I watched about 10 minutes of CNN the other day. They had a feature that was new to me: a box… I watched about 10 minutes of CNN the other day. They had a feature that was new to me: a box in the upper left-hand corner labeled “Terror Alert.”

On the day in question, it read “high.”

Those terrorists might as well hang up their spurs, if their aim is to strike fear into the hearts of Americans. The American media is doing their job for them.

On Sept. 10, 2001, there was no box. There was no threat then, I suppose. Since Sept. 11, 2001, America has taken dozens of steps to combat terrorism, and there is simply no way we are more vulnerable to terrorism than we were then.

Terrorism is a very real threat, but not the threat that, say, driving a car is. In 2001, automobile crashes claimed 42,116 lives in America, according to the National Center for Statistics and Analysis. Terrorism caused 3,547 deaths worldwide in 2001, according to the U.S. Department of State’s Web site. The latter number represents the highest recorded number of deaths ever attributed to terrorism in one year.

Where is the “Automobile Accident Alert”?

President Bush has said that American citizens should not panic in response to the alert, and that the intent is to keep law-enforcement institutions informed and on their toes.

Sounds swell. What’s it doing on CNN? Is that how our branches of law enforcement keep in touch?

So the alert is high. Should we fear terrorism? No, because we, the American people, can’t really do much about it. There is no point in worrying about something you can’t prevent. That’s easy to say, but difficult to live up to. Since we can do nothing about terrorism but panic, there is every reason for us to be in the dark.

The CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the U.S. Armed Forces might be up to the task. The rest of us, should we try to respond to the threat of terrorism, will only get in the way.

If an airplane were in danger of crashing, there is no way the pilots should tell the passengers about it. The response – panic, fear, bedlam – hinders the pilots’ best efforts to handle the situation.

“Drought alert: High.” Sounds like a terrific idea. If I know we have drought issues, I can keep my shower short and wear my clothes one more time. We know how to respond to the problem.

But with terrorism, we respond by duct-taping plastic over our windows in a futile attempt to combat the effects of a hypothetical biological weapons attack, the man on CNN said. We stop traveling. We stockpile goods. And sooner or later, some will once again get the bright idea that they should pre-empt terrorism by attacking the man down the street with vaguely Arabic features.

In its own special way, this is even worse than the duck-and-cover response to nuclear attacks. Duck-and-cover is devoid of ethnic stereotyping.

Moreover, every mention of terrorism merely furthers the goals of terrorists. The response to news about terrorists is fear, which is their goal to begin with.

I wonder whether the folks at CNN and the Fox News Channel feel they are doing a service by reporting this information, or if they merely want to snag an audience.

If the latter is the case, news agencies need to reexamine their ethics. If the former is the case, they should keep in mind that it would be a far better service to Americans in general if they would dole out information on a need-to-know basis.

Marty Flaherty is a columnist for The Pitt News, and can be reached at [email protected].