All the news you never read
By SHAWNA RICHER
Saturday, October 20, 2001 Print Edition,
Page F1
When newspaper editors the world over
arrived at their desks early on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, they
were already mulling over the stories they planned to pursue.
In the newsroom of The Globe and Mail, editors were excited about a
piece about Patrick Dolan Critton, a man who was captured the previous
weekend for hijacking an Air Canada jet in the 1970s. Simon Houpt, The
Globe's New York correspondent, had interviewed Critton the night
before.
The editors also expected to get a front-page story out of someone who
had become a trusty Canadian-media standby in 2001 -- Stockwell Day.
They were keen to follow a story about Canadian Alliance rebels who
were about to shun their former leader and form an unprecedented joint
parliamentary unit with the federal Progressive Conservatives.
Readers of The Globe never saw those stories, and likely never will.
Instead, they found an 88-page paper on their doorsteps that Wednesday
morning, 52 pages of which were wholly dedicated to the terrorist attacks
that resulted in the destruction of the World Trade Center's twin towers
and part of the Pentagon, and the deaths of more than 5,000 people.
Dozens of stories were spiked that day. Many more were discarded in the
weeks to come, giving way to copy about rescue and recovery efforts, a
city grieving and rallying, the attacks on Afghanistan and search for
Osama bin Laden, and anthrax scares at home.
California Congressman Gary Condit, who was entangled in the saga of
missing intern Chandra Levy, disappeared from the news pages himself,
and hasn't been heard of since. An audit of last year's contentious U.S.
election -- a recount meant to establish whether George W. Bush or Al
Gore really won the Florida vote, and thus the presidency -- was
suppressed by the same group of powerful media outlets that originally
commissioned it.
"Plenty of stories that loomed so large before Sept. 11 now seem awfully
small indeed," said Howard Kurtz, media reporter for The Washington
Post and host of CNN's Reliable Sources. "Gary Condit has become
Gary Who? Some of these stories are being shoved inside the paper.
Others aren't getting done at all."
In New York, the papers aren't covering killings any more. The gruesome
slaying and dismemberment earlier this month of Afghan filmmaker Jawed
Wassel by one of his movie financiers in New York rated just 283 words
on Page 11 of the New York Post. It would have been the trashy daily's
cover story at any other time.
All the news that's fit to print has become all the news you've never read.
Overwhelmingly, obsessively, the "war on terrorism" is the news agenda
now. Not since the Second World War has an event demanded such
staggering newsroom resources. It offers reporters and editors a story that
is constantly escalating, and encourages newspapers to do what they do
best -- educate.
But 40 newspaper deadlines have passed since that awful morning. Who
knows what we haven't been told along the way? When Mike Harris
announced his resignation as Premier of Ontario this week, it was the first
non-war story newspapers in Toronto, Canada's biggest newspaper
market, gave any real attention.
The investigation of the Air Transat plane that ran out of fuel in midair on
Aug. 24, which had topped The Globe's daily news agenda, vanished
from the news along with Condit, Mariah Carey and J.Lo. The serious
and the stupid became equally vulnerable.
"The utter fascination with one story almost always means the other
significant information people need to carry on their civic lives is lost," said
Vince Carlin, chairman of the school of journalism at Ryerson Polytechnic
University. "But it's hard to condemn the full coverage becasue it still
accords with the interest of the population. That was not true with other
stories such as O.J. [Simpson], when the networks kept up after the
general public's interest was gone."
When news becomes catastrophic, do readers' values change? Roy Peter
Clark, senior scholar at the Poytner Institute for Media Studies in St.
Petersburg, Fla., thinks so. "One of the things that's happened, at least
here in the States, is that Sept. 11 revealed the shallowness of a lot of our
news reporting of the 1990s," Clark said. "Politics, scandal, sex and
celebrity seemed to be the constellation from O.J. Simpson to Gary
Condit. . . . This single event might actually restore the paradigm of
serious news. I hope it does."
Novelist and essayist Kurt Andersen, founder of Spy and Inside
magazines, says that is doubtful. He believes that the news agenda was
already, slowly, starting to shift "back to normal" before a litany of anthrax
scares swamped front pages this week. "Absent nationwide epidemics or
huge, terrifying bombing incidents, if this whole thing becomes a constant
but managable and not perpetually terrifying state of being, with
expectation it will be relegated to a section," he said. "We were getting to
that landscape.
"There's a lot of pretty inconsequential stuff in the news on any given day,
stretching to get an audience or fill the time. These days makes many
journalists happier about their job. There are a lot of pretty important
stories to write."
If the news is going to return to "normal," the next question becomes
when. By November? January? Richard Addis, editor of The Globe and
Mail, imagines that it will take at least a year. Andersen isn't so sure. "It's
hard to tell how things might change. How we felt between Sept. 12 and
Oct. 1 changed a lot. But somehow everyone's thoughts and sensibilities
about what's important doesn't mean that Dharma and Greg doesn't have
a place in the world. It's not a binary thing. It's more organic."
Carlin agrees. "I'm not one of those who say Sept. 11 changed everything
for all time. It's not reflective of human history. It has changed things for
now. Eventually, we will seek out the stupid and the funny. Even Vietnam
wasn't all- consuming the entire time."
"When the day comes, when we don't feel so under attack, the normalcy
we return to will be different from the normalcy we left," Clark said. "The
question is, are we going to drift back to some of our old bad habits or
use this as a Phoenix moment, where our credibility and our sense of
mission can be restored? I hope so. I really do."
In the meantime, here is a rundown of some of the stories you probably
haven't seen.
Politics
In a stunning decision, a final, comprehensive audit that would reveal
whether Al Gore or George W. Bush was rightfully elected president of
the United States was suppressed by a consortium of news organizations.
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal,
Associated Press, Newsweek, CNN and others voted unanimously not to
analyze and report the results of a $1-million (U.S.) audit they
commissioned to identify which candidate received the most votes in
Florida in last November's election, raising questions about whether they
are suppressing news in the wake of Bush's war on terrorism.
They say a lack of resources and the war has made the story irrelevant.
The story, by The Globe's John Ibbitson, did run on A1 on Oct. 11, but
was never followed up. "I was appalled by the decision," Carlin said.
"This is significant information the public has a right to have. It may be that
after you say it's horrible there's not much left to say. But don't forget the
agenda drivers all participated in the decision. It's not in their interests to
let it out."
If you were looking closely, you may have seen mention in the Sept. 14
Globe that television cameras were banned from the fraud trial of former
B.C. premier Glen Clark. Follow-ups, including the trial's early days,
were harder to find. The Casinogate scandal, in which Clark was accused
of helping a friend obtain charity-casino licence and allegedly interfered
with the police investigation, led to Clark's resignation and had long been
big news. Not this time.
In Britain, within an hour of the World Trade Center being struck, Jo
Moore, adviser to Transport Secretary Stephen Byers, sent an e-mail
urging ministers to take advantage of the tragedy to "bury" bad news in the
Commons. Miraculously, Byers chose not to fire her.
Less than four months after deciding to renounce his Canadian citizenship,
publisher Conrad Black finally received his peerage from the British
House of Lords. The Globe did run a story, but deep inside on A16.
Shots were fired in a tense confrontation between native people and
lobster fishermen in Burnt Church, N.B. The Globe ran a
seven-paragraph Canadian Press story on A16 on Sept. 17, even though
the dispute has long attracted national media attention. About 50
non-native fisherman from surrounding communities took to boats to
protest against the closing of a herring fishery, while native people have
vowed their traps would follow the lobsters outside of a federally
approved fishing zone near the reserve.
On Sept. 18, a Globe and Mail/Le Devoir poll indicated that the support
for sovereignty was down significantly in Quebec. It was relegated to
A19, though revealing that the spectre of separation has retreated so far
that fewer than 15 per cent of Quebeckers now expect the province to
become independent within five years. A clear number would vote No in
a referendum.
Then, on Oct. 3, Quebec Premier Bernard Landry indefinitely shelved
plans for a referendum. A story by Rhéal Séguin got slightly better
treatment, running on A12. Landry said immediate action is needed to
secure a weakening economy, and it's not the time for "bold initiatives" to
promote sovereignty.
Also that day, a Senate committee examining health care suggested that
user fees and private services may become part of the Canadian system.
It was given minor play on A19, despite the suggestion of official
imprimatur to one of the most controversial issues in health care.
And what of a compelling election in Bangladesh featuring two women?
On Oct. 2, Khaleda Zia defeated Sheikh Hasina to become Prime
Minister. The following day, an Associated Press story ran on A14 of The
Globe. But it's a compelling tale about two women who have become the
most powerful politicians in an impoverished, male-dominated country.
You probably also haven't heard much about the intriguing election to be
held in Nicaragua on Nov. 4, when former Sandinista leader Daniel
Ortega will make a third bid to recapture the presidency.
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations and its
popular Secretary-General, Kofi Annan on Oct. 12. The
100th-anniversary award was a first for the UN. Annan hinted at an
expanded UN role in Afghanistan. The Globe ran a story on A17 the next
day.
As for the notorious Gary Condit, the last news story in The Globe about
him was a Sept. 8 report that the Democrat would not seek re-election.
Then, nothing, even as the sordid story reached a fever pitch with Connie
Chung's inquisition of the nervous congressman on prime time. Who
knows what he's up to now, or cares?
"Absent of the police linking him to Chandra's disappearance, no, he
won't be back," Andersen said. "That was a beast that needed to be filled.
News organizations fixated on it in a real compulsive way. There was
nothing more to say, yet it was there. What will likely happen is a new
Condit-type thing will come along, and we will see we still have an
appetite for stupid things."
Murder and mayhem
A grisly family massacre in Montreal was played on page A16 in the Sept.
21 edition of The Globe. At any other time, it would have been flared
across the front page. Seven people were found dead in a Montreal home
and police suspect a murder-suicide in the shooting deaths of six; a
seventh body was discovered at another house. The tragedy shocked
residents of Kirkland, a quiet community west of Montreal. Police ruled
that John Bauer, 51, shot his wife and three sons, 14, 18 and 22, as well
as his father-in-law and a business associate, before killing himself.
On Sept. 28, a Swiss man killed 14 people in parliament in Zurich. The
shooter sprayed the assembly with gunfire and set off an explosive before
turning the gun on himself. Front-page international news, which ran on
A13.
A car bomb and suicide attack in Kashmir killed at least 35 and wounded
more than 60, and made A14 of the paper on Oct. 2. A militant attacker
drove a car packed with explosives to the main gate of the province's
legislature and detonated them. The Indian government blamed a small
militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is linked to Osama bin Laden
and has ties to Pakistan. (After the first day, this story gathered some
steam, because of the terrorist links.)
An SAS airliner taking off for Denmark crashed in Milan and killed 118.
The passenger plane hit a private jet that had wandered across the runway
and careened into an airport building. It was the worst aviation disaster in
Italian history, yet the war forced the story to A17 on Oct. 9.
Sibir Flight 1812 was shot down over the Black Sea, killing 78 people.
The Globe covered it on A13 on Oct. 5, initially because it was suspected
there were terrorist links. Later, it was revealed a rogue Ukrainian missile
had accidentally been fired during military exercises.
A B.C. man suspected of killing five people over 35 years was finally
arrested on Oct. 10. If convicted, Philipp Mickie Smith, a 54-year-old
former commercial fisherman in Vancouver, would rank as one of the
province's most prolific serial killers. Lucky for him there's so much other
news going on. A story by Jane Armstrong ran the following day, on A14.
The teenaged Montreal hacker known as Mafiaboy was sentenced to
eight months in a detention centre on Sept. 13, and The Globe ran a
Canadian Press story on A16 on Sept. 13. Last year, Mafiaboy received
tons of press for jamming five major Internet sites, including Amazon and
Yahoo. But he didn't quite rate against the terrorist attacks.
On Sept. 15 a 1,700-ton barge rammed the Queen Isabella Causeway in
Port Isabel, Tex. Eleven cars plunged 80 feet into the bay, killing eight,
after a 160-foot section of the longest bridge in Texas collapsed.
Recovery efforts were halted when a third section of the road crashed into
the water.
An oil refinery in Toulouse, France, exploded, killing 18 and injuring 650.
It ran Sept. 22 on A17, even though the blast levelled much of the town,
destroying buildings near the site and leaving a gaping crater, 50 metres
wide and 15 metres deep. Many people initially feared a terrorist attack,
but it was ruled an accident. No terrorist links? No more stories.
On Oct. 12, three bars in Montreal were set ablaze and investigators
believe that the arson is linked the biker war in the city. It rated two
sentences on A16 the next morning.
And police in Vancouver have added more than a dozen names to the list
of missing women who have vanished from the city's Downtown Eastside.
More than 40 women, since 1984, are now presumed dead and likely
murdered, Jane Armstrong reported on A14 on Oct. 16.
Sports
National Basketball Association great Michael Jordan had scheduled a
press conference for Sept. 11 to announce his comeback, but cancelled it
in the wake of the tragedy. When he finally made the announcement two
weeks later, he did it by fax to avoid inappropriate fanfare.
Baseball's ironman, Cal Ripken of the Baltimore Orioles, should have
played his last game on Sept. 30 against the New York Yankees.
Because the baseball schedule was pushed back, he didn't until Oct. 7,
and it ran on the second sports page.
Star-crossed hockey star and wannabe Toronto Maple Leaf Eric Lindros
finally made his return to the National Hockey League after 18 months of
concussion and contract woes. Lindros returned as a member of the New
York Rangers. The story ran on the front of the sports section on Oct. 6,
but it would have been a candidate for the front page in calmer times.
Entertainment
Public-relations diva Lizzie Grubman, who dominated the gossip columns
all summer, particularly in New York, pleaded innocent to charges she ran
down 16 clubgoers outside a bar in the Hamptons on Sept. 12 and was
indicted by a grand jury. It did not make the Sept. 13 Globe. The New
York Post, which played Grubman's antics on the front page all summer,
buried it on Page 66.
The annual television-industry Emmy Awards were first postponed, then
cancelled, leaving the annual Sopranos-vs.-West Wing contest undecided,
and the much-nominated Canadian production company Alliance-Atlantis
disappointed.
Comedian Paula Poundstone pleaded "no contest" Sept. 12 to child
endangerment. Her court appearance was documented by only one
camera crew, compared with dozens in previous weeks.
Isaac Stern, one of the last great violinists of his generation, saved
Carnegie Hall from the wrecking ball. He died Sept. 22 of heart failure at
the age of 81, and his death was documented on Page R7 of the Globe's
Review section on Sept. 24.
On Oct. 1, the Globe reported, in 62 words under the headline "Say It
Ain't So, J.Lo," that singer-actress Jennifer Lopez had married
choreographer Cris Judd in a private ceremony in Calabasas, Calif., on
R4.
And pop sensation Mariah Carey suffered another breakdown, or
perhaps a continuation of her previous one. No one is certain, and no one
is trying very hard to find out.
Health, science and the environment
In a feat billed as the first transatlantic operation, a Canadian surgeon
working in New York used a remote-controlled robot to remove the
gallbladder of a 68-year-old woman in France. The story, by Globe
medical writer Carolyn Abraham, did make the front page on Sept. 20,
but was given less significant play than it typically would have received.
On Sept. 20, The Globe's earth sciences reporter, Alanna Mitchell,
reported that the earliest whales looked like small dogs that scampered
over land and may not have been able to swim, according to scientists
studying fossils discovered in Pakistan that hold the key to one of the
great mysteries of mammal evolution.
"It's possible the ancient whales lay in wait for their prey on land near
shallow lakes, occasionally wading in to snap at potential food," said Hans
Thewissen, the paleontologist at Northeastern Ohio Universities College
of Medicine who found the fossils. It's the kind of story that could have
made a catchy secondary splash on the front page at another time, but it
was on A16.
A Russian atomic power plant was forced to make an emergency
shutdown on Oct. 14. This didn't make the next day's paper, even though
the Leningrad plant runs four Soviet-designed RBMK-1000 reactors of
the type that malfunctioned in 1986 during an experiment in Chernobyl,
causing the world's worst nuclear accident. Workers were trying to fix a
leaky valve when the safety shutdown occurred. No leaks were reported
-- as far as we know.
And in other news
The last story on the Air Transat investigation was on Sept. 10 on A5,
detailing a fuel leak in another jet bound from Toronto to Paris. The story
had been reaching its peak that week, but the next day it ceased to exist.
On Sept. 14, hurricane Gabrielle swept across Florida, spawning power
outages, tornados and flooding with more than a foot of rain. Gabrielle
caused an estimated $115-million in damage and losses.
In Toronto, the National Post laid off 130 employees on Sept. 17, and
The Globe ran a staff-written story on B16 the next day about this
turnaround in the much-talked-about (until Sept. 11) "newspaper war."
And plans to raise the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk began during the
third week of September, but very little was made of it. The Kursk was
finally brought to the surface by salvage crews on Oct. 13, after an
explosion on Aug. 12, 2000, sent it and the 118 submariners to a watery
grave. A year ago, that disaster was a major international news story. This
year, its follow-up ran on A14.
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