I was reading an Associated Press article on CNN.com today about the United flight from London to DC that was diverted to Boston, after a female passenger more or less freaked out. The second-to-last paragraph in the story contains two sentences:
"Terror scares garner particular attention in Boston because of Logan's history. Members of al Qaeda hijacked two planes from Logan on September 11, 2001, and flew them into the World Trade Center towers in New York."
Did you read that? Good.
Taken at face value, there is some logic to it. Bostonians, just like all Americans (and in truth like most humans), were deeply affected and frightened by 9/11.
But do me a favor, and go back and read that again. Particularly the first sentence. Then come back to me over here.
Are you reading what I'm reading? Of course it doesn't say that Bostonians were more affected than New Yorkers or anyone else, but why does an article about a flight that's potentially in trouble require a statement that says that Boston freaks out due to terror warnings. From a purely logistical/physical perspective (i.e. not loss of life) Logan, and therefore Boston, lost a plane. New York lost landmarks. Yes, they lost people too, just like 48 other countries who had citizens perish that day, and I'm most certainly not trying to stir the pot or create controversy. Nor am I saying a word about the city or people of Boston, who had nothing to do with this story.
I'm calling out the AP actually. I don't think insensitive is the right word here. Nor do I think tasteless is right, though God knows I take issue with the way every single news outlet covers 9/11 (something I won't go into right at this moment). I think the word I'm looking for is stupid.
If you want to tell me that New Yorkers have a greater fear of terrorism, because 9/11 happened here, I'm with you. Same for the other 9/11 sites, London, Madrid, Mumbai, and any number of other locales where terrorism has occurred in recent years. I also buy the statement that Bostonians, as with all Americans, are more frightened by terrorism in the past 5 years than ever before. These make sense; they show logic.
But, to me, to imply that Boston has a greater fear of terrorism because their airport was a launching-off point for the attacks belittles the attacks themselves. It suggests that regardless of where those planes and their passengers eventually met their end, whether it was NYC skyscrapers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania or the Dark Side of the Moon, that the theft of the plane is what strikes fear into the hearts of Bostonians.
Yes, the hijacking of an airplane is scary, and anytime I see a story that involves such an act I get a little quiver (and that was true even before 9/11). But no, I don't know that the hijacking doesn't scare the people of the departure city anymore than it does a person somewhere else.
I understand that it was an attempt to neatly wrap up a story that, at the time of this writing, hasn't seen its end yet. I suppose its author spent a while, as long as their editors would let them ponder a seemingly meaningless throwaway paragraph on a breaking news story, trying to figure out exactly how to close this piece out. And while I certainly don't think that this person was trying to offend, they did manage to. I'm not offended in a traditional "I just saw something that offends my ethical sensibilities" sort of way; it's my intelligence that's offended. It was a thoughtless way to finish off an article about a relatively minor incident by needlessly tying the residents of a city to, and reminding them about, a horrible attack. I highly doubt that the diversion of United 923 made Bostonians remember that American 11 and United 175 left from their airport. I'd suspect that if that day occurred to them at all, they thought about the entire thing and the atrocities committed.
