[caption id="attachment_17093" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="Lydia Timmins,
Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Delaware"]
September 11, 2001. I saw none of the television coverage that saturated the airwaves. No, I lived it.
The day began for me as all my mornings did then—in a TV newsroom. As a news producer at NBC10 in Philadelphia, I produced a news/lifestyle program that aired at 10 a.m. That morning, I was on the phone with my husband in Newark. He was in the middle of telling me he had left his wallet in my car—when I looked up at the monitor with The Today Show on and said, “Breaking news—I gotta go.”
For just a moment the newsroom froze. Then we all leaped into action. My boss said to me, “Your show is cancelled. Get yourself to New York NOW!” I jumped into a news van with a photographer and reporter and we sped north. I won’t go into our speed, but we made it up the New Jersey Turnpike and within sight of the city in a little over an hour. Cresting a hill—the sight of a city in flames spread out before us. We went immediately to Liberty State Park where anything that floated was evacuating Manhattan.
Hundreds of people were running from boats—their clothes soaked with blood and ash. I saw a respectable looking businessman standing alone, so I walked up to him for an interview. He held a paper in his hand. An invoice, he said from an office on the 103rd floor. But now it was gone.
He began to cry, and so did I.
I met and touched many people that day: An 18-month-old child separated from her family, rescue workers begged us to put video of her on TV so her parents could find her; bankers with $800 Egyptian cotton shirts that would never be white again; people in robes and slippers who just ran as buildings crashed and burned; and a paramedic dazed and covered with blood, wandering through the crowd.
Each of these people had an experience, a story that deserved to be told. That is what news media from around the city and around the country did: tell the stories of those who could not themselves. To me, 9/11 represented the best of what American news media does—tells the stories and conveys the important information citizens need to function in society.
10 years down the line, could the media be doing a better job? Yes, of course. The lessons of that day have faded in our collective memories, despite the ready availability of videos that capture all the horror. But just because those lessons have faded does not mean they should be abandoned. The lessons faded, I believe, because the media (in all incarnations) is ephemeral. Newsrooms are designed to concentrate on the latest, newest, most interesting events. Most journalists believe the audience has a short attention span and is not interested in long, drawn-out discussions of issues. With my two decades of experience, I agree to some extent.
Yes, there are committed news consumers (perhaps you!) who are willing to read several newspaper pages that carefully dissect an issue, or watch an hour-long discussion of an important topic. But many of those who watch, read and listen to the news are not willing or able to devote that much time. Most Americans are trying to balance family, work and other responsibilities. They need information condensed into a more manageable timeframe. They need the information presented in a way that they can understand even if there are multiple distractions. That leads to a lack of depth in news coverage, and a preponderance of quick and easy answers that may or may not be correct.
Am I saying that the problems we see in our media are the fault of those who watch and read it? Yes. It is also the fault of the newsrooms which make little effort to do the hard stories, preferring to report again and again on trivial things, and to allow opinions to permeate editorial content. Communication is not a one way street. If you are dissatisfied with your plumber, your doctor or your co-worker, you have the option to speak up. If you don’t like what you see or hear from the media, make yourself heard! My research shows that journalists pay attention when audience members connect with them.
We should expect our media to choose to tell us important stories. We should expect those stories to contain context to help us understand situations, and not be opinion disguised as fact. We should expect stories that better our lives whether they contain information or entertainment—because we all need to smile sometimes.
The experiences we all had on 9/11 changed us. If we don’t like where that change is taking us 10 years later, we can choose a different path. We can choose to be active news consumers who request accountability and respect from our media. In turn, our media can respond in a way that enhances our citizen democracy.
Lydia Timmins is an Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware in the Department of Communication. She spent 22 years working in local TV news, including Delaware and Philadelphia, before seeking a career teaching the next generation of journalists.