Media partly to blame for anti-U.S. feelings, some students and faculty say
By Matt Murphy, Reed Mercado and Robyn Shepherd

The American news media’s ethnocentric mindset and habit of ahistorical reporting may be partly responsible for stoking war fever, while the replaying of images without analysis fails to help audiences grasp salient facts, several NYU journalism professors suggested during a Monday conference arranged to discuss last week’s terrorist attack.

Holding up a copy of the Daily News with the front page headline: "Crusade," Robert Karl Manoff, director of NYU’s Center for War, Peace and the News Media, suggested that such sensationalism could provoke an escalation of hostilities. "We are setting in motion the law of unintended consequences," he warned.

Manoff spoke during a daylong "teach-in" the journalism department hosted in the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center on campus. The event was meant to offer journalism faculty and students a forum to discuss last week’s horrifying events.

Journalism department chair Jay Rosen said the talks were inspired by those sometimes staged in the 1960s, when sit-ins and teach-ins protesting the Vietnam War and advancing civil rights causes were common on campuses.

"We felt it would be strange -- in fact impossible -- to resume teaching, and pretend we have nothing new to teach," Rosen said. "In all the world, we are the closest journalism school to ground zero."

Faculty and about 100 students considered why the U.S. was so despised in some parts of the world, and how much of that was the news media’s doing.

Some speakers suggested that journalists are responsible not only for reporting events, but for analyzing events’ history and causes. "History is not the story of things coming out of the blue," said Prof. Susie Linfield. "You can’t depend on journalism to know about the world. It should not take 5,000 people incinerated alive in order to connect."

Though Prof. Mitchell Stephens suggested that the attack might be "simply a lunatic act," several students from Asia and the Middle East backed the idea that the actions of the U.S. government, and perhaps the U.S. media, have a hand in letting hate grow. "America kills innocent people all the time -- maybe not in the same manner -- but we never hear about any of it," said Aziz Ansari, a student from India who studies in the Stern School of Business.

"I do not condone the actions that took place, but people need to understand that this was an act of retaliation, not war," said Shereen Fahmy, a Muslim student from Egypt. "When Palestinians look at the ground and see that the tear gas shot at them by Israel was made in Pennsylvania, it is no wonder they were cheering in the streets Tuesday," she said, referring to film footage purportedly showing Palestinian villagers celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Prof. Todd Gitlin suggested that, as they carried out saturation coverage, some U.S. journalists eventually began to surrender to feelings of patriotism, which then threatened to interfere with their reporting responsibilities. "It is a profound human responsibility to have emotions," Gitlin said. "But the danger is when journalists succumb to those emotions."

Many appreciated the TV networks’ round-the-clock presence on the scene, though there was annoyance at the many inaccurate reports, and at a lack of historical framework. "I wanted the immediacy when it happened, but now I want the context," said Prof. Carol Sternhell.

With a wax-caked memorial still standing in Washington Square Park, some students still displaced from their dorms, and classes just reconvening, the mood at the teach-in, as on campus, was subdued. Rosen said that during his time at NYU, "this is the first event that was conceived in sadness, took place in sadness and ended in sadness."

 

Matt Murphy is the editor in chief of the Washington Square News; Robyn Shepherd and Reed Mercado are undergraduate journalism majors.