The 9/11 terror attacks had drastic impacts across America’s culture and institutions. One institution that was drastically shifted was the press.
University of Georgia journalism professor Moni Basu experienced it firsthand. A Florida State University alum, she shifted from being a local reporter to a war correspondent after 9/11 for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and CNN.
She spoke with WFSU’s Tristan Wood, who she taught at the University of Florida, about how September 11 changed journalism, and what it looked like for a journalist who lived through it.
The interview has been edited for brevity.
Tristan Wood
So, Moni, do you remember where you were on 9/11?
Moni Basu
I remember very well. Turned on the radio as I always did. I listened to Morning Edition on my way to work on NPR, and I heard what was happening. It was all very confusing because it was just a few minutes, you know, after 9 o’clock, and people were still trying to figure out what had happened. Planes had hit the towers, and the news was very chaotic.
So the minute I heard that, and I realized that oh my God, something horrible has happened, I turned around and instead of going to College Park, I made my way to the museum, the AJC Newsroom in Downtown Atlanta, and it was chaos.
My job that day was to report on the chaos at the airport, because of course all the airports were immediately shut down after this happened, and 1,000’s and 1,000’s of people were stranded, and so I spent the entire day covering that, hanging out at airport restaurants, which were overflowing with people who were stuck, and talking to people.
Tristan Wood
I was two years old when 9/11 happened, and I’ve only worked in journalism in a post 9/11 world. How did it change your career and change journalism as you were working in it at the time?
Moni Basu
I think one of the easiest ways to understand this is to tell you that the newspaper created almost immediately after 9/11, AJC created what was called the Crisis Team, and crisis had become sort of the new normal.
We were writing stories about what was then called, in a lot of newsrooms, it was a beat, the new normal. What life in America was before 9 a.m. on 9/11, and what life in America became after that.
That was focused on journalists covering this new way of life in America with the new security measures, with new fear of terrorist attacks, now with America going to war in what would become its longest war, Afghanistan, and then two years later, Iraq.
After 9/11, the U.S. military started this embed program, where you could embed with the you know Marines and the Army units and journalists were all over Iraq, Afghanistan, and 1000’s of soldiers started coming home not just with physical injuries but with traumatic brain injuries from the blast, from the you know the IED blasts.
So, that’s how life changed for me. I was going to start a new beat as a Fulton County reporter. Instead, I was writing about Afghanistan, and then eventually Iraq. I ended up going to Iraq many, many times and covering the war.
Tristan Wood
On that experience, a little bit. I know a lot has been discussed about you know after 9/11, using that as a symbol as kind of justification for entering Afghanistan and Iraq. How much did like the specter of 9/11 impact the day to day lives of soldiers and people that were, you know, actively serving in Iraq?
Moni Basu
I think if you talk to soldiers back then, if you went to at least the army units I encountered, so many of them told me, well, I enlisted because of 9/11, right? I joined the military because we were attacked, and I feel like I have to do my part now to defend America. But I think a great motivator for a lot of the guys who fought over there was 9/11. They felt like they were doing the right thing; that it was their obligation to defend the United States after this, you know, the most brutal attack on American soil ever.
Tristan Wood
You know, 25th year anniversary of 9/11. What do you think the legacy of it is on its impact of on journalism and on the media in America. How do you think it’s permanently changed it?
Moni Basu
Trauma reporting was not considered. Nobody thought about covering trauma and how that affects journalists before. To me, that was a big change after 9/11, but I also think that covering government secrecy and sort of this a miss or a lack of trust between the media and the government, all of that I think was amplified by 9/11.
I mean, there was so much secrecy and so much stuff that was kept from the press, and then also lies that were told to justify, you know, military action abroad. I think, you know, journalists were affected like the rest of the American public. This thing that I described as the new normal, 25 years later, it’s it is the normal. We never are going back to what it was like before 9/11.
Tristan Wood
I don’t remember a world that didn’t have high levels of security at the airport, and you know to this day, like one of the very topical issues here in Florida and around the country is the conversations about those automated license plate reader, like Flock camera stuff, yeah, and other surveillance stuff.
Moni Basu
All of that started with 9/11, right? I mean that that all that stuff wasn’t there before. We didn’t have cameras stuck on poles everywhere, spying on the public in public places. That was just a that was became part of the new normal. That it was okay for the government to do that.
Tristan Wood
Is there anything I didn’t ask about that you think is important to include or anything else from your experience that you’d want to impart on listeners before we wrap it up?
Moni Basu
Yeah, well, I would just say again, 9/11 changed America forever. We are never going to ever go back to what it was like before that, and it changed my profession. It changed my life.
I would also just say that I know that we make a big deal out of anniversaries, but you know, for the people who suffered on that day, every day is an anniversary, and whether it’s one year or 25 years, there are lots of people here in this country who live with the trauma of what happened on 9/11.
Tristan Wood
Thank you so much for talking with me. I really appreciate it.
