So, what do you think would make the American public happier? The capture and assassination of Osama bin Laden? Or the death by anthrax of every member of the American media?
The terrorists who - presumably - are mailing packets of poisoned powder to newsrooms across the country have chosen what they think is a symbol of American decadence and immorality.
But whatever point they're trying to make is negated by the fact that most Americans probably agree.
Journalists are even more vilified than politicians, who seem to have become the next target of the anthrax assault: this week, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle received a packet of the lethal bacteria in the mail.
Oh, sure, we in the media see ourselves as missionaries of truth, indispensable to the foundations of freedom upon which this country was founded. The public, however, has a slightly dimmer view.
They tend to think we're spreaders of spin, hustlers of hysteria, broadcasters of bias, celebrity cultists and divas of distortion. Not to mention politically correct left-wingers who've done our own hijacking-of the county's ideology.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
After all, it wasn't a member of al-Qaeda but an American author who wrote the book, "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy" (New York: Pantheon, 1996). And it was no Taliban theologian but another American author who wrote "News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works." (New York: The Free Press, 1995).
In a recent Harris poll ranking of prestigious professions, journalists ranked 14 out of 18-right below ... lawyers.
While it's clear that only a psychopath or a terrorist would destroy the World Trade Center and all the innocent civilians inside, there may be suspects galore in the attempted anthrax attack on members of the media. In fact, if the bioterrorism assault on the nation's newsrooms didn't seem so linked to Sept. 11, the suspect list would be like the passenger manifest in "Murder on the Orient Express," in which everyone had a motive.
As an online columnist for the Poynter Institute said in response to a question about why newsrooms have been targeted: "We report stories that make normal folks angry and angry folks crazy."
And who's to blame when a legislator turns Lothario and winds up caught in a scandal?
The media, of course.
Perhaps Gary Condit might feel a slight twinge of satisfaction at the parcels of powder that are scaring the bejeesus out of newsrooms across America. (Not to mention Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich and everyone else whose private foibles became public fodder courtesy of the press.)
Unfortunately, it isn't just members of the media who are being felled by the bacteria, but their assistants and their families. And no American would celebrate the attack on a 7-month-old baby, one of the latest victims of anthrax.
But the fact is this: While Osama's agents may differ with the American public's vision of what constitutes a civilized society, they're both clear that it doesn't include the coarse and corrosive American communications industry.
And while Americans might feel slightly uneasy about bioterrorism, it's really hard to say what would make them happier: the capture and assassination of Osama bin Laden, or the death by anthrax of every member of the American media.
by Jill Porter
Knight Ridder-Tribune
Jill Porter is a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. Readers may write to her at porterj@phillynews.com.
