Why media coverage is circumspect over remains at WTC ( Media use FEMA footage)

USAToday ^ | September 27, 2001 | Peter Johnson

[Dan Day]

Holocaust footage of starving bodies heaped in mountainous piles serves an important historical purpose. I don't know how you balance that with respecting the families and the obvious pain these images are going to cause. But I'm very much afraid that if we sterilize this event, make it as pretty and as innocuous as possible, we will have social disconnect and denial. I have this sad lost feeling that we NEED to know EXACTLY what was done to us. We need to see the wound, count the stitches, LOOK at it and come to grips with it rather than hide it neatly beneath some curtain of government censorship. I don't want to look at it. I really don't. But I know darn well that if we didn't have the visual evidence of what happened at Dachau, at Auschwitz, in Cambodia and all the places where humankind turned into demons capable of unspeakable acts, we will NOT keep in mind what the culprits really are. It will become to us some kind of vague accident, like any other explosion, crash, or fire. It is HARD ENOUGH to try to comprehend and believe in evil. Many liberals don't even TRY. If we shy away from the proof of it, we fall into the trap of being ready to excuse it. There will be nothing visceral to hold our attention and make our will to punish the culprits remain focused.

Thank you -- I was going to post something similar, but you've said it better than I could.

[Chemnitz]

True enough. I remember everyone agreeing that it was good to leave Saddam in power. I kept asking, "Since when does someone start a war and burn oil wells and stay in power?" Now everyone thinks he should have been removed in the Persian Gulf War. Group think is aided by the media, but the media needs a faithful and obedient nation so they can be our priests.

[ChemistCat]

You and I will not forget. But I was listening to the radio this morning and the DJs were making JOKES about terrorist attacks. Very tasteless jokes, in my opinion. That's part of the desensitizing that has already started. Anti-war protesting is still very minimal but gets maximum coverage. New Yorkers can't get away from this--it is in their air. Dust from the bones of the dead sifts down onto their battered hands while they work with their buckets. I am told that many rescuers are going through several pairs of leather work gloves each day. Rescue dogs get so depressed at finding no one alive that firefighters must hide in the rubble to give them someone to find--so the vital search dogs will eat their kibbles when they get too tired to work and must be carried away.

Those who are given this first-hand imagery will not forget. But watch. In three months those who saw just a little on the news will balk at the grim and thankless task of going after the culprits. By then the images of the crash and the collapses will have receded. They'll vaguely remember that Bush made a good speech but by then everyone will be talking about the social security lockbox again and the economy. Anti-abortion advocates have found that if people see pictures of aborted fetuses, it informs them that these were human babies, not wads of anonymous tissue excised like a tumor. Who can imagine 7,000 dead? I can't. I don't think you can either. I can bring up vague images of stadiums full of cheering fans, and imagine all the voices suddenly stilled in a flash of flames. But I have only a few times in my life seen buildings as big as the WTC. When that airplane crashes into the tower, my mind, conditioned by Star Wars special effects, refuses to accept that this is REAL. I'm not there. I can't smell the still-smoldering jet fuel or rotting bodies, I can't feel the annoying flies landing on me with feet that maybe just a few minutes before had crawled on the hand of a baby victim.

I live 3 blocks away from the path of the biggest tornado ever recorded. The events of that day and the ensuing weeks are VERY vivid to me. I had friends dug out of the rubble of their homes, having survived a minivan from blocks away landing right next to the closet they all were cowering in. I saw the peculiar look of the sky when at last I came out of my home. I heard a thousand emergency vehicle sirens all going at the same time, I smelled the natural gas from broken gas lines. I picked up a cancelled check in my front yard that had blown there from someone's destroyed house 15 miles away. I took bundles and bundles of sorted and bagged baby clothes to shelters where homeless people collapsed each night. I saw the people get sunburned waiting because President Clinton had to come gawk at the wreckage, so they weren't allowed to go through the wreckage to recover whatever they could for a whole day. I saw President Clintons helicopter-cade zoom up and down the tornado damage path while on the ground his secret service kept people waiting in the sun so they could be a good photo-op for him while he promised everybody a free government-built storm shelter. (Of course, nobody actually got one as far as I know.)

I watched people rebuild their houses. I watched our property taxes double because the city had so much expense and loss of property taxes because of the people who did not rebuild. There are some lovely new homes. There are a lot of people who either died and couldn't rebuild or had to give up because of money or health.

What's my point? THe point is that I can tell people who don't live in Okalahoma that I'm a couple of blocks away from the damage path of the biggest tornado ever, on May 3, 1999, and they will usually look at me blankly or assume I'm from somewhere ELSE that had a notable tornado. I've had people say, "Oh, you must be from Salt Lake City" because that happens to be the tornado they remember.

If we are not careful to share this experience in its entirity with New York, we will detach from it. How many average civilians remember Khobar Towers? It was bloodier by far than the loss of Challenger, but people remember Challenger much better. Our tornado and Challenger were not DONE BY anyone. There is nobody to blame! BUT THIS EVENT IS DIFFERENT. We must NOT let America forget!!!!!! Look at some liberal news sources and watch how the flag has been suppressed, photos of the damage have been suppressed, and they're not showing us replays of the crashes anymore. Their agenda is still the same. They want a weakened, feminazi'd military, they want the Kyoto Protocols, they want US to take all blame for the world not being perfect. They want this event behind us so we'll go back to worrying about our car not looking new enough or our deoderant not working well enough. They want us to go back to being good little consumers, and the austerity of war will hurt that.

[Jack Black]

First off I'm not in the press. Secondly I'm not suggesting free access to anyone with a press pass. My suggestion was that instead of having a FEMA employee take pictures they should have a real press photographer do it. Thirdly I don't think the press are "more important" than anyone, just that they have a job to do. Threatening to take cameras away from citizens in the surrounding area sounds a little over the top to me.