Dear Bono....

There is little doubt the images of two commercial airliners purposely crashing into New York’s twin towers in September 2001 made astonishing television. And since the event took place, the entire world has looked on via the media, Americans’ reflection and healing in a time of devastation of epic proportion. The story invaded our lives by making its way into our news bulletins, disrupting our day and night time television and reevaluating all defence agendas for our federal governments. We refer to the day as September 11 or 9/11 – however, the hysteria it inflicted on the entire world went on much longer. We mourned with America through sympathy and because we had no choice. A superpower with much influence on the western world does not have to allow its people go through something so tragic on their own.

America is more than just an ally with the free world – she is a paradigm. In relation to our media she provides us our sitcoms, blockbuster films, reality TV; and our escapist world which exists through entertainment and fantasy. We are bombarded with American-owned networks, American news, American music and American commodities. The culture of the western world is not even ‘western’ anymore, it is American.

In regards to our prolonged interest in September 11, things might have been a little different in Australia. The Commonwealth’s Prime Minister at the time, John Howard, was in the United States when the towers were hit – this no doubt was a moving experience for him and one where Howard inevitably felt obliged to act as one of the first national shoulders for President Bush to cry on. Little did Australians know back home that this initial gesture of compassion would be the beginning of a friendship that would lead to a series of bloody commitments. This is not to say those commitments were either right or wrong, but it is unquestionable that Australia’s military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq where aggression, violence and suffering would take place, all began from a kind heart and willingness to help.

But from then on it dragged. It dragged and it dragged. Like the world’s longest episode of Dr Phil, the world watched and even mimicked the issues the United States were undergoing. Americans were feeling hostility towards Muslims, taxi drivers were being victimized, foreigners were becoming paranoid, loved ones ─ mourned, anger was still in the air and there was little closure for Americans with a government setting no noble example and behaving as heatedly and as impulsively as its people.

Then came the stories about the bright side of New York – people were sticking together, morale was booming, the culture of the obnoxious city was temporarily on hold and people were actually caring about one another. In New York at least, patriotism was on the rise, flags were in the air, people came together to heal and move forward and try and forgive and so forth. So what was happening was a situation where things that would traditionally and normally be undergone privately in a city and inside of people’s homes, was being broadcasted for the world to see.

About three thousand people unnecessarily died on this notorious day and the world has been shaken like a snow globe. We have seen two wars arise yet were unable to gain the weapons of mass destruction we heard so much about. Our television keeps referring to the immortal date as do our newspapers. Every trip now to the airport sucks, security levels have increased tenfold, and our beliefs have started to change. In the old days, we might have taught our kids that if someone hijacks an aeroplane we happen to be on, to give them our wallets and our jewellery and everything will be okay. Nowadays we would probably teach them to do anything in their power to bring such people down.

Is there a reason 3000 tragic deaths on one morning in America can cause such a stir and 25,000 in the third world on the very same day does not? Does our media place in higher regard that of the people living in the developed world? The answer is of course, but unfortunately, to say it out loud sounds both cynical and conspiratorial. Australian Press Council executive secretary, Jack Herman, agrees that 9/11 received extensive coverage, but says it was due ultimately to the circumstances being of such an unusual nature.

"…stories about third world conditions do from time to time get published in the press, feature stories are written and egregious consequences of third world poverty are noted. But news is also about the unusual events of the day, which is why the attacks on the Twin Towers garnered such coverage. Newspapers also need to be selective in what they report and because most news is local."

If only people died less often from malnutrition, then we might have ourselves a news story! In fairness to Herman, the attacks on America did lead to a series of developing news stories that both directly and indirectly affected almost everyone. From trivial moments such as your, now, routine inconveniences at the airport, to those less trivial, such as the two bothersome wars that followed. The complete annihilation of the World Trade Center (and the Pentagon) was indeed riveting to the eye, but to totally neglect the annihilation of 25,000 people on that very same day ─ a body count eight times as many, is inexcusable. What makes it even worse is that that body count has recurred every day ever since.

Mike Binder’s movie that came out in 2007, Reign Over Me, was a reminder of just how much the American attacks were still a part of the lives of New Yorkers sic years later. Adam Sandler’s character played a loner who lost his family on 9/11 and reenters a friendship with Don Cheadle. Despite being a relatively okay film, Hollywood tends to give us the impression that it is still okay to keep milking the memory of September 11. Which is fair enough, Americans are entitled to still be fascinated by a historical day and get through that pain somehow. But what is important to acknowledge, is exactly what kind of outlet does sub-Saharran Africa have for this sort of pain? It is no wonder we see a continent so unstable and with such anger and sorrow with its mercenaries and rebels leaders and the hundreds of thousands of child soldiers murdering for them. Some of the most horrific stories come from Africa – an incredibly poor region. But we continue to take for granted the attention and benefits which certain news stories can bring, and forget to recognise the devastation that can continue from a situation’s non-coverage.

What we learnt from September 11 is the power of the image. Unlike the Boxing Day Tsunami, the attacks on the twin towers were planned and executed which inevitably resulted in repercussions. This is not to say that the tsunami did not lead to repercussions but they were repercussions eventuating in much poorer countries, so we naturally did not hear as much about them. Think about it – whatever happened to the Maldives that were obliterated after the earthquake? How long did it take to rebuild? Are there any locals left on the islands? Who knows and who cares? As long as we remember not to go there on our honeymoons or summer vacations then we should be fine. But as the media continues to run stories on the ramifications of 9/11, we are nearly always taken back to those initial images. The images that once shocked, horrified and moved us.

Ten months prior to the attacks on America, Rupert Murdoch’s FOX News Channel broke an immensely significant story that has probably influenced the past seven years. But it wasn’t the content of the news story that has contributed such broad influence but the sheer breaking of the news story itself. On November 8, 2000, the notoriously conservative and pro-Republican news network, FOX News, was the first to report the outcome of the presidential election in favour of the Republican Party. The decision to announce this unofficial victory was made by FOX’s head of the election analysis division, John Ellis. Ellis also happens to be the first cousin to President George Bush.

The information was gathered by exit polls, non-government affiliated ballots with no official status whatsoever. As the media only tells us the information at hand and not where the information has come from – the broadcasting of this so-called election outcome had a domino effect on rival American networks. NBC, CBS and ABC, who by no means wanted to be the last to break the story, all followed suit in broadcasting an incorrect result. The appropriate message to convey was in fact that it was too close to call. In turn, the world was prematurely informed, while votes were still being counted in Florida, that George W Bush was indeed the new president of the United Sates.

Now while News Corp received a rap over the knuckles for FOX News’ overly keen and irresponsible reportage of the news, we were also able to gain an insight into the impulsive attributes these adversary news channels possessed and sheep-like reflexes that we now see can influence the running of news. As an audience member, this behaviour is a frightening reminder of how much we are left in the hands of the media; how much we rely on them to inform us and how much we sit back and have little choice but to trust what they have to say.

Robert Greenwald goes into detail as to why FOX’s mistake had so much influence on the world in his documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism. A film condemning Murdoch’s 11-year-old news channel, Outfoxed illustrates an irrefutable bias the FOX network holds in support of the Republican Party through highly conservative and prejudicial journalism. Greenwald includes examples such as the over-representation of journalists and right-wing guests to those leaning left; the vague line the channel implements separating facts from comment; and the actual memos from the top ─ ordering editorial teams to smear the reputations of Democratic candidates.

And as we all know, the presidential election of 2000 between Gore and Bush was as controversial as it was close. The complexity of the American voting system alongside the paradox of having a different presidential winner to a winner by popular-vote, was enough for anyone to neck themselves with indifference. However, in hindsight, and with the repercussions of September 11, the occupation of Iraq, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and the recent global awareness of Al Gore’s passion to fight global warming after his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, ─ there is little doubt that we would be living in a very different world to the one we are now had President Bush lost the 2000 presidential election.

However, the most compelling hypothesis came from that of journalist John Nichols who stated:

"When FOX made the call that Bush had won and the other networks followed on, that created the perception that Bush was the winner, when in fact, he wasn’t. But that perception was what really held for the next thirty seven days and I would suggest to you that that call on election night had more to do with making George Bush president than any recount or ballot design issue."

It is indeed a huge call to suggest a media network was the driving force for instating the President of the world’s largest superpower. But merely the possibility that this is a plausible situation is a dangerous position no matter how hypothetical it might be. It is easy to say ‘who cares’ about the United States, but unfortunately America continues to affect us all. She is a powerful nation and rightfully so – and who knows how Gore and the Democrats might have handled the September 11 attacks in its aftermath. Although it is highly unlikely, he might have gone to the same lengths as Bush.

What makes things interesting about Murdoch to me however, are his close ties to Australia. While the former Aussie might now be a naturalized American citizen – he still rears his (figuratively, of course) ugly head from time to time, letting everyone know he could probably find the power to change what cereals we ate for breakfast if he wanted to. During the distribution of Greenwald’s documentary, Outfoxed, he pulled considerable rank over the sales department at News Corp’s Herald Sun and Courier Mail by banning them to run advertisements for the film’s release in Brisbane and Melbourne theatres. Greenwald responded to the bans as "a direct attack on freedom of speech" stating he was "furious that Murdoch would sanction and encourage such Stalinist behaviour from his so-called newspapers".

However, times have changed. As of late, Murdoch has tried to counteract his conservative biases, publicly announcing his concern over climate change. At a renowned Japanese newspaper convention in Tokyo in November of 2006 he acknowledged a need for reform. In an interview with Shane McLeod on Australia’s ABC Radio Murdoch stated that:

"Some of the assumptions about extreme weather, whether it be hurricanes or drought, may seem far-fetched to us today. But what is certain is that temperatures have been rising and that we are not entirely sure of the consequences and the planet deserves the benefit of the doubt...We've at least got to at least take the insurance that the people who say so, might be right. And the world certainly is warming. How much of it is warming due to human error is open to debate."

I’m wondering exactly how greenhouse gases might have increased if it wasn’t for human intervention and the industrial revolution. I’m sure there’s more to it than farting cows and overactive volcanoes. But, whatever his motives, Murdoch has taken a moral stance. His British newspaper The Sun, announced to its readers that they should "go green with The Sun" and his television company BSkyB had announced itself as a carbon neutral enterprise. Whether Murdoch has been turning green due to the fact that he’s nearly 100 or because of influential advice from his semi-sensible sons, is not what is important – what is important is that he has began lobbying for an issue that has not been a priority within the conservative views of the right-wing parties. Therefore, one of Bush’s greatest allies is saying something needs to be done about global warming. And all we can do is watch and wait.

Some lateral thinkers have caught on to Murdoch’s firm grasp of political power. In 2007, the brand spanking new opposition leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) Kevin Rudd, made it a priority to meet with Murdoch in April, prior to the 2007 federal election. While Murdoch has a history of supporting Prime Minister John Howard, the PM has at times proved to be more than just a thorn in his side. Howard had been slow to reform Australia’s entrepreneurial-potential-limiting media cross-ownership laws, giving Murdoch plenty of opportunities to make subtle threats. Until recently, in Australia a person controlling a major daily newspaper in a specific area could not control a television or radio station in the same region. The irony was that Murdoch became an American citizen in 1985 to avoid similar laws in the US that only let Americans buy television networks.

For as long as Australians have known Kevin Rudd, we have known he has always been familiar with the power of the media. Prematurely grey with glasses, strong but weak-looking – Rudd speaks fluent Mandarin and gives you the impression he has always been an over-achiever. He’s a nerd. Whether you love him or hate him, you could forgive even the mellowest of men for wanting to flush his head down a toilet. But Rudd is media savvy – and countries need media savvy leaders. Making weekly appearances on television breakfast program Sunrise for five years, Rudd took advantage of the banter he would engage in with its hosts which melted his nerd-like persona, giving him some sort of favourable personality.

But what made Rudd’s visit to Washington and New York so interesting was that he completely bypassed any possible meetings with United States leaders. Rudd had only been in the position of Opposition Leader a couple of months; he would be going head-to-head with the second longest-serving Australian Prime Minister in history and he would have to make the most of his time in America. But not only did Rudd bypass a meeting with Howard’s best friend George Dubya, he scheduled no appointments to talk with Democrat candidates Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama either. He did however manage to meet with some B-grade US government officials, workers at left-wing think-tank The Brookings Institution and some meat-heads from the Magpies football team. And while some might think the trip a waste of time – Rudd proved no dummy. He knew his most critical appointment was a one-hour meeting with Rupert Murdoch.

Here is an example of exactly where resting powers lie in the 20^th Century. And the irony remains in the fact that even power-hungry politicians know that the power doesn’t really rest in office at all, it rests in the media. Kevin Rudd went to America to sell his character not to Australia’s allies – but to a media tycoon. He was scheduled to see Murdoch for just one hour at News Corp headquarters. This ‘one-hour’ appointment stretched right out until after dinnertime. Now three things could have happened for this to take place: (1) It never actually was a one-hour appointment to begin with; or (2) It was only ever a one-hour appointment but Rudd had something Murdoch was interested in hearing. By the following day – headlines were already reading "Murdoch endorses Rudd as next PM".

But why was it so important for Rudd to meet with Murdoch? The answer could be, albeit late, Howard had delivered his promise to reform media cross-ownership laws. As of April 4, 2007, the restrictions on foreign-ownership limits had been lifted and foreigners would be free to buy whatever the hell media outlets they wished. It was some gift. Radio and television station proprietors are now allowed to own newspapers in the same city, and vice versa. This is a huge sigh of relief to many media moguls with a billion dollars in their wallets and an interest in Australian news mediums. However, nothing is for free, and even if Howard’s intentions were pure, there were plenty of reasons to make a political opposition leader eight months away from an election just the teeniest bit nervous.

And separate to Murdoch’s partiality to Bush and the Republican Party, Murdoch has developed a reputation for being quite the swinging voter. Having backed former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a time when every other newspaper was tearing her to pieces, Murdoch would later switch to the British Labor Party, lending his support to Tony Blair in the late 1990s. Secret meetings evolved between Blair and Murdoch which became highly controversial after 9/11, as Murdoch was a keen supporter of the invasion of Iraq. The events that followed were Blair announcing support for an Iraq invasion (which many believed was out of character), which in turn led to Great Britain going to war. Less than six months later, Kevin Rudd became the 26^th Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Only five days prior to Kevin Rudd’s meeting with the News Corporation giant, on April 16, 2007, a 23-year-old South Korean student at Virginia Tech opened fire on students and lecturers killing 32 people in total before turning the gun on himself. It was bigger than Columbine and described as the largest shooting massacre in modern US history. And as usual, it possessed all the anticipated subtexts of a big American news story. It was food for thought regarding who could be held accountable; raised the issues relating a need to reform gun laws; and questioned whether the police acted swiftly enough. The story is undoubtedly tragic and sadly, one the world had seen in America several times.

The killer, Seung-Hui Cho, planned the attacks in advance. It was no spur of the moment idea driven by the last straw on a bad day. It was a Monday morning – he had the whole weekend to figure out the idea was cockeyed and cancel the killing spree. Cho was a troubled kid; his motives were obscure and his actions merciless. But whatever insight we were given into his rationale, psyche and rage – we were given not by the police trying to piece together the case, nor was it given by Cho’s family helping clarify what problems he bore. Before Cho committed suicide that day, he did not reveal his demons to the students he was about to kill, nor did he reveal them to his family or the police. Cho disclosed them to American television news station NBC.

On April 19, NBC received a package from Cho consisting of video footage and 43 digital photos of himself. The video messages were sinister, poetically abstract and frustratingly vague. Cho outlined a hatred for almost everyone, claiming that he had been victimized his whole life and even illustrated a haunting admiration towards the Columbine High School killers. Although it wasn’t much, it was an insight into his motivations. But more importantly it was all anyone had. If school shootings were going to be a big thing in America then at least people expected to be able to learn from them – understand why they were happening in order to stop them from happening in the future. But the growing trend where these troubled young killers inevitably turn the guns onto themselves give us no answers whatsoever.

Cho knew the importance of sending this tape to the media. Whether it was a forgotten part of the plan we don’t know – but Cho thought it so important for the media to receive these tapes ─ that he posted the package at 9:01 in the morning of the killings. He posted the package after he had already started killing people in the dorm rooms of the school. But at least Cho left a message with someone. At least he felt compelled that his thoughts could be trusted with trustworthy people. And exactly where was that sanctuary of trust that would be certain to portray his killings to be anything but ordinary? It was NBC, a place that was a haven for sensationalized news.

September 11 shocked us with images. The media gave us plenty to take with us for the rest of our lives, stored in the A-drive of our brains as memories of one of the most influential moments in history. And as a society, we understand how powerful these images are. While it is debatable, at school ─ modern history was always the more interesting subject over ancient history because of the images available to us. The misery of the concentration camps in the Second World War; the murders that took place at the Munich Olympic Games or merely seeing a Russian dog go into outer space. Those images were enough to make us look at the past 100 years in awe. We can even choose the type of violence we want to see whether it be of the poor man having his head blown off at point blank range during the Vietnam War or JFK having his own taken off at a sniper’s range. For Cho to send video taped images of himself to NBC rather than the police tells us that like those horrible yet memorable images we see in history lessons, he wanted the world to see him and remember. He wanted a portrayal of his personality to be constructed not by the police, but by him.

The story of Cho and the Virginia Tech murders has everything in it that makes a memorable news story. Like a good academic essay, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It had updates and twists, mourning and closure. It had everything in a news story that extreme poverty does not. Extreme poverty has no beginning and no ending. It continues to go on. It continues to be boring. And everything that has happened in between has always been the same. There are no plot twists and there are no characters we are barracking for or sympathising with. The story of the rise and rise of famine is as dead as its people.

So what did NBC end up doing after receiving this disturbing footage? NBC claimed to have, (after reviewing the package, of course) turned the information over to the appropriate authorities, whoever they were. But not before making copies and releasing the footage to other media outlets and airing it on the NBC Nightly News. Following an audience’s thirst for seeing this footage, then came the inevitable criticism that NBC should not have broadcasted the killer at all. The upstanding pillar of decency, FOX News, stepped in to announce that it would be decreasing its broadcasting dosage of Cho. News editorial vice-president, John Moody, advised in one of those wacky FOX staff memos, of his concerns with the footage. He stated:

"We believe that 18 hours after they were first broadcast and distributed via the Internet, our news viewers have had the opportunity to see the images and draw their own conclusions about them. We see no reason to continue assaulting the public with these disturbing and demented images. We reserve the right to resume airing them as news warrants."

As refreshing a feeling as it is when one stops banging their head on a brick wall, one has to wonder where this sympathetic attitude was after the 9/11 attacks. Since when does the media want to stop reminding us of shocking stories that took place? And like a flashback of an earlier scene in a movie that confirms us who the killer is – we suddenly realise that the answer lies with NBC – the TV news station Cho decided was the best news station to broadcast his message through. And the history of the American media all begins to make sense. Why did so many news mediums cease following up stories on Watergate when it happened? It certainly wasn’t because 1970s hippy journalists were all devoted Republicans. It was because The Washington Post broke the story and it will always be remembered as a Post triumph. It is only when a particular news medium becomes part of the news that we have its rivals come out and demand fairly proportioned representation of that story. FOX might be a tad different because of its right-wing gun-loving stance; however, it never hurts to act maturely when your opponents are starting to appear on the callous side.

So many issues have unfolded and are unfolding since September 11 that they are contributing to its status as one the most historic events in history. Our children will be writing essays about it for their high school exams. And there will be reforms and hidden truths that will reveal themselves in years to come that are different to what we know now. When my parents took history – they were told the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was what instigated the First World War. When I took history I was told there were a number of factors. You could look the same way at the confusing events following 9/11. Right now we can say there is no doubt the attacks on America that took place on September 11 led to a war in Iraq. But in twenty years time our children can be excused for sitting in class and wondering exactly what the hell Iraq had to do with 9/11 at all.

Whatever the future holds, it is safe to say that no previous generation has documented history better than our own. We have nearly every angle you can think of, of the two planes hitting the two towers. And we have seen what those images can do to people – how they can make people feel. We have watched the emotion in people’s lives go up and down like a polygraph. We learnt that 3,000 American deaths in one morning could result in the bloodshed of thousands of non-Americans. We learnt that one morning could lead to the capture of Saddam Hussein, a bloody war in the third-world country of Afghanistan and increase security worldwide and global disruption in air travel.

Since September 11, 2001 ─ 96,000,000 people have died hunger and hunger-related disease and nothing has come of it. No wars, no panic, no political crisis. This is a catastrophe of epic proportion. It is a most disturbing because our media has the power to sound the appropriate panic alarms but still continues to choose not to. For a body count today that stands 32,000 times as big, from a cause we continue to see coming every day, one would expect more people to care. Nobody saw those two planes coming on 9/11, they came from nowhere. However, we can rely on extreme poverty like a Swiss train getting us to work. We have learnt many things from September 11, but what we should take away with us, is that our media has contributed to the unnecessary deaths of 96,000,000 people.