Theatre of the Absurd

Press Pass: Not Necessarily Reporting the News
It isn’t just Fox—even the liberal media is in the fake news business.
By Ted Genoways

near the end of beowulf, there is a scene that may be the earliest description of war reporting in the English language. The eponymous hero lies dead on the battlefield with only faithful Wiglaf remaining at his side. This is bad news for the Geats: It spells the end of Beowulf’s era of protection and means years of affliction at the hands of their enemies. Nevertheless, Wiglaf summons a rider and orders, in Seamus Heaney’s brilliant translation, “the outcome of the fight to be reported” from a high cliff so all can hear. The messenger accepts the onerous task and earns the poet’s praise, because “he told the truth / and did not balk, the rider who bore / news to the cliff-top. He addressed them all.”

A terminal at New York’s Kennedy Airport may seem like an odd place to be contemplating Beowulf, but as I sat watching the images flit across the frenzied television screen, high above my head, I couldn’t help thinking of Wiglaf’s weighty charge. It was June 2, 2007—a day long since forgotten in the churn of the never-ending news cycle, but at that moment the airwaves bristled with reports of the “jfk bombers,” who had been caught red-handed while hatching their plan for a terrorist attack “worse than 9/11.” The television showed long security lines snaking through the outer terminal, armed guards in riot gear manning the screening stations, and handlers with bomb-sniffing dogs probing every corner and alcove.

The problem was that none of what the TV showed was actually happening. The terminal was quiet, calm, overtaken by the usual lassitude of travel, but nothing more. In fact, it took longer to get a stromboli in the food court than it did to have my bags checked by tsa. Still, I pulled up the cnn website and found more of the same: a long line of passengers looking harried and worry worn. Below this picture, however, was a tiny credit line that read “File photo.” These images of airport chaos were leftovers from some previous crisis—maybe from August 11, 2006, when a foiled bomb plot in the United Kingdom really did cause trouble at jfk, or just as likely from this past March, when the terminal was packed with passengers held hostage by nothing more sinister than an unexpected spring snowstorm.

Read on.