pre-dawn gloaming near the base of the Bay Bridge that spans from Oakland, Calif., to San Francisco.

But even in reporting such news, the news media didn't provide a good service over the past week, many journalism experts say, and their performance in recent days doesn't bode well for what's to come if the nation goes to war, as expected, in Iraq.

In a time of almost unprecedented anxiety, journalists appeared to be having trouble with their equilibrium as they tried to report official terrorism warnings without exploiting that fear to attract more readers, listeners and viewers. And, some critics say, the press seemed to be willing partners for an administration that might be interested in building fear and transforming it into support for war.

Many critics boiled the issue down to a couple of simple questions: In a climate of war, when the government has a clear interest in manipulating public opinion, what are the obligations of journalists to the audience?

"Journalists should be asking that question because this whole thing could be a means by which to boost public opinion for a war the federal government wants to fight," says Robert J. Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University.

Other are more blunt. "We're living in the middle of an ad campaign for war and the press has bought it. In fact, it's helping write the script," says John R. MacArthur, author of "The Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War." "The terrorism warnings are a strategy designed to put the country on war footing in order to invade Iraq."

Those warnings have come fast and furious. CIA chief George Tenet, after months of refusing to sign off on the White House strategy linking al-Qaida and Saddam, suddenly warned Congress the agency had strong evidence to prove that terrorist connection. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced attacks could coincide with the recent conclusion of the Muslim hajj pilgrimage -- that tip was later deemed to be bogus -- while FBI director Robert Mueller reported hundreds of al-Qaida members were hiding inside America waiting to attack.

"The media are to an extent marketing fear, but fear is what the story is about," notes Thompson. And few would suggest the warnings, along with the bin Laden tape, weren't news events. But when Fox News Channel and MSNBC plaster a "High Alert" logo permanently on their screens, does that inform viewers or more cynically scare them and induce them to keep watching?

At issue is how far should the press go in conveying the government's stated sense of urgency, and to what extent should journalists temper the alarm with skepticism and a sober tone. Predictably, media leaders and their critics disagree.

"When you have government officials warning of potential danger we have no choice but to report it, and then try to do reporting on how to cope with it," says Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio Television News Directors Association. "I don't think it's being done to try to boost ratings."

"That terror alert logo is totally inexcusable," says Norm Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of the book "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You." "There's no plausible explanation other than an attempt to ratchet up the hysteria level in hopes it draws attention."

An information vacuum created by the government has also helped spread the fear, says Robert Zelnick, a former Pentagon reporter for ABC News who now chairs the journalism department at Boston University. "It's amazing how panicked people can get when the government puts the country on high alert but doesn't provide any specific guidance. That leads the press to do speculative stories and causes people to run out and buy duct tape, which then in itself becomes a story."

Critics charge that the media fell down by not putting the recent warnings in context or asking tough questions. "The press is not providing a greater understanding. We're compounding the anxiety and hysteria people have," says Calvin Sims, the former New York Times Tokyo correspondent who recently taught Media Coverage of Terrorism at Home and Abroad at Princeton University. "Nearly 18 months after 9/11, the reporting today on domestic terrorism warnings should be much more sophisticated. I'd give it a B-."

Next page: "The White House got the press coverage it wanted"