Since I read chapter 7 in Anthony Feinstein's book about how 9/11 affected the media, I've been thinking about my own experience with that tragedy. I was a sophomore in college and living in Tacoma. I first heard about the plane crashing into the World Trade Center from my roommate. She often got up earlier than I did and would go for a long bike ride, come back, shower and then get ready for the school. That's when I would usually roll out of bed. On that morning, I remember she rushed in and turned on the TV. I sleepily asked her to turn it off and her response felt urgent and even panicked. She said something like, "Trace, look what's happening." That got me up. I looked over at the screen of the small TV and saw the tower burning. I wasn't wearing my glasses, but I could still see the flames. The broadcaster's voice was shocked. The image seemed surreal. After that, I don't have any other memories of 9/11. I'm not sure why. I know that I continued to watch and read the coverage. But the event itself did not jar my reality like it did for some people. It was a tragedy. It was terrible. But for me, it was really far away and I didn't know anyone involved. Like the many tragedies I'd read about in the 90s, Rwanda, Bosnia, the first Iraq war, it was sad. But unlike Rwanda, Bosnia and and even to some extent Iraq, the event itself did not involve nearly as many deaths. In Rwanda alone, between half a million and a million people were killed. I know that it is never fair to compare tragedies, but I wonder if the scale had some effect on me. It could be that I was young and unconnected from it. If the same tragedy befell New York today, I might have a much different take.
In terms of Feinstein's research, 9/11 hit at an interesting time. He was already researching war journalists and this event gave him the chance to research domestic journalists who had essentially become war reporters. He wrote that when lives are violently taken, it is difficult for people to grapple with because there is "no victim hierarchy." He also wrote that the shock and revulsion of the viewer lies on a sliding scale. Perhaps the event didn't hit high on the scale because I was thinking in terms of global events, but other Americans were thinking in terms of New York events or American disasters. In that case, it would be hard to find a recent event that killed that many Americans on American soil. The one significant difference between the war journalists and the domestic journalists who covered 9/11 was that the domestic journalists had higher hypervigilance scores. They were jumpier. My guess is that the war journalists just got used to the shelling and the constant sound of guns in the background, while the domestic journalists replayed the same event over and over again, but experienced it just once, so they didn't have a chance to get used to it. Or perhaps it's something else entirely. He explains that the domestic journalists had to re-watch the coverage again and again as they reported it in the following months, but war journalists are assaulted with war every day as well. So, it would be interesting to ask Feinstein what he thinks attributed to the increased hypervigilance of the domestic reporters.
In terms of Feinstein's research, 9/11 hit at an interesting time. He was already researching war journalists and this event gave him the chance to research domestic journalists who had essentially become war reporters. He wrote that when lives are violently taken, it is difficult for people to grapple with because there is "no victim hierarchy." He also wrote that the shock and revulsion of the viewer lies on a sliding scale. Perhaps the event didn't hit high on the scale because I was thinking in terms of global events, but other Americans were thinking in terms of New York events or American disasters. In that case, it would be hard to find a recent event that killed that many Americans on American soil. The one significant difference between the war journalists and the domestic journalists who covered 9/11 was that the domestic journalists had higher hypervigilance scores. They were jumpier. My guess is that the war journalists just got used to the shelling and the constant sound of guns in the background, while the domestic journalists replayed the same event over and over again, but experienced it just once, so they didn't have a chance to get used to it. Or perhaps it's something else entirely. He explains that the domestic journalists had to re-watch the coverage again and again as they reported it in the following months, but war journalists are assaulted with war every day as well. So, it would be interesting to ask Feinstein what he thinks attributed to the increased hypervigilance of the domestic reporters.
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