The media fall in line.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: War on terrorism, United States

Watching the news media cover the catastrophe of September 11 and its aftermath has been like watching a fugitive seeking his way in uncharted territory, trying on different guises, testing out different routes, and toying with the merits of staying on the dark side or coming into the light. These shifts are hardly surprising, given that our news media rely so heavily on official sources, and that the man acting as President switched, in short order, from looking like a deer caught in the headlights to sounding like Rambo.

Retired generals were everywhere, with hardly a peace activist, academic expert on the region, or left-liberal journalist in sight.

An extraterrestrial watching the proceedings would assume that, with the exception of Condoleezza Rice, there were no women in the country capable of analyzing Middle Eastern politics, or of discussing war and peace. Female faces, with the exception of those of a few reporters, were wiped off the screen.

The repeated use of pictures of Osama bin Laden to personify all terrorists has contributed to warmongering, massive oversimplification, self-delusions about American purity and innocence, and a mythologizing of one man instead of a discussion of the broader trends and global conditions that got us to this dreadful point.

Evidence that some journalists were prepared, two days after the attacks, to submit to the most transparent news management was their willingness to buy the wholly unsubstantiated claim that George W. Bush had stayed away from the capital because Air Force One was a target. Some, like Peter Jennings, made it clear that they found this claim from Ari Fleischer hard to swallow (why would the terrorists call to warn about Air Force One, but not any other targets?), but by Friday CNN and others were in line. CNN's Kelly Wallace, in covering Bush's visit to New York after he had been faulted for seeming to hide in the closet for several days, reassured viewers that he was there "not in response to the criticism, of course," but rather that "we're just seeing the President out more."

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times wrote that Karl Rove was peddling the "White House was a target" line wherever he could, and that it has been "widely discredited." But you didn't hear that on TV. Instead, accepting Rove's explanation was a crucial turning point in getting much of the press to fall in line. By the time he appeared on David Letterman, Dan Rather said of George Bush, "Wherever he...