Media Coverage Before modern mass media were at our fingertips, major news events could not be made known to the public until long after they had occurred. The media has always made disasters and wars big news. These have always been major news events in recent decades. And with the development of television and other technologies the ability to show the public what is happening has become easier and easier. Now that mass media were available, the public could almost immediately see or read about disasters and wars. Average Americans could now sit in their living rooms and watch what was happening in the Vietnam War. They witnessed the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. They saw frightened teenagers running from Columbine. Perhaps the most striking of all the events that the mass media brought into our homes were the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City. The mass media has grown so much in such a short period of time and society has difficulty managing it. Some wonder whether the public needs to see such terrible things on television. Some question whether the media is truthfully describing events. The media today is so big and could conceivably be harmful to our society. If we take a look at past events and the recent tragedy of 9/11, we can criticize the way the media handled them. To become more media literate we need to understand how events such as disasters and wars have been handled in the past. It's been called "The New Day of Infamy" "worse than Pearl Harbor" and when you see how many Americans were killed and affected by the tragedy of 9/11, it is. The innocent victims are estimated to be thousands, but that morning the informed Americans seemed to be all citizens. At 8:48 in the... half of the paper ......reported continuously. After looking at these events we can see that there are many different aspects of the coverage that can be criticized on their own. This was simply an independent look at how past events that the media has covered relate to recent ones. Hopefully, after reading coverage of past events you can better understand the recent coverage of 9/11 and its aftermath. This media literacy can then be used when witnessing future events as they occur. Ultimately, Manson asks the question: Is it the fault of the entertainment or the music? The answer is no. He challenged media commentators to ask themselves this question, because their coverage of the event "was one of the most gruesome sights any of us had ever seen" (Manson, page 3 of 3). It can be clearly seen that the media has gone too far in reporting this situation to the public.