Do Terrorists Kill Their Publicists?

Even in the best times, there's a little game New Yorkers play: the nothing-bad-can-ever-happen-to-me game. It's a necessary means of continuing to live in a city of eight million people, where the laws of statistics say that every now and then a horrible occurrence will make the news. Did a crazy man push somebody in front of a subway train? That couldn't possibly happen to me, you say. I never go to that subway station. I'm never out at that time of day. I never stand too close to the edge of the subway platform (do I?). Therefore, I am indestructable.

Sept. 11 changed the rules: from New York to the tiniest American towns, people began playing the everything-bad-can-happen-to-me game, the instigation of which is the basic objective of terrorism. But at the same time, some New Yorkers, desperate for some shred of comfort, started playing a new version of the old game — I don't work on Wall Street, we told ourselves, I'm not in a tall enough building, and so on. In the media, our inoculation of choice was an old truism: terrorists don't kill their publicists.

INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS Map: Hunting Osama Map: Nukes Pipeline Interactive: Taliban P.O.W. Revolt More Graphics Tora Bora Nukes Pipeline Taliban Revolt Last Bastions Women & Islam No Refuge Taliban on the Run Afghan Caves Mood of the Nation Mazar-I-Sharif Terrorist Timeline Al-Qaeda Suspects Flu/Anthrax Sharing Secrets Al-Qaeda's World Ground War 11.4.01 Bush Team Grades Bioterror Threats War in Winter Workplace Safety Afghan Targets Anthrax Pathogen A Ground War An Uneasy Ally Targets Hit Search & Destroy Firepower & Food Frozen Assets Safety Guide Mideast Leaders Agents of Death Afghanistan Military Buildup Terrorist Cells Our Weapons Deadly Paths Twin Terrors   CNN.com Latest news: War Against Terror RECENT COVER STORY Closing In Dec. 24, 2001 Past Issues Taliban Last Days Dec. 17, 2001 ----------------- Lifting the Veil Dec. 3, 2001 ----------------- Hunt for bin Laden Nov. 26, 2001 ----------------- Thanksgiving 2001 Nov. 19, 2001 ----------------- Inside Al-Qaeda Nov. 12, 2001 ----------------- Defender In Chief Nov. 5, 2001 ----------------- Going In Oct. 29, 2001 ----------------- The Fear   Factor Oct. 22, 2001 ----------------- Facing   the Fury Oct. 15, 2001 ----------------- How Real   Is the Threat? Oct. 8, 2001 ----------------- Life on the   Home Front Oct. 1, 2001 ----------------- One Nation,   Indivisible Sept. 24, 2001 ----------------- Day of Infamy Sept. 14, 2001   PHOTO ESSAYS Kabul Unveiled Taliban on the Run More Photos >>> MORE STORIES Where's OBL: Letter from Tora Bora Anthrax: Where the Investigation Stands TIME/CNN POLL: Americans Standing By Bush's War More Stories >>>

It was a rationalization as wilfully ludicruous and self-centered as any of the others people use to feel safe. And, apparently, just as empty. Anthrax exposure has now been reported at the offices of supermarket-tabloid publisher American Media, NBC News (via a letter addressed to Tom Brokaw which exposed his assistant) and, presumptively, ABC News (a producer's 7-month-old baby came down with the illness after visiting the offices, though no link has been proven). The media isn't the only target off the anthrax mailings, which have also hit a Microsoft office and the offices of Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. But as we say in the news biz, three examples make a trend.

There's no indication yet that the anthrax attacks came from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda. Another group, or a freelance copycat, might have done it (that's the thing about attacking the media: there's no lack of motive), although obtaining anthrax is not quite as simple as sticking a needle in a candy bar. And in one sense, it hardly matters. If someone sends you a package of death, it's hardly going to make you feel better that the package didn't carry Osama's return address.

Maybe the more interesting question is what anyone, bin Laden or otherwise, had to gain from it. If it was someone else piggybacking on al-Qaeda's publicity, they defeated the whole purpose of putting a scare into the media by not identifying themselves or giving their reasons. Given that the raison d'etre of terrorism is to generate attention and useful fear for a cause, any other group is wasting its spores by sending out an unacknowledged attack that Americans are likely to credit to someone else.

If it was al-Qaeda, some have suggested it was a fiendishly clever idea: hit the media through a means just scary enough to cause panic, but not deadly enough to kill off the messenger. The theory — especially popular among media members themselves, self-loathing as we are — is that the self-absorbed media would hype an attack in its own offices much more loudly than strikes anywhere else.

It's an attractive theory, given that journalists do consider themselves the center of the universe: we'll cover, say, the loss of 38 jobs at Inside.com far more intensely than the loss of 500 jobs at a steel plant. There's just one small problem with the theory. We're talking freaking anthrax here. In a nation already fixated on bioterrorism, any anthrax attack, however small and wherever located, would have started a feeding frenzy, media self-absorption or none.

OK, then, let's try theory 2: that al-Qaeda might target the media to scare America's opinion makers and weaken our resolve for war. It's as plausible a strategy as any. It's also almost certain not only to fail but to backfire. For it to work, you have to assume that the media will support the war to the extent that its members personally feel safe from terrorism. In fact, exactly the opposite is true. The Sept. 11 attacks hit New York and Washington, killing thousands in exactly the cities where the most powerful journalists and their bosses live.

There's at least one way in which we journalists are exactly like any other Americans: we don't want to die. And since journalists and their offices are disproportionately located in New York and Washington, we already felt disproportionately more threatened, long before any case of anthrax was known.

And by and large, we reacted by wholeheartedly supporting the war against terrorism both at home and abroad. Editorials and op-eds embraced such liberal-media bugbears as ethnic profiling. Writers were fired for criticizing George W. Bush. Dan Rather— who once had an on-air run-in with Bush's father — now swore his fealty to Bush the Younger on David Letterman. We put flags on our video graphics, our covers and our lapels. TV networks accepted an unprecedented administration request that they limit their airing of al-Qaeda videotapes. Fox turned over an hour of prime-time (albeit by bumping the very low-rated "Pasadena") for a special terrorism episode of "America's Most Wanted." A consortium of media groups even held off indefinitely on reporting the results of a study of the controversial 2000 presidential vote in Florida, which threatened to perhaps undermine the president's legitimacy. (Investigating the integrity of democratic elections is apparently unpatriotic while we're busy defending freedom).

Were we being patriotic? Trying to follow public sentiment? Maybe some of both. But a big part of the reason, if we're to be honest, is that we simply don't want to die. And call it inappropriate or laudable, that's what we were doing before we started shaking our mail for suspicious powder. Today you have Tom Brokaw clenching back purple rage on his own newscast and journalists around the country imagining their own kids in the position of that ABC producer's baby. (My own two-month-old visited my office a couple of weeks ago. He's doing fine; his dad's overactive, morbid imagination — that's another story.)

Of course, all this assumes a well-thought-out strategy on the part of the mail bombers. That's a big assumption. The mailings don't seem to be the work of an especially sophisticated mind; the attacker(s) were apparently at least dumb enough to believe that people like Tom Brokaw and Tom Daschle open their own mail. (You have to wonder, in fact, if some moron didn't target a group of supermarket tabloids in Florida simply because the parent company's name was American Media — look! it's the headquarters of the American media!) One of the many offenses of terrorism: it gives tremendous power to the ignorant.

Regardless, the upshot is that it just became that much harder for members of the media to play the nothing-bad-can-ever-happen-to-me game. Osama Bin Laden may have had something or nothing to do with it. But if he thinks these attacks are good news for him, he's not quite as media-savvy as we've made him out to be.