A couple of weeks ago, the local Hearst daily, like the vaunted New York Times, chose to bury inside the newspaper the story of a developing terror plot against New York’s JFK airport. The New York Times placed the story on page 37.
That prompted the new public editor of the Times to start his column early, with criticism of the decision:
My own view is that The Times story was very well reported and written. It quickly made clear that the accused men were a long way from action and that despite the apocalyptic comments of the U.S. attorney, their ability to carry out an attack on the airport was very much open to question.
But instead of being a reason to put the story inside, I think this was a compelling reason to keep it on Page 1. This reporting put the story in an appropriate perspective, far calmer than the day’s television coverage. Giving the story subdued play on the front page — toward the bottom, with a single-column headline — would have told readers that The Times knew what they were concerned about, that there was something real here, but that it wasn’t anywhere near happening and there was no need for alarm.
This is just the way The Times played the announcement last year of an alleged plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago — which seems to have had even less substance to it. That story appeared on Page 1, under a one-column headline, below the fold, even though the F.B.I. was quoted at the top of the story saying that the plan was ”more aspirational than operational.”
In contrast, the Chronicle‘s reader rep (who rarely criticizes editorial decisions made by Chronnies other than erratic features editor Kyrie O’Connor) defended the Hearst daily’s decision to bury the news in its Sunday edition:
Dan Cunningham, a Chronicle deputy managing editor for news who also oversees our Sunday package, agreed with [New York Times national editor Suzanne] Daley’s reasoning, but conceded that the decision to play the story inside was not an easy one. “We (Chronicle editors) did have a lively debate about it throughout the day Saturday and decided a blurb would be appropriate for A1 and then give the story prominent play inside,” Cunningham said.
Placing the story inside does not suggest that we take terror plots or threats lightly. A month ago, we published a Page One story about six people arrested in an alleged plot to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey.
Conversely, we put other terror plot stories — one, about the arrest a year ago of seven Miami men who were scheming to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and two, a plan to bomb underwater New York City train tunnels to flood lower Manhattan — inside Section A.
Perhaps another factor (but not an overriding one) in the decision for many editors around the country to place the JFK story inside, was that it broke on a Saturday. While the Chronicle looks for breaking news to put into the mix of pre-packaged Sunday Page One stories, the story has to be of significant weight to warrant changing the page.
Sadly, the bolded highlight probably was more “overriding” than Campbell can concede in his column. The Chronicle weekend edition is largely a package of ads and feature-type “news” that is concocted days earlier. Because there is only limited weekend staff, changes are rarely made unless not making a change would result in diminutive editor Jeff Cohen’s golfing buddies asking him what in the world he’s thinking and then laughing at him.
The Washington Times editorial page offered an interesting perspective on the matter:
[O]ver five years of asking Americans this question: “How concerned are you about the possibility there will be more major terrorist attacks in the United States?”, ABC News found last year that Americans give roughly the same response they did in only two months after September 11. Between a fifth and a third of the respondents said they worried “a great deal” in November 2001, and similar numbers have persisted since. The percentages of those who are “somewhat” worried stabilized in the low-to-mid 40s between the years 2001-06. “Not too much” bounced between 12 and 20 percent and “not at all” between 4 and 8. The margin of error is three percent.
This is remarkable constancy, especially in light of how President Bush’s approval numbers have plunged in polls conducted by the same polling firms over the same period. Other polls reveal a similar picture. Coupled with the “national priorities” data suggesting that terrorism is no longer a top concern, this suggests the public has come to regard terrorism like hurricanes or tornadoes. We worry, but there’s no point in obsessing about it, beyond focusing on regular checkups of emergency management agencies.
The changes in media perceptions are different. The media seemed bored with the revelation of a plot to blow up fuel dumps at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. We typed the words “terrorism” and “terrorist” into Lexis-Nexis to see how many entries we could find for the New York Times and The Washington Post over January of the years 2002-2007. We found a precipitous drop in the frequency of “terrorism”: 1,250 uses in the New York Times in January 2002 down to 512 in January 2004 and 328 five months ago. The drop was steady and steep. In The Washington Post it was 881 in 2002, 473 in 2004 and 297 this year. “Terrorist” dropped precipitously from 2002-04 as well, and steadily in smaller increments in both newspapers thereafter. We also checked the month of August, which, with the exception of the year 2004 and its noticeable election-year uptick, also trended downward.
The media reflects the public interest, and politically correctness, too. The gratuitous use of the dodge words “allegedly” and “authorities say” in stories buried back with the truss ads reveals an urge to be politically correct. The diminution of terrorism coverage nevertheless poses a dilemma for the organs of the media. The threat of terrorism is still there, whether the public and editors like it or not. The public and the media have been wrong before. They could be wrong again, with the inevitable regrets.
Sadly, some (*cough* *Hearst* *cough*) newspapers might just lament that serious coverage of the news may require that more staff give up their banker’s hours. Who wants that?
