New York media unfazed by anthrax

The US media has been the target of anthrax attacks

		By Joseph Winter BBC News Online correspondent in New York

Judging by the media scrum which breaks out whenever and wherever anthrax is reported, New York's press pack is not unduly concerned about its own safety.

This is in spite of the fact that at least two of the best known journalists in the United States have been singled out by whoever is sending the poisoned letters.

The more information they get, the less concerned they become because it is a curable disease

ABC spokesman

So far, the major television news networks in New York - NBC, ABC and CBS - have all had one confirmed case of anthrax each, while the first report and only death was in the Florida offices of newspaper publishers American Media.

Outside the CBS Broadcast Centre on Thursday morning, there were scores of journalists battling to get the best pictures and the tiniest details.

No-one was wearing gas masks or any special protective clothing and yet this was the scene of the latest outbreak of a potentially deadly disease.

I was no different - these thoughts only occurred to me when I was safely back at my desk. I suppose there is something in a journalist's make-up which means that once you are chasing a story, any distractions are banished from your mind.

And that is especially true of New York's news hounds.

"After 11 September, everything else is peanuts," said Nick Folbaum, a reporter with Fox News.

But of course, journalists here are concerned, along with all employees of media organisations.

Nervous accountant

A few yards from the lines of reporters outside the CBS building, Emmanuelle Butler was pulling on a cigarette.

"I was trying to quit smoking but that'll be for another time," she said, laughing nervously.

Mrs Butler is an accountant with CBS and is worried that anthrax may be in the building where she works.

"I'm trying not to panic," she said. "I'm calling my husband every five minutes."

Like virtually every other business in New York and the US, news organisations are now being hit by anthrax scares on a daily basis.

Journalists say closing the US Capitol is hypocritical

Some sugar spilled here, marketing samples of washing powder being sent by post there, not to mention prank phone calls.

All are sufficient for thousands of people who work in a New York skyscraper to be evacuated, seriously disrupting normal patterns of life and work.

A spokesman for ABC, Todd Polkes, said that ABC employees are now considerably calmer than they were earlier this week when news broke that the seven-month-old son of an ABC worker who had visited the studio had contracted anthrax.

"The more information they get, the less concerned they become because it is a curable disease," he said.

Mr Polkes said that ABC's mail room had taken extra security precautions and that the main news presenter, Peter Jennings, had moved his office while his mail had not been opened for several days.

Letters addressed to Mr Jennings' counterparts, Dan Rather from CBS and Tom Brokaw from NBC, are believed to have contained the anthrax which has infected two of their assistants.

Freaking out the media

But why is the media being targeted?

Professor Richard Wald from Columbia University's School of Journalism says: "Without knowing who [is responsible], it is difficult to know why."

But he does point out that attacks on the media are sure to generate massive publicity and this publicity makes the general public apprehensive.

"So if the intention is to spread fear, this is an effective strategy," he says.

If the media gets freaked out, that creates a general unease and that is the goal of whoever is behind this

Reporter Nick Folbaum

As a journalist, Nick Folbaum knows that attacks on the media often receive more publicity than they sometimes deserve and he agrees with Mr Wald's theory.

"If the media gets freaked out, that creates a general unease and that is the goal of whoever is behind this," he says.

But Mr Wald notices that the anthrax letters are not on the same scale as the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center.

"That was wholesale terror. This is retail terror in tiny little bits," he says.

Whatever the whys and the wherefores, New York's hardy media has little time for the Washington politicians who have abandoned their offices after the discovery of anthrax on Capitol Hill.

Both the New York Times and the New York Post call this hypocrisy at a time when the nation's leaders are urging Americans to carry on as normal.

As ever, the Post is more direct than the high-brow Times.

Underneath pictures of the leaders of the House of Representatives, its front page headline reads simply: "Wimps".