Newspapers Struggle With Crisis Reporting

By: Todd Shields In the new world that dawned with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America, journalists can expect years of crisis reporting. The terrain brings with it a bewildering array of potential threats, complex technology, and arcane science.

Newspapers are pondering how to sift through it all. To pose their problem another way, what should editors make of the suitcase nuclear bomb? And how does it stack up with, say, a bioterrorism attack?

There are no clear answers. But a seminar staged in Washington last week by FACS (originally an acronym for Foundation for American Communications), a nonprofit journalism-education organization, offered the beginning of a way to think about the new hazardous landscape. At the Dec. 6 seminar, the Pasadena, Calif.-based FACS served up a series of experts who guided assignment editors, feature writers, and beat reporters through the basics of biological warfare, the risks from nuclear terrorism, and the possibility of cyberattacks that could immobilize much of the economy.

Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge urged those attending to report thoroughly on threats and steps to reduce them. "Obviously you will continue to probe and question and challenge priorities and decisions," Ridge said. At the same time, he noted, "There's a public information role we can share with you. ... The worst danger is fear of the unknown."

The event was "very useful," said Michael Riley, editor of The Roanoke Times, a 98,916-daily-circulation newspaper in southwestern Virginia. "One of the main things it did was help form the issues in a broader perspective."

FACS hopes to stage more such seminars in cities around the country, said John E. Cox Jr., the group's president and CEO. He called the sessions "an opportunity to create dialog" between those dealing with terrorism and journalists who would emerge with better understanding of relative risks.

At the Washington seminar, one speaker, IBM fellow emeritus Richard L. Garman, suggested contamination from a so-called "dirty bomb" -- one that uses conventional explosives to spew radioactive matter -- was unlikely to cause a public-health disaster. Another speaker, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, a former New York City health commissioner, said an attack using disease-causing organisms posed a threat of "really quite extraordinary" devastation.

Riley, The Roanoke Times editor, said surveys show his readership in recent months has increasingly appreciated international and other hard news.

"This is the time to be running a newspaper," Riley said. "You also have a great obligation to get it right -- to put it in perspective."