OPINION
What you didn't see on the front page
by Dan O'Brien
February 18, 2004
Feb. 6, began as a typical news day. Articles concerning the gay marriage controversy, the Superbowl, and the credibility of Central Intelligence Agency information were splattered all over the Boston newspapers. Yep, it was just a typical news day in New England.
Or, was it? All of these stories certainly had the relevance to appear in the paper because they affect a number of people. Gays might be able to get married. Tom Brady is a symbol of New England victory and is a hero in the minds of many New Englanders. And, CIA Director George Tenet is essentially accusing our president of lying. There was no doubt that these stories were important to the lives of many. However, on this day both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald overlooked one big story.
Abdelghani Mzoudi, a 31-year-old Moroccan man, walked out of a German courthouse with his freedom after being acquitted of acting as an accessory in the murders of 3,000 people in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Globe reported the story briefly on page eight in their "World" section. The Herald did not print the story at all.
Mzoudi's trial was only the second trial, anywhere, of a suspect in the 9/11 attacks. He was a longtime acquaintance of lead hijacker Mohamed Atta, and so much so, even signed his will. At one point, Atta and Mzoudi lived and studied together in Hamburg, Germany. Furthermore, Mzoudi was trained as a terrorist in training camps.
This story is one that people would have loved to read if it had happened on Sept. 11, 2002 because it would have been in the news at a time when people were remembering the 9/11 tragedy. However, Mzoudi's acquittal happened on Feb. 5, 2004 and got lost in the hoopla that is news in America. This story occurred at a time when Janet Jackson's breast had been dominating the news for days, and these days there is little room for news that is not sensational.
The story was so important that one of the cable news networks could have certainly picked it up and made it sensational. Mzoudi being linked with hijackers certainly falls into the "War on Terror" category, doesn't it? Unlike a lot of the war on terror stories that we see on Fox News and CNN, this one has actual merit. It's an example of how good - or bad - of a job our government is doing in capturing these terrorists. German officials have even hinted that Mzoudi would have been convicted if Washington had provided the Germans with more information.
Germany's chief federal prosecutor criticized Washington for refusing to allow U.S. captive Ramzi Binalshibh to testify in the trial. Binalshibh was believed to have been the main contact between the hijackers with the rest of Al Qaeda.
This is just one example of the media not reporting the important stories behind the war on terrorism. Because many Americans are not going to read about Mzoudi's acquittal, many people are going to see and hear more immaterial sound bites about the war on terror and base their judgments on frivolous information.
But, what do I know? After all, I wasn't the one who conducted the survey on CNN and Fox News viewers - the survey that revealed 40 percent of people who watch the Fox News Channel and 30 percent of people who watch CNN falsely believed that Saddam Hussein was partially behind the 9/11 attacks.
No matter how important I think the Mzoudi story is, the importance of this story versus the other stories that we read in the papers is an arbitrary decision, one that is left up to news editors. These editors have to make important decisions about which stories will be printed in the next day's paper. They must decide how much space a story gets, whether the story deserves a photo, and what page each story gets printed on. The most important stories are published on page one, but you already know that.
We think that these papers are managed by professionals. Let's see how great of a job these professionals did on Friday's edition of The Herald.
The stories on the paper's first three pages included the following: a half-page color photo of Tom Brady at a golf tournament, (keep in mind, the Patriots had already won the Superbowl five days earlier.) A story about a dog being rescued by firefighters from an icy river, which included a huge photo. And, another Jackson-related story. The headline: "Janet, return my gift... Offended jeweler demands earrings back from Jackson."
Even though the Mzoudi acquittal is a key piece of the 9/11 story, the Globe and the Herald chose to focus on the issue of gay marriage, football, and breasts. Gay marriage is an important story, but in the end it is not a story that will truly change the face of the world. For example, Canada, as well as some other countries, already have gay marriage.
The Sept. 11 story has had the entire world on edge for a year, changed our political and economic climate, started a war on terrorism, and affected the lives of millions who died or knew someone who died. Maybe these newspaper execs' believe that people think a half-page color photo of Tom Brady waving to a crowd at Pebble Beach is more important than whether or not anyone is being held accountable for the worst terrorist attacks in American history.
Dan O'Brien is a Collegian staff member.
BACK TO COLLEGIAN OPINION COLUMNS
BACK TO MAIN PAGE