The 9/11 Attacks and the Media
Without a doubt, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon near Washington, DC were shocking global media events that dominated public attention and provoked reams of discourse (Kellner 2004). Obviously, terrorists were aware of the fact that attacking the symbolic targets in the US, killing thousands of citizens, and causing a tremendous amount of damage to the American and international economy, as well as the image of the US would be sensational news around the globe.
The response of the media in the US was often far from being objective, calm, and prudent. Instead, media organs oozed hatred and hysteria, calling for action against mainly Arabs and Muslims and crying for revenge, as terrorists would have planned. The major corporate media tended to support the patriotic discourse and the policies of the then president George W. Bush, who was leading the nation against the forces of “political and cosmological evil” (Lewis 2005). This way of media coverage after a traumatic event dramatically changed the public perceptions, discourse at government and public levels, and the way people perceive events and “other” people, specifically ethnic and religious minorities who can be perceived as a “threat”. As a result, as Altheide (2009) argues, the discourse of fear has been constructed through news and popular culture accounts and the main discourse of fear has clearly become terrorism in the post 9/11 era. In other words, “9/11 was used by the media and politicians to promote fear related agendas and ideologies. Citizens became accustomed to ‘safety rhetoric’ by police officials, which often required them to permit police searches, condone ‘overaggressive’ police action, as well as join in a myriad of crime-prevention efforts, many of which involved more human as well as electronic surveillance of work places, neighborhoods, stores, and even ‘bodies’” (Altheide 2009).
The picture above suggests that the architects of the 9/11 attacks achieved their media-centered objectives, as the media conveyed the message that even the US was vulnerable to terror attack, that terrorists could create great harm, and that anyone at any time could be subject to a deadly terror attack. They also succeeded in immersing the US government in “a global information war to promote the interests, values, and the image of the US” (Kavoori and Fraley 2006). Terrorists were obviously aware of the magnitude of sensation their attacks would create; however, the way media covered news and stories rendered it possible for the terrorists to conceive an unimaginable victory in terms of penetrating into the daily lives of a huge audience. They attracted global attention, obtained global recognition, received a degree of respect among sympathizers, and gained legitimacy in the eyes of supporters and potential recruits, through the fear narrative the media employed