The Sept. 11 attacks shocked America in part because of reduced international news coverage, and they presented an emotionally challenging environment for professionals dealing with their effects, a Newsweek diplomatic correspondent and a University of Chicago psychiatrist said Monday afternoon.
About 100 students, faculty and community members gathered in a Fisk Hall auditorium to hear Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Roy Gutman and psychiatrist John Rolland as part of the Crain Lecture Series.
Americans did not understand why the Sept. 11 attacks occurred because of the reduced coverage of foreign affairs in the decade since the Cold War, said Gutman, Newsweek’s chief diplomatic correspondent.
“Who would have guessed … that there would be an attack on the American homeland, and that many people (around the world) would not be unhappy about it?” Gutman said.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a civil war continued in Afghanistan and war between Hindus and Muslims played out in the Kashmir region in the Indian subcontinent. But U.S. news coverage of the Arab world receded and practically disappeared from southern Asia, Gutman said.
One exception was the fine coverage of wars in the Balkans, which Gutman attributed to the atrocities of Slobodan Milosevic’s government.
Journalists should look at the attitudes of other nations toward the United States to learn why some justify the Sept. 11 attacks, Gutman said.
This would lead to an informed debate that could better influence the government’s actions.
“We are not as familiar as we should be of the world,” Gutman said. “I absolutely think foreign coverage is an essential element of news. This is a field the next generation should consider seriously.”
But before they board a plane for the Middle East, journalists and other professionals should consider how they will deal with working in a war zone, said Rolland, a psychiatrist with the Chicago Center for Family Health.
The press and the medical professionals at the scene have emotional reactions too, said Rolland, also a professor at the University of Chicago.
Rolland told the story of a doctor in Kosovo who treated 40 patients a day and cried between every one, but he always maintained his composure in front of the patients. The stamina of health professionals surrounded by death impressed him.
“Every physician deals with the fact that we’re mortal,” said Rolland.
Similarly, Rolland said Dan Rather’s stoic presence during his news broadcast, followed by his breaking down and crying on The Late Show with David Letterman, shows that even people of Rather’s stature can be overcome by their emotions. Rolland stressed that professionals can become better by showing emotion, because they become isolated if they don’t talk about the trauma.
Rolland also criticized the news coverage immediately following the attacks, saying that children watched the buildings collapse repeatedly and did not understand that the buildings were no longer standing.
Medill sophomore Allison Willis said she enjoyed hearing Rolland’s humanistic examination of the Sept. 11 events.
“The psychiatrist was able to take a viewpoint rarely heard from the normal Medill community,” Willis said. “It was good to hear feedback about media coverage from someone outside of the journalism community who seemed to look at the day’s events with more heart than head.”
