Media Coverage of the
Terrorist Attack on the
World Trade Center
and the Pentagon

My normal area of research lies in the analysis of various media as they report natural disasters and hazardous situations and thereby affect public perception and agency response.

I agreed to do an analysis of the online Los Angeles Times' coverage of these incidents and their aftermath for the twelve weeks following the disaster.

Media affect the social understanding of hazards, crimes, and wars. They influence public opinion and, thereby, policy to manage these risks by directing audience attention to the particular issues that they emphasize.¹ Literature in media analysis identifies several factors governing issue salience or obscurity²:

• Profit pressures on media subsidiaries, which can result in sensationalism
• Capital concentration in media ownership, which can result in ideological narrowing
• Advertising dependence, which can produce coverage skewed to the interests of "desirable demographics"

From this literature, the L.A. Times' front screen coverage might be expected to evince:

• sensationalism
• a narrow ideological spectrum on the context of the attacks
• reduced emphasis on poorer victims or on workers as opposed to more prosperous victims or corporate employers

This study concentrated on those stories that the editorial staff deemed so salient that they warranted front screen coverage. Of all the material on the paper's home page, I captured headlines and a lead sentence or two for all articles showing both on the front screen. This typically yielded from six to eight articles each day, approximately the content of the front page of the paper editions of the Times. These added up to 558 stories for the 12 weeks of the study.

I recorded the key theme of each such article, using an inductive coding process. This iterative coding process eventually yielded ten consistently named major themes for stories related to the events of 9/11 and seven minor themes that were grouped into an eleventh code, "other related stories." Additionally, I tracked the appearance of "unrelated" stories on the front screen as a harbinger of the return to normal concerns. The twelve thematic categories, then, were:

• Context, n=6 (1.1%)
• Diplomacy, n=38 (6.8%)
• Impact, n=35 (6.3%)
• Investigation, n=57 (10.2%)
• Military, n=103 (18.5%)
• Mitigation, n=24 (4.3%)
• Reactions, n=55 (9.9%)
• Reconstruction, n=9 (1.6%)
• Response, n=19 (3.4%)
• Restoration, n=19 (3.4%)
• Other related stories, n=14 (2.5%)
• Unrelated stories, n=179 (32.1%)

The eleven categories related to the disaster and the stories in them began to converge into three overarching narratives:

• Stories of the disaster, response to it and recovery from it
• Stories about the crime and its investigation
• War stories of diplomacy, deployment, airstrikes, and the fall of the Taliban

Key Themes (Figure 2)

Military: Far and away the dominant concern in the first 12 weeks

• n=103, or 18.5 percent of the 558 stories
• the only theme prominent for all 12 weeks

Crime Investigation: Very much a secondary theme

• n=57, or 10.2 percent
• this theme was prominent for 6 of the 12 weeks

Reactions to the disaster itself: Also a secondary theme

• n=55, or 9.9 percent
• this theme was prominent for 4 of the 12 weeks

Context of the events of 9/11 received the least front screen coverage, with just 6 stories, or 1.1 percent.

• This poor showing fits with prior work on how media perform in other hazards and disasters
• It is also consistent with the ideological narrowing linked with media ownership concentration
• It also reflects the long-established media need for drama and simplicity, which contextual information rarely satisfies.

Reconstruction: Also very little coverage (n=9, or 1.6 percent).

• This is not too surprising due to the still early stage of this disaster on the conventional post-event timeline of response-restoration-reconstruction

Metastories (Figure 3)

The war story

• the dominant narrative overall: 168 of the 558 stories, or 30.1%
• dominated most of the last 9 weeks of the study period

The disaster story

• the second most prominent metastory at 152 stories or 27.2%
• dominated the first 3 weeks after the disaster

The crime story

• the least covered of the grand narratives at 59 stories or 10.6%
• never attained dominance in any of the 12 weeks of the study

Disparities in coverage

The 9/11 attacks were the greatest disaster to befall the United States in the last half century

• 3,023 deaths (estimated by Associated Press as of 02/08/02)
• huge property losses (estimated at $90 billion by Swiss Reinsurance)
• economic and personal disruptions it caused, directly and indirectly

The disaster story was quickly displaced by the war story within a month of the attacks, possibly deprioritizing the needs of the victims and their cities in recovering from these horrific events

War Story:

The war to exact vengeance and dismantle terrorist networks does not compare to other wars after WWII in terms of American casualties and other losses (data: Civil War Center, LSU)

• WWII: 407,316 American deaths
• Korea: 36,913
• Vietnam: 58,168
• Gulf War: 293
• Afghanistan: 31 (as of 03/14/01, ABC News)

The war story has held most of the media focus after the third week anyhow, perhaps expressing American anxiety about getting into an endless war.

Crime story:

At 11%, the crime story is a fairly minor strand in front screen coverage

• This minor showing is in contrast with the standing of these events as probably the greatest crime ever perpetrated within this country
• The relative quiescence of the L.A. Times may just reflect the necessary secrecy in which an investigation of this sort must be conducted

There may simply not be much information to report

Expectations

Sensationalism:

a common criticism leveled at media during disasters is evident here:

• obsessively repetitive imagery of United Flight 175 striking the South Tower on television and on the front page graphics of newspapers, including the L.A. Times
• the coverage of the anthrax bioterrorist incidents amplified public concern far above the actual numbers of people exposed, sickened, and killed by mailed anthrax, leading to pressure on physicians for wanton prescription of Cipro

Poor contextualization:

often seen in the coverage of any disaster, context is conspicuously poorly developed in coverage of the events of the 11th of September:

• only 6 stories appeared on the front screen of the L.A. Times about the geopolitical background that produced such homicidal and suicidal men
• this is a new hazard for Americans, and context is key to their understanding and preparation for this probably permanent new element in their lives

Balanced treatment of victims:

equity in front screen stories was unexpected in light of media critical literature that often draws out social inequities in disaster coverage

• to its credit, the L.A. Times has covered impacts on businesses and impacts on workers in roughly equal numbers in front screen stories
• the paper was careful to draw out the job losses cascading from these events, despite Congressional and Presidential focus on the needs of the businesses ordering the layoffs

Those responsible for recovery will have to work to get the media to focus on the needs still lingering after this unprecedented military strike, criminal action, and disaster. Prior work of mine suggests that the following may be effective strategies for governmental agencies and non-governmental victim advocacy organizations to consider³:

• First, government agencies and NGOs can actively cultivate personal relationships between particular reporters and particular representatives of their organizations. Reporters appreciate knowing who the peer-recognized experts are ahead of time. Examples:
  • the seismology team of Kate Hutton of Caltech and Lucy Jones of USGS, whom California and national media seek out whenever there's an earthquake in California
  • Jack Popejoy of L.A. radio station KFWB has a hazards "beat" among his interests and often shows up at hazards conferences to stay informed

• Second, those in non-governmental and victim advocacy organizations are in a position to play to the media's need for human drama by generating "newsworthy" events, including demonstrations.
  • media look for human drama and conflict in deciding what is newsworthy
  • a demonstration or staged confrontation sometimes generates the coverage needed to set victim and locality issues on the political agenda, particularly if the event is well publicized to media contacts

• Third, the Internet can be used to generate public interest in and support for victims' needs and the organizations trying to meet them
  • the web seems all the rage, but web pages depend on active audiences, people searching for a particular site or concept or following links
  • e-mail, listservers, and news groups are far more effective in getting the word out because of "chain-mail mathematics"
  • getting a message onto listservers or news groups can lead to passive recipients actively forwarding it to all of their Internet friends, who forward it to theirs, and so forth
  • the message's audience expands exponentially and can approach the numbers reached previously only by major national media conglomerates

Birkland, Thomas A. 1996. Natural disasters as focusing events: Policy communities and political response. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 14, 2: 221-243.

2     Media criticism:

Fischer, H.W., III. 1999. Using cyberspace to enhance disaster mitigation, planning and response: Opportunities and limitations. Australian Journal of Emergency Management 14, 3: 60-64.

Herman, E.S. and Chomsky, N. 1988. Manufacturing Consent. New York: Pantheon Books.

Kasperson, Roger E., et al. 1988. The Social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework. Risk Analysis 8: 177-187.

Rovai, Eugenie L. 1994. The social geography of disaster recovery: Differential response to the North Coast earthquakes. Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers 56: 49-74.

Singer, E., and Endreny, P.M. 1994. Reporting on risk: How the mass media portray accidents, diseases, disasters and other hazards. Risk: Health, Safety, and Environment 5, 3: 261 ff. Available at: http://www.fplc.edu/risk/vol5/summer/singer.htm.

Smith, Conrad. 1992. Media and Apocalypse: News Coverage of the Yellowstone Forest Fires, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, and Loma Prieta Earthquake. Westport, CN, and London: Greenwood Press.

Rodrigue, Christine M. 2001a. Construction of hazard perception and activism on the Internet: Amplifying trivial risks and obfuscating serious ones. Natural Hazards Research Working Paper 106. Available at: http://www.colorado.EDU/hazards/wp/wp106/wp106.html.

Rodrigue, C.M. 2001b. Impact of Internet media in risk debates: The controversies over the Cassini-Huygens mission and the Anaheim Hills, California, Landslide. The Australian Journal of Emergency Management 16, 1 (Autumn): 53-61.

Rodrigue, Christine M. 2001c. The Internet and plutonium on board the Cassini- Huygens spacecraft. Risk: Health, Safety, and Environment 12, 3/4 (Fall): 221-254.

Rovai, Eugenie, and Rodrigue, Christine M. 1998. The "Northridge" and "Ferndale" earthquakes: Spatial inequities in media attention and recovery. National Social Science Journal 11, 2: 109-120. Available at: https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/nssajournal.html.