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Coverage of Terrorism
2000 (1,382) than they did in 1989
(4,032), which was a high point. At the
same time, foreign news bureaus are
closing down at an alarming rate. ABC
went from seventeen 15 years ago to
seven in 2001. Chris Cramer, the president
of CNN International Networks,
recently wrote that many networks have
given up international coverage for
higher ratings, with “most of CNN’s
competitors focusing on U.S. news
only.” Those networks, he said, had
“committed the worse crime in journalism”
in “the failure to make the
important interesting.”
“Freedom itself is under attack,” said
Bush. Unfortunately, it is his administration
that is leading the charge. As the
U.S. government returns to the days of
Nixonian secrecy and unprecedented
attacks on civil liberties, it is the job of
the press to climb over, or dig under,
the titanium walls and return with the
truth. The question is, after a fat and
lazy decade of triviality, do they still
have what it takes? ■
James Bamford, author of “Body of
Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret
National Security Agency,”
(Doubleday, 2001), is the former
Washington investigative producer
for ABC’s “World News Tonight.” He
is working on a book dealing with
the events of September 11 and will
be a visiting professor at the University
of California, Berkeley’s graduate
school of public policy in 2002.
Washauthor@aol.com
The Unreported Threat in Coverage of Anthrax
Journalists fail to focus on the longer-term dangers of antibiotic resistance.
By Philip Caper
During the impressive print and
electronic media coverage of
recent events concerning the
threat of bioterrorism through anthrax
dissemination, one major threat has
been almost completely ignored by the
press. It is that posed by the widespread
and indiscriminate use of antibiotics
to “treat” perceived but perhaps
not real exposure to anthrax
spores. This is a major omission and
has potentially disastrous consequences.
Humans, together with almost every
other biological creature, live side
by side with or actually act as hosts to
other organisms, including large numbers
of bacteria. Under normal conditions,
bacteria live on our skin, in our
nasal passages, and in our intestines.
Examples of such organisms include
strains of E. coli (intestines), staphylococcus
and streptococcus (skin, respiratory
and oral passages), and various
fungi (skin and respiratory passages).
All animals, including humans, have
developed pretty effective ways of maintaining
defenses against uncontrolled
proliferation of these bacteria. Occasionally,
we are infected by organisms
that we encounter routinely in our
daily environments—meaning that we
have encountered an unusual strain to
which we have no immunity or our
immune systems are compromised, as
in the case of HIV. When normally
harmless microorganisms—those a
normal immune system can keep in
check—gain the upper
hand and are able to multiply
within our bodies
to an abnormal extent,
we are said to be infected
by them.
During the past 75
years or so, we have developed
various chemical
and biologic agents
that are more toxic to
microorganisms than
they are to humans and
are therefore useful in
supplementing our natural
defenses against microorganisms.
Examples
of these include so-called
chemotherapeutic
agents (such as sulfonamides)
and antibiotics,
such as penicillin and tetracyclines.
Ciprofloxin
(Cipro) now considered
to be the “treatment of
choice” (but not the only
treatment) of anthrax is
an antibiotic. These
agents are extremely valuable in restoring
the delicate equilibrium we
maintain with other biological creatures
with which we (usually) peacefully
coexist when they have gained the
A hazardous-materials response team during a decontamination
process. Photo by Tom Mihalek, courtesy of Agence
France-Presse.
22 Nieman Reports / Winter 2001