The Media Surrounding 9/11

It is astonishing to me that as many times as I have seen the footage of the attack on The Twin Towers and The World Trade Center over the last 16 years, such strong emotion is still evoked from me. It doesn't matter how many times I see it, it always catches me off guard to find that my eyes still brim with tears and I'm filled with an overwhelming sense of helplessness. I feel that it's one of those days that everyone remembers where they were and exactly what they were doing when the attacks occurred. I can recall sitting in my seventh grade art class and an announcement came over the PA system instructing our teachers to turn on the news immediately. In retrospect, I'm not sure this was the greatest thing for a bunch of young kids to be subjected to. At that time, the second plane hadn't hit the tower and we all sat huddled around starring at the television screen in stunned silence. I don't think that we were processing that this was reality that was occurring in front of our eyes. I was living in Indiana at the time, but no one could predict what else might be a potential target. We were dismissed for the day after being held in the gymnasium until our parents were able to collect us. It all felt like a movie. After all, all our young lives we had been made to feel like we lived in the safest country in the world. How could there possibly be an attack on America? I recall the following weekend when all the flights were grounded, the sky was eerily quiet. While the attacks were obviously all that America was thinking about, it seemed like we couldn't take a break from the tragedy. The media wouldn't allow us to become distracted by anything else and were so wrapped up in their feelings of outrage and fear of more attacks, that they neglected to do their jobs by remaining unbiased. These strong emotions were then projected onto their audience (the American people) who in turn, supported the war on Iraq and many participated in racial profiling. If a person looked like they could be from the Middle East, they were often associated with terrorism. I can recall seeing this in airports very frequently. Americans would become unnerved by the presence of a person that looked Middle Eastern on their flight and consequently report them as a "suspicious person."  The media was primarily motivated by fear that we were feeling collectively as a nation. I'm not sure in a situation such as 9/11 that they could have done their jobs properly by remaining unbiassed. Fear, however, breeds fear and this definitely should have been taken under more consideration during that delicate time.