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Coverage of Terrorism<br />
Understanding the ‘Why’ of September 11<br />
Using the Web, Globalvision’s world news site helps readers dig deeper<br />
and broader for answers.<br />
By Danny Schechter<br />
Visual coverage of the events of<br />
September 11 was as riveting as<br />
the unbelievable images it conveyed.<br />
Answers also came fast and furious<br />
to questions of who, what, where<br />
and when. It was the “how” and, even<br />
more difficult, the “why” part of journalistic<br />
inquiries that, perhaps understandably,<br />
was not as well explored, as<br />
television reached for its cast of familiar<br />
pundits who often turned out to be<br />
as confused and predictable as they<br />
were jingoistic.<br />
What became hard to find after September<br />
11 were places to go for news<br />
in which the broader dimensions of<br />
the story about the terrorists’ attack on<br />
America were unfolding. There were,<br />
of course, in mainstream media questions<br />
asked—and answered—<br />
about who was responsible, how<br />
the acts of terror came to be, and<br />
how the nation’s defense and intelligence<br />
agencies missed signals<br />
about this attack. Often, though,<br />
the level of indignation coming<br />
out in these interviews exceeded<br />
the depth of good information and<br />
analysis provided.<br />
As a way to respond to what we<br />
perceived to be a vacuum,<br />
Globalvision launched its own<br />
online News Network<br />
(www.gvnewsnet.com) prototype<br />
for a more diverse global syndication<br />
effort. By using this vehicle,<br />
we were able to offer stories from<br />
news outlets throughout the<br />
world. It became our way of bringing<br />
information and views of local<br />
sources—and often unheard<br />
voices—to audiences more accustomed<br />
to a narrower range of<br />
Anglo-American news. Our news<br />
network provides a panoply of “inside-out”<br />
coverage (for example, coverage<br />
about Pakistan is written by Pakistani<br />
journalists, not Americans) instead<br />
of the conventional “outside-in” international<br />
approach. On a given day, our<br />
lengthy collection of stories—linked<br />
for reader convenience—can include<br />
reports from Interfax Russia, The Kashmir<br />
Times, Middle East Newsline, Islam<br />
Online, Iran News, The Moscow<br />
Times, The Times of India, Mandiri<br />
News, Israel Insider, and Radio Free<br />
Europe. We call ourselves “context providers”<br />
and are turning a collection of<br />
stories into a news product that we<br />
hope news companies and Web sites<br />
will acquire to compliment existing<br />
wire service reporting as a way of offering<br />
more and deeper sources to their<br />
readers.<br />
Our initiative emerged as a response<br />
to media trends that over the years<br />
The homepage of mediachannel.org.<br />
have shortchanged the public and, in<br />
turn, eroded our democracy. While<br />
Globalvision is not alone in rejecting<br />
the dumbing down of news, we are<br />
trying in a practical and credible way to<br />
counter the pervasive withdrawal of<br />
international coverage by networks and<br />
newspapers. Yet it still surprises me to<br />
learn how many in the media business<br />
don’t appear to recognize the scale of<br />
this problem or the scope of its consequences.<br />
Pulitzer Prize-winning media<br />
writer David Shaw reported recently in<br />
the Los Angles Times, “Coverage of<br />
international news by the U.S. media<br />
has declined significantly in recent years<br />
in response to corporate demands for<br />
larger profits and an increasingly fragmented<br />
audience. Having decided that<br />
readers and viewers in post-cold war<br />
America cared more about celebrities,<br />
scandals and local news, newspaper<br />
editors and television news executives<br />
have reduced the space and<br />
time devoted to foreign coverage<br />
by 70 to 80 percent during the<br />
past 15 to 20 years.”<br />
Long before September 11, my<br />
colleagues and I had become<br />
alarmed by the consequences of<br />
America’s media-led isolationism<br />
as it fueled citizens’ ignorance<br />
about the rest of the world. We<br />
could understand why headlines<br />
in other nations’ newspapers soon<br />
read “Americans Just Don’t Get<br />
It.” And we could read about how<br />
this absence of engagement<br />
through public communication led<br />
the Indian writer Arundhati Roy to<br />
suggest that Washington’s foreign<br />
policy was the consequence of the<br />
power of the U.S. media to keep<br />
the public uninformed. “I think<br />
people are the product of the information<br />
they receive,” Roy<br />
writes. “I think even more powerful<br />
than America’s military arsenal<br />
has been its hold over the media in<br />
some way. I find that very frightening….<br />
[J]ust as much as America be-<br />
<strong>Nieman</strong> Reports / Winter 2001 57