The Big Three networks are already talking about the focus of
their programming for the 2nd anniversary of the 9-11 attacks:
ABC News' Peter Jennings seemed to sum up all of the networks' attitudes when he said at one point during the Sept. 11 coverage last year: "This is not, it seems to me, the moment to have a policy debate."
Not this year.
ABC is brandishing its plans to spend five days that week on a series of reports across most of its news vehicles -- on television, radio and the Internet -- that will examine, in effect, if the war on terrorism is working. All of ABC News' shows will ask aggressive questions about al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden and whether the $20 billion spent on security was worth it.
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But CBS News senior vp news operations Marcy McGinnis conceded that the media might have hesitated at a time when patriotic fervor was sweeping the country. [emphasis added]
"It's been swinging like a pendulum back and forth," she said. "The press, they questioned authority a little bit less than they normally would after 9/ 11. The mood of the country was such, it was a very different time. The mood of the country was very much 100% rally around the president, and I think the media probably wasn't as tough as they normally are."
But in the past few months, she said, "It went the other way after the war was over. There were no weapons of mass destruction and no connection between al-Qaida and (Saddam) Hussein."
The stupidity of these statements defy the need for comment. For now.
