The other day I wrote about media bias against religion and mentioned Gustav Niebuhr’s excellent book Beyond Tolerance: How People across America are Building Bridges Between Faiths.
Writing about the aftermath of 9/11, Niebuhr tells us that the media misrepresented what happened. The fact is, he writes, American people wanted to preserve humane community after that dreadful event, to look after the vulnerable, to show neighborliness, to demonstrate however they could by their actions that they were all in this together, not pitching one against another as the subsequently declared “war on terror” implies. Niebuhr writes that what was needed from the leaders was a social and intellectual response, as much as a military one. Those who died at 9/11 deserved a monument dedicated to life and hope, he wrote, not a “war on terror.” So many individuals showed responsibility after that event to maintain their communities. How much of that was covered by the media?
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