Headline ‘o the Day: Mea culpa edition
by digby
A few weeks after 9/11, Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian-born pilot, was arrested at his home near London’s Heathrow airport. He was alleged to have trained several of the 9/11 pilots during the time he had been a flight instructor in Arizona, from 1997 to 2000. The incriminating evidence included the fact that several pages of his flight log were missing during the period of time he was alleged to have trained one of hijackers. I was among the journalistic mob that staked out his house and interviewed his neighbors, and I wrote several articles about his arrest and the efforts by the Bush Administration to extradite him, relying on evidence gathered by the FBI.
I wince as I read them now. The articles appeared under the rubric “A National Challenged,” and their clear import of was that the FBI had a strong case linking him to the 9/11 attacks. A British court subsequently found that Raissi had been falsely accused—the pages were “missing” due to the negligence of law enforcement officials—and ordered that he be paid compensation.
The Raissi story is illustrative of how the media reported the “war on terror,” emphasizing national security over civil liberties. Editors behaved like politicians—they worried about putting the resources in places to cover the next terrorist attack, while paying scant attention to lives ruined by the erosion of civil liberties. When law enforcement officials, whether in Washington or New York, said they were worried that terrorists might use helicopters or crop dusters, it was a front-page story. The horror stories of individuals falsely accused of being a terrorist were buried inside the paper, if reported at all.
With the ruins of the World Trade Center still smoldering, Attorney General John Ashcroft told a congressional committee that a mosque in Brooklyn was funneling money to al Qaeda. It was the lead story in the New York Times. It turned out to be wrong, as the reporter, Eric Lichtblau, would later note, with remarkable candor and admirable journalistic integrity. Lichtblau understood why: “We in the media were no doubt swept up in that same national mood of fear and outrage,” he wrote in Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice.
I would just say this. The press’s behavior after 9/11 was egregious and terribly dangerous. But it was only the latest in a series of egregious examples of pack journalism. They get “swept up” by all kinds of things, most of which, thank goodness, do not result in disastrous military invasions. Whether it’s juicy tabloid scandal coverage or puerile mean girl clubbiness or lockstep pro-government conformity, when you sense that febrile excitement coming over the media be skeptical, even when it’s something with which you have some sympathy. The truth gets lost, innocent people are put through the wringer, false narratives get built, cynicism is reinforced and nobody who did it ever pays since it’s a collective crime in which we all partake in the end. All you can do is try to keep your own head straight. And it’s not easy.
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