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Introduction:
The media failed us after 9/11, Jannie Botes observes, because they were too caught up in it.
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Failure of the Media After 9/11
Jannie Botes
Assistant Professor, Program on Negotiations and Conflict Management, University of Baltimore
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We've sort of talked about this but
the current Gulf War; I think was a great example of where American journalism
failed us, the public. In the sense that in the aftermath of 9/11 and we've sort
of talked about this, to a degree they deferred to the government on whether
this war should occur or not. Now to a degree I think the vehement criticism of
the 16 words that should or should not have been in the speech made by President
Bush is that American journalism is playing catch up. It's sort of a guilty
conscience over the fact that they didn't really do what is a major role of the
media in all conflict reporting is reality checking. Is it really necessary for
us to go to this war? Are there really weapons of mass destruction? What's the
motive behind this? And I think we're slowly coming to the realization that
again, the British Press and the European Press did a much better job of this
than did the American press at the time because they were further away from the
conflict and so they could be less patriotic and more neutral and objective or
be forced to be. That is another story in terms of international view, and
stories which is the whole argument about "do the media have the strength
to go against the main stream public view at the time," which might be
abused by politicians? Connected to the business parts of that because the worst
thing that can happen to a media organization is to do the right thing but to
pay the commercial price for doing the right thing. That's a part of our tragedy
of conflict reporting. Then you would ask the question about, what role would
journalists have in terms of conflict resolution?
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