For a month in the fall of 2002, a series of sniper attacks
suddenly dominated the headlines in the nation's capital. Beginning
in the Washington suburbs, these crimes eventually stretched over
one hundred miles along I-95 to Richmond. More than a thousand law
officers would pursue the perpetrators--an enormous number for one
case. The number of reporters covering the story, however, was even
greater. "On the Trail of the D.C. Sniper" uses the remarkable
events of that October to explore the shifting character of
journalism as it entered the twenty-first century and to question
how this change in the way news is gathered and reported impacted
the events it covered.
Because of its political significance, Washington, D.C.,
although not a huge population center, is home to an international
news corps rivaling that of London or New York. The sniper story
thus gained unusually broad media coverage. These events also
coincided with the rise of cable network news, meaning that the
story would be delivered through a greatly accelerated news cycle.
Continuous coverage on television meant a more intense race for
scoops; when a major development wasn't available, lesser incidents
were sometimes played up in an attempt to maintain the sense of an
always unfolding story.
Jack Censer looks at the atmosphere of heightened anxiety in
which this killing spree occurred--coming only a year after the
9/11 attacks, as well as the unsolved anthrax scare centered in the
D.C. area--and asks if the press, by intensifying its focus, also
intensified the sense of fear.To bring in another perspective,
Censer looks closely at the elementary and secondary schools in the
area, comparing their experience of the threat with the press's
perception, and presentation, of it. In most cases, school
officials chose a course of precaution in which life could carry
on, rather than one of hypervigilance and lockdowns.
Although it is widely thought that journalists have strong
political and commercial biases, Censer reveals that in this case
the press was motivated, above all, by the creation of a gripping
story to evoke emotion from its audience. One of the most detailed
studies yet published of how the press follows a story in the
twenty-four-hour news era, this book provides a window on post-9/11
anxiety and the relationship between those fears, public events,
and the news media.
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