Has international broadcasting changed after September 11, 2001?

Undeniably, the September 11, 2001 terror attack, also known as 9/11 significantly affected several areas of American as well as human life in general. Such act is considered form of terrorism or the premeditated use, or threat of use, of extra-normal violence to obtain a political objective through intimidation or fear directed at a large audience (Sandler & Enders 2002). Terrorist attacks, like the 9/11 and its aftershocks are characterized by political objectives. If it is not embedded to a political objective, otherwise they are cannot be considered as terrorist acts but criminal acts. Additionally, terrorists often direct their violence and threats toward a vulnerable target group, not immediately involved with the political decision-making process that they seek to influence (Sandler & Enders 2002). With the effects of this historical happening, the world affairs are affected in one way or the other. Aside from triggering worldwide cooperation, the 9/11 tragedy paved way to some notable changes in different sections of the society and the world. Among the most affected areas of the said terrorists attack are international economics, politics and world relations, foreign business and trade, tourism, and media – both broadcast and print.   Primarily, there is a need to briefly elaborate the nature of international broadcasting to establish the rationale behind the broad scope of the topic. International broadcasting, according to Wikipedia.org, is a specialized area of broadcasting that purposively intended to a foreign audience. Instead of catering to the need of the domestic location, it chooses to reach diverse kind of audience by using specialized waves. Today, with the advent of modernization and information technology, satellite broadcasting and the Internet are among the new means of reaching international audiences. Additionally, international broadcasting by the television or radio and its programs as media, serve for the purposes of information dissemination, propaganda, transmission of culture and religious beliefs, communication with allies and colonies, education, trade and commerce, and proliferation of national stature. To reach a global TV audience, a media outfit must expand within satellite broadcasting, a pond with room for only a few big fish, and it has therefore sought alliances with other broadcasters (Crisell 2002).   This paper sought to answer the query that served as the title of this report. It also aims to provide some information about the adverse and beneficial effects of 9/11 tragedy most especially to the field of international broadcasting.   Media and 9/11: a Brief Historical Account The development of human communication paved way to the launching of broadcast satellites and the spread of cable television. It initiated technical change that massively accelerated the use of personal computers. Meanwhile, the telephone industry was re-organized and broadcasting deregulated or, elsewhere in the world, it was privatized. The communication system, suffering from massive excess capacity, entered into a phase of merger and acquisition that absorbed once proud news organizations into larger entertainment enterprises that were increasingly global in reach. Traditional news media, such as newspapers and magazines, redefined themselves as part of the "information industry" in order to find a niche in which they might survive in the new order. As firms grew larger, news in the traditional sense became a smaller and increasingly insignificant part of total corporate enterprise. Freed from effective requirements to serve the "public interest, convenience, and necessity," broadcasting operations were subject to ruthless cost-cutting and paring in order to make an appropriate contribution to the bottom line of increasingly rationalized and bureaucratized corporations.   Historically, news media have been constrained by the presentational requirements of the medium, such as the length of time of a broadcast or the number of pages available to a daily newspaper. But now, the Internet has altered these constraints and provides the opportunity to educate, inform, and provide alternative readings and diverse perspectives of events. With the convenience brought about by this evolutionary media, the real action will be several minutes ahead and then it will be visible afterwards within a click-of-the-mouse. The news media play a particularly significant role in responding to, recreating, and constructing historic events for several reasons (Bailey, Brown, & Chermak 2003). According to the said editors, the role of media is: first, there is an expectation that the news media represent the public at such events. The public was starved for information and interpretation. Almost all citizens wanted to know what had occurred, who was able to do such damage, and what additional risks existed. People turned to various media, and when Internet sites shut down because of the congested traffic, users went to other sources. With this expectation comes the enormous responsibility that the media will uncompromisingly fulfill its role as informant and watchdog of society. Second, the news media was important because of their access to the places of destruction. The distribution of technology within society has provided an astonishing number of accounts. Third, news media have positioned themselves to offer nonstop and seemingly comprehensive coverage. The events were recorded and relived as broadcast stations halted all other programming, newspapers expanded in length to provide written accounts, and media organizations immediately began packing additional information on their own web sites.   This is what exactly happened with the September 11 incident. This was an extraordinary incident that created a "spectacular" – may it be on the Internet or on the TV screen. It was a total spectacular, not in the exact essence of the word, but it pertains to the producing and broadcasting such visual images of the sort that millions of Internet and TV viewers all over the world must have watched on that day, unable even to blink, and the collective act of watching them intently, necessarily turned the events into a spectacle (Walker & Gokay 2003).               Various institutions were affected after the massive catastrophe. Just after the attack, the world media – broadcast and print in nature immediately came into covering the whole story. In each of the different news media, the realignment of priorities took shape in different ways. In US during the early hours after the attacks, the four major television networks agreed to share video and satellite footages. They suspended their regular programming in their cable and satellite stations. Instead of showing entertainment formats revolving around music videos, sport, or films began broadcasting, news feeds were presented. This sudden shift of programming resulted to decrease or disappearance of the most number of commercials. Hence, it cost the country's media outlets hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue especially during the dates of September 11 and 12 (Zelizer & Allan 2003, p.4).   Looking beyond the television coverage, the importance of the other news media comes to the fore. Radio broadcast simultaneously joined worldwide coverage of the event. Several radio stations began broadcasting live television news feeds. Others produced their own reports direct from the different scenes, bringing to mind, for some listeners, Edward R. Murrow's wartime broadcasts from London (Zelizer & Allan 2003, p.6).   Further, Aufderheide (2001) pointed out that the incident "was a moment when the training of professional journalists to use skepticism in the service of accuracy clashed with the role of the only national mass media-the television networks-to provide emotional reassurance." In the field of print media, one New York Times reporter's words states that: "The images were terrifying to watch, yet the coverage was strangely reassuring because it existed with such immediacy, even when detailed information was scarce. Imagine how much worse the nightmare would have been if broadcasting had been destroyed. On a day of death, television was a lifeline to what was happening (James 2000, A25)."   Initially, the narrative appeared to be almost made for television. Because of the immediacy, details, visual and aural benefits, and as well as the experience of being-in-action, television broadcast is preferred by people as the means to see the happenings (Aufderheide 2001). The 9/11 was depicted in such ways that the people are wanting for more visual and detailed illustrations to satisfy their yearnings. The presentations the broadcasters offer to the audience elicit further need to know what really had happened. Hence, the role of the responsible journalist was under a series of test for the validity, credibility, and accuracy of reports being made. It is considered that this terrorist attack is certainly among the worst events in American as well as world history today. Their occurrence at a time when society is both consumed and connected by its media gave the events dramatic significance. It also opened the events up to the possibility of a wide range of conflicting interpretations. For news organizations, nothing else was important except events related to the attacks and the response to it. The full responsibility of the broadcast journalists and the rest of the media advocates are to deliver the fair and truth information that will eventually provide answers or solutions to the needing public. There is no room to neglect such prime and institutionalized responsibility in performance of societal duty. The eventual and consistent coverage of the whole event is subject to the underlying principles and objectives of international broadcasting and media responsibility as a whole.   The Catalyst of Change: the Aftermath of 9/11 Terror Attack   Foreign broadcasting may be projected as a modern approach that extends its imperatives to the national public sphere. This genre of broadcasting focused exclusively on those international regions located on the political periphery of their home countries. Communication technologies helped to support the political and commercial spheres of influence abroad. In fact, this was the major purpose of employing new technological advancements – to established political, social, cultural, etc. awareness and involvement among nations and its people.   Taking this instance, the world wire and cable systems improved military communication as well as communication with governments of colonized countries (Zelizer & Allan 2003, p. 243). This contemporary approach to internationalization continued in a moderated form even through the first satellite decade, simply because the satellite technology did not allow other means of communication between countries. It was also as expensive as it was exclusive. News alliances were formed, such as the European Broadcasting Union (and the newspool "Eurovision"). However, foreign broadcasting still "mediated" international foreign events from a strictly national point of view.   Since the media is considered as the fourth estate and the ultimate catalyst of change, its scope of coverage is trusted by people who use it for personal uses and gratifications. In times like this, people are glued in front of their television sets, radio, and the Internet in order to see, heard, and "feel" the action and information themselves. In "Journalism and political crises in the global network society" written by Ingrid Volkmer, a CNN worker, she argues that the obvious aftermath of September 11 was that "news media are playing a new role in a globally enlarged public sphere". She added that this period of internationalization of the news media allowed national broadcasters extended their national coverage across the borders and reflected international events in the dimension of "parachute journalism". This role challenged global news channels, such as CNN, which developed a new worldwide journalism," through new program formats and journalistic styles of reporting. Volkmer argues that since September 11 it has become obvious that the concept of the national public sphere has again changed and revolutionized. Given the global interconnectedness and collaboration of media, the public sphere has become increasingly integrated into a global network society, with new sub-national and supra-national coordinates, and-in consequence-new players and alliances, such as Al-Jazeera, the broadcasting station from Qatar. Given this up-to-the-minute news infrastructure, conventional formats of "domestic" and "foreign" journalism have to be reviewed, in order to define the particular role and responsibility of journalism in a global public sphere (cited in Zelizer & Allan 2003, p. 21).   When broadcasting came upon the scene as an essentially entertainment medium, it was saddled with the responsibility of serving the public interest, convenience, and necessity. As stated by Bailey, Brown, & Chermak (2003), the role of media to provide the fearless, balance and existing truth among the public should be in its total execution when it comes to international broadcasting. To meet that burden, broadcasting stations and networks created news departments that adopted the ideology preserved in radio and television. The requirements of regulatory law attempt to perform as independent arbiters of truth and promoters of the values and norms of modernity.   The news coverage of international affairs has been increasingly neglected over the recent years. News delivery and coverage has been a substantive treatment of historical context in news accounts, leaving audiences to make sense of events without the benefit of reporting concerned with the cultural, economic, and political factors underpinning them. But with the terror attack that the U.S. encountered, international correspondence of mass media reawakened its full functions and operations. There is a sudden revival of the one of the most powerful agent of communication and change – the media. Further, with the historical nuisance, the world mass media strengthened their cooperation and unity in search for the truth and delivering the people the most reliable and useful facts right in the comfort of their houses in from of their television sets and computer monitors.   Newspapers, magazines, broadcast news, and the Internet published millions of accounts to define what happened. These diverse interpretations of the rationale behind the event led to different characterizations and elucidation from the media and its agents. After the September 11 attacks in the U.S., the international media find a new way to lure the audience with the power they posses in the practice. The popular culture outlets, also participated in these definitional processes, as television shows referenced what happened, they showed real life drama and testimonials of the family of victims of the incident. The human drama was perfectly depicted in the use of visual and aural medium as well as the factual presentation of what really had happened. Furthermore, some movie releases were delayed because of the similarities between the fictional images and the realities of what happened due to the fact that various media defined it in different perspectives. Even singers/songwriters, poets, and novelists told stories in an attempt to make sense of what happened with their own intellectual and personal understandings. But of course, with the immediacy of the delivery of news and other information essential to the creation of such definitions, the changes in international broadcasting are distinguished and to be considered as avant-garde. With such happenings, the world awakened its full sleeping state of across the border news and now taking its big leap on developing international broadcasting as well as journalism.               The eventual process of globalization and the internationalization of almost all aspects of human life, the role of international broadcasting or media as a whole generating entity play a moral, societal, economical, as well as survival means to augment the further needs of the people. Modernization of the once-upon-a-time traditional processes and systems are known to everybody that is affected because of international delivery of news and information. Matters of the state, foreign relations, cultural cooperation, peace and development among conflicting nations are bridged by the fact that international broadcasting or media in general, plays its definitive and standard role in nation-building.   Again, after the earth-shattering fall of the Twin Tower, the world changed. Many, if not all were affected with its fall. The Ground Zero left a great lesson to the history of mankind. In connection to international broadcasting, the 9/11 tragic happening served as the global stimulant to risen the importance of international broadcasting. It triggered the full cooperation and involvement of the once so-called misanthropic individuals of the society to take time to accustom themselves to the vital changes that affects the lives in one way or the other. International broadcasting, being one of the most revolutionary, fastest, reliable and factual means of information dissemination to almost all parts of the globe, served its ultimate goal – to deliver the news in service to the people and in humble performance of duty.   Conclusion This paper is about the effects of September 11 attack and how various media were affected and engaged into changes just after the drastic courses of events. With the important and specific meanings as well as the ignored other presentations in interpreting the consequences of the event especially in lieu to international broadcasting, the question of reliability, fairness, and credibility among media outfits and its correspondents is taken into close significant attention. It is considered that these terrorist attacks are certainly among the worst events in American as well as world history today. Their occurrence at a time when society is both consumed and connected by its media gave the events dramatic significance. It also opened the events up to the possibility of a wide range of conflicting interpretations.   With the information accumulated from the research done, there is indeed a significant change in the field of international broadcasting. The proliferation of various media networks that operates in international market show that the broadcast industry is not just a profit-oriented and promising business venture but it is one of the fastest, reliable, and up-to-date technique to deliver the audience the necessary information needed at hand. The tragic happening at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 paved way to the amplification of the worldwide operation of mass media. International broadcasting opened the eyes of people and builds a feeling of social awareness and involvement to the significant events that the worldwide community holds. Worldwide knowledge and potential peace-making ability that is induced by the ongoing development of the international broadcasting community will truly contribute to the development of the system itself and the beneficiary of the service it offered – the masses.   International broadcasting will always be one of the most necessary fields of mass communication and media. With its rapid advancements and potential developments, its ultimate mission to serve people in the comfort of their houses is undeniably possible. The cooperation among mass media practitioners will open wider horizons for global understandings and education among individuals by using the information being gathered in everyday encounter in the field. Little by little, international broadcasting can be a potential peace-making instrument in the emerging battle of worldwide political and economical dominance and leadership.   Most researchers decided that the best approach to take stock of the wealth and breadth of images, ideas, and accounts available to be analyzed was to connect with scholars from different disciplines. The events of September 11 indeed were seeping into some academic work, but the reality that other scholars, who long had an interest in understanding the constructed realities and the significance of the media world, would be struggling to make sense of what was being said and ignored in various media outlets about the tragedy.