America’s mainstream press finds some stories too hot to handle. One of the most egregious examples of this is its coverage of the hunt for the perpetrator of the post-9/11 anthrax letters—a matter of concern to all Americans. After an initial flurry of reports, the media inexplicably ignored the FBI’s laborious search for the person who last fall mailed anthrax-laced letters to news organizations and the Capitol Hill offices of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (S-SD) and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT).
Did the U.S. media merely lose interest after the government failed to find an Iraqi or al-Qaeda connection, and therefore could not link the postal terrorism to Sept. 11? Or was the press warned off the sensitive subject? After months of silence, in August the subject of the anthrax attacks once again hit the newspapers and network TV stations. The scientist in the spotlight, however, may be little more than a hapless “fall guy.”
Five people died and more than a dozen more were made seriously ill from exposure to the deadly Ames variety of anthrax. Americans across the country feared opening their mail. It’s a safe bet that, had a Muslim- or Arab-American scientist been the prime suspect, press coverage would have been unrelenting.
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