News media struggle over how to report terror warnings

By The Associated Press,
freedomforum.org staff

05.25.02

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NEW YORK — As warnings about terrorist attacks stream out of Washington, news media are growing more skeptical of what motivates the alerts and concerned about striking a balanced tone that won't needlessly scare their audiences.

The recent surge in terrorism warnings from government officials got into high gear on May 19 when Vice President Dick Cheney said the chance of more al-Qaida attacks against U.S. targets was "almost a certainty."

The barrage of warnings since then has caused intense debate in many newsrooms over how to handle the stories. News executives are trying to balance the need to convey vital information to the public with the need for appropriate tone and context.

Paul Slavin, executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight," said the timing of Cheney's May 19 remarks was "too coincidental" with the emergence of questions over what the White House knew about threats of attacks before Sept. 11. As a result, "we applied a more rigorous political analysis to the story," he said.

John McWethy, ABC News national security correspondent, told viewers in a May 21 broadcast that "the Bush administration, burned by accusations that it failed to tell all it knew about terrorist threats, has now decided the public must be told more ... even if there is not much new to tell."

Still, news outlets are evaluating each warning on its own merit, even if they are uncertain if political motivations lie behind the sudden increase in warnings.

"There are people who say the government is putting this out there to put reporters off the path of asking what they knew before 9-11," said Jim Murphy, executive producer of CBS' "Evening News." "Are they doing it definitely? I don't know. They also could be disturbed by the information they have and feel compelled to share it with the public."

Several warnings from senior administration officials have received wide attention in the past few days, particularly FBI Director Robert Mueller's statement on May 20 that walk-up suicide bombings like those in the Middle East are bound to be tried in America.

But when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the next day that terrorists would "inevitably" get their hands on weapons of mass destruction and use them, it didn't create quite as big of a stir, partly since it came on the heels of so many other nonspecific warnings.

Ward Bushee, editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, played the Rumsfeld story inside the paper.

"On day three or four of these announcements that massive destruction could happen, it's no longer all that surprising given all the other voices in administration," Bushee said.

"Our readers want to be informed but not overly alarmed," he said. "There is a new reality out there that terrorist threats may occur with regularity."

It's an awkward place for journalists to be — demanding more information from government officials about terrorism warnings just at the time that skepticism is rising about the administration's motives for providing it.

It may be that an increase in terror alerts is partly a result of officials' trying to answer reporters' questions, and partly a result of new levels of intelligence "chatter."

On May 21, presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said in a White House press briefing, that some of the warnings were made "more as a result of all the controversy that took place last week, just an effort by people who were on the (television news) shows to answer questions, because they're reflecting things about the generalized level of alert and concern we have."

Fleischer added: "And, of course, there has been a recent increase in the chatter that we've heard in the system, and that was reflected in what [officials] have said. So I think they're doing their level best to answer questions that people have."

For Tim McGuire, editor of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis and the outgoing president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the role of news outlets is clear. "I think there will be a lot of second-guessing about the government's approach, but it's our job to put it out there," he said.

"It would be dishonest not to report prominently what the government reports," McGuire said. "What you're seeing right now is the evolution of a communications policy, and this is not any time for the press to be superimposing its judgments about the legitimacy of threats."

Bill Wheatley, executive vice president of NBC News, said every warning received a thorough examination in the newsroom. "There's more deliberation in our news meetings about what government officials are saying, what it's based on, and whether it's fact or opinion," Wheatley said. "We've talked about this a lot in the past few days."

Tim Franklin, editor of the Orlando Sentinel, played a story about a threat to his city's water supply inside the paper because the details were "incredibly thin."

"It's not my place to say the government is overcompensating, though they do seem to be covering themselves by revealing a lot more information about threats to the public," Franklin said. "But pretty soon numbness is going to set in, if it hasn't already."