The innocent people murdered while performing their everyday activities remind us that we are not immune from danger no matter where we go. Parents hugging their children a second time before sending them off to school, secretly praying that they will return home safely. National media swarming over the latest developments, capturing everyone’s reactions to such heinous acts. Schools locked down with students not permitted outside, in order to assure their safety. Businesses suffering because customers are afraid to be out in the open for too long. Law enforcement investigating every lead, hoping to link clues to the perpetrator or perpetrators responsible and bring them to justice. Have you noticed any of these behaviors lately? This has been the aftermath of the nine shootings in and around the District over the past week and a half.
But these reactions bear a striking resemblance to what occurred following Sept. 11, leaving one to wonder whether the devastation that shook New York City and the District just over a year ago has permanently altered the way we as a society think and act.
For starters, take the general public’s reaction: The nation has once again been shaken by the deaths of people going about their normal lives. Instead of completing a conference call, typing up a financial report or finishing an important business meeting, though, the most recent casualties were vacuuming their cars, walking to school and mowing the lawn. Residents in and around the District have again been forced to grapple with the same reality they faced after planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: Nowhere we go is completely safe. It’s a startling notion to have to come to terms with, especially twice in a relatively short span of time.
The visibility of these shootings in the media, while not of the same magnitude as Sept. 11, still shares many of the same characteristics. Networks have brought the suburban D.C. story to millions of viewers in much the same way that they brought the story of downtown New York and the Pentagon. This is not a mere crime story or random attack; this is a human interest story. Media have devoted their coverage to the nature of the shootings and the investigations into the culprit, but they have also focused an almost equal amount of time on the victims’ lives and residents’ reactions. The Washington Post has kept its readers up to date on the search for the killer, but it also covered the funeral of the first shooting victim and the survivors’ lives as they try to return to normal. One can’t help but wonder whether the definition of a “normal” life has changed and now involves reacting to frequent tragedies. The New York Times’ coverage included a piece on how the area has united to solve the mystery of the sniper. Unity was a common theme of the coverage after Sept. 11, as the media followed police officers, firefighters and others who joined together to search for survivors and remains in order to bring closure to thousands of families.
The media usually covers the stories we want to see, so the question remains, why do we want to see this? Before Sept. 11, coverage of disasters tended to be hard news: the who, what, where, when, how, why. But something is different now. Perhaps reading about a stranger’s funeral somehow brings us closure as individuals. Perhaps seeing another community pull together in a crisis helps us pull ourselves together. In any case, we’re being forced to go through it again, but we can take a lot of what we learned last year to help us through it this time.
