Constant Fear, Real Wars, and Fake News
Why it stuck and will not go away
When I began my career two decades ago, a mentor and employer shared something that stuck with me until this very day. It was an acronym for fear. Fear, he would say, stands for “false evidence appearing real”. Less than one week after he shared these words came the attacks on 9/11. For an entire country, specifically those regularly consuming network news, fear became very real, and ever present.
On September 20th, 2001, nine days after 9/11, President George W. Bush had an announcement; “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”
From Fox to CNN, primetime slots featured anchors beating the drums of war, feeding viewers a steady diet of patriotism, with a side of anger, and a dash of hate. We should fight the terrorists there, so we don’t have to fight them here; newscasters would preach. “The war on terror”, as it came to be known, allowed for military engagement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and anywhere else deemed a threat, even theoretically.
There was one glaring problem, and it needed a work around. Some places, including Iraq, had absolutely no link to 9/11, al Qaeda, or international terrorism. Through government…
