My interest in the events of 9/11 has always been scholarly as well as personal. By 2001, I had already spent two decades latching onto public assassinations, wars, natural disasters, and acts of terror as part of a scholarly investment in violent public events. Having parsed them for what they might reveal about the changing state of journalism, I felt certain 9/11 would deliver important insights about the ebb and flow of journalistic practice.
Now I’m not so sure.
The events of 9/11 ruptured America’s sense of self. Because terror on United States soil was not part of the national mindset, 9/11 imploded the very idea of Fortress America that had been central to U.S. identity since the Cold War. This involved all the institutions that had tied their fate to the country’s, including journalism.
Journalists knew what to do in covering 9/11. Though it arrived with little warning, few precedents, and no available script, journalists reporting its events tapped into well-established conventions for covering unpredictable circumstances. Trained to go into overdrive around stories like 9/11, they readily took on 12-to-18-hour workdays as newsrooms upended beats and redistributed work tasks to provide wall-to-wall coverage. Local, national, and global desks converged, as did different news outlets sharing video and satellite footage. Advertising, music, sports, and entertainment programming was suspended. All journalists were assigned to some role in covering 9/11, a prescient decision because the story would not exit breaking news mode for weeks.
At the very beginning, journalists owned the story. They provided extensive information while reassuring and unifying the public. Though many journalists reported initially what they saw on the TV screen because they couldn’t get close to what the world came to call “ground zero,” resourceful adjustments kept them on top of developing angles.
9/11 became a story primarily for TV, radio, and print media because cellphones were limited to voice conversations and the internet was still finding its footing. Newsrooms experimented with features like The New York Times’ “Portraits of Grief” and “A Nation Challenged,” adding formats like scrolling news tickers and still photo galleries on TV to accommodate instantaneous updates. There was an uptick in international news. Amid a broad recognition of the value of collaborative newswork as well as Pulitzer Prizes and Peabody Awards for reporting and public service, there appeared to be reason to celebrate journalism. Much was said about the journalism to come — it would be less frivolous and ethnocentric, more context-driven, global, and contemplative.
But there was an underside to owning the story of 9/11. Other well-established conventions prompted journalists to foreclose reporting options. News of 9/11 turned into stories of good and evil, simple explanations that neglected to probe structural risks or non-U.S. views. In the name of national security, journalists too easily accepted the secrecy hiding the rationale of wars to come in Afghanistan and Iraq, military tribunals, Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, a shadow government, and detention of foreign nationals. More journalists asked “why do they hate us?” than “why — or how — did this happen?”
Much journalism turned fiercely patriotic, even jingoistic, at the same time as journalists separated into polarized domestic enclaves. What did it mean to rally around the flag? Too often, it meant failing to ask difficult but necessary questions or contextualize the longstanding U.S. role in the Middle East. It meant internalizing the Bush administration’s stand of “you’re with us or against us” while wearing flag lapel pins. It even meant demonizing Muslims and ignoring dissent.
Today, 25 years on, American journalism has more or less hung tight to the reporting patterns of 2001. It is still very good at covering crisis and produces very good reporting when stakes are high and decision-making fraught. Collaboration extends today across citizen journalists, influencers, activists, and digital content creators as a familiar part of newsmaking. We now experience events as an ongoing stream of digital updates delivered in real time shaped by the technology and platform of the moment.
But journalists still cover world events with many of the same beleaguered assumptions that we saw in 2001. A simple us versus them news frame. Deep domestic polarization alongside a hawkish form of patriotism. Excessive cronyism and insufficient questioning of officials on complex global issues. Ethnocentrism and Islamophobia. Inadequate context or structural explanation.
Though the circumstances where journalism lives have changed — more burnout, less stature, shakier funding models, shrunken workforce, intensified reliance on market logic, physical danger, news deserts, heightened public disinterest, distrust and detachment — today’s journalism looks very much like it did 25 years ago.
Why did 9/11 not change journalism in any meaningful way?
9/11 couldn’t impact journalism because coverage was not shaped by its events. Rather, the journalism we saw with 9/11 had been in place way earlier than 2001, dating at least back to the Cold War. Though the idea of Fortress America was ruptured by 9/11, American institutions mostly continued to act as if nothing had changed. Journalists largely borrowed old routines for coverage, even when the events of 9/11 rattled everything about America.
This is the most important impact of 9/11 on American journalism, and it is worrisome. If 9/11 did not change journalism, what will?
Coverage of 9/11 tells us journalists aren’t doing their job the way we need them to because they’ve not evolved adequately with the times. When the longstanding conventions for journalism are not workable in current realities, then not only journalism is at stake. No wonder America’s sense of self remains ruptured.
The world changed with 9/11. Journalism needs to change with it.
BARBIE ZELIZER is the Raymond Williams Professor Emeritus of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication. Her email address is barbie.zelizer@asc.upenn.edu.
