Criticism is beginning to mount over increasing patriotic displays by U.S. television outlets, which commentators suggest may inhibit public debate over the government’s response to the Sept. 11 attack. Noting that television has a long history of ignoring overseas news, L.A. Weekly executive editor John Powers writes in its current issue: “Far from encouraging open discussion of what happened and how the country should deal with it … the media pushed the idea that a national consensus already exists. There was no serious argument about whether Afghanistan might prove to be a quagmire or whether we really should flatten Kabul, a city that already looks like a sand-wrapped village from the original Star Wars.”
In Israel, Robert Rosenberg, who publishes an Internet newsletter devoted to the peace process, posted a message on Online-News, an Internet discussion list for the news industry, that took American news networks to task for their lack of “critical reporting” about this country’s plans for a military response. Instead, he said, they have offered up a host of reporters who are “full of passion, rhetoric, and sentimentality, but somewhat at a loss to even begin trying to find out what happened, why it happened, and what actually has to be done.”
ABC’s response, in part, has been to forbid its reporters from wearing lapel flags. Today’s Washington Post quotes network spokesman Jeffrey Schneider as saying: “Especially in a time of national crisis, the most patriotic thing journalists can do is to remain as objective as possible. … That does not mean journalists are not patriots. All of us are at a time like this. But we cannot signal how we feel about a cause, even a justified and just cause, through some sort of outward symbol.”
