No. 8: Oklahoma City bombing

Editor's note: This story is part of a series titled "Top 10 News Events of Our Lives," published in December 2008. The stories were chosen and written by Daily staff writers. Our editors have shared some of their anecdotes on each event. We encourage you to leave your own memories in the Discussion section of each story.

Two terrorist attacks on federal buildings occurred in 2001 and 1995. The media named one group of terrorists Islamic extremists and the other one was named a domestic terrorist.

In 1995, Timothy McVeigh bombed one-third of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City. He was a pro-gun advocate who retaliated because of the federal government’s acts in Waco and Ruby Ridge. The Indiana native fell in and out of Catholicism and was a Caucasian male.

About six years later, 19 hijackers flew planes into both the world trade center buildings, the pentagon and into the ground near Pennsylvania. The attacks were tied to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, who retaliated because he said America was massacring Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and Iraq. The attackers were mostly Muslim and Arabic.

Hector Avalos, professor of philosophy and religious studies, said McVeigh was treated differently than the Sept. 11 hijackers because of his religion.

“I never heard ‘Christian terrorist’ applied to Tim McVeigh, but you hear ‘Muslim terrorist’ all the time for the 9/11 hijackers,” Avalos said.

Avalos said McVeigh was treated differently because Christianity has a better image in America than Islam.

“Usually in America you do not paint Christianity as a religion of violence because of the idea that true Christianity is peaceful,” Avalos said. “Therefore, Americans and the media usually never refer to a ‘Christian terrorist’ or ‘a Christian extremist.’ Americans are much more comfortable using ‘violent’ to describe Islam.”

Avalos said the true test is comparing the case of Paul Hill to the Sept. 11 hijackers. Paul Hill, who killed abortion doctors, openly gave his Christianity as a motive, Avalos said.

“Paul Hill says he was acting as a Christian, and he quoted the Bible to support his actions,” Avalos said. “Even self-described Christians who commit acts of killing are not usually referred to as Christian extremists or as Christian terrorists.”

The treatment of terrorists who are Muslims compared to terrorists who are Christians is unfair, Avalos said.

“While Muslims who commit violence may be labeled as ‘Muslim terrorists’ one hardly ever hears the equivalent, ‘Christian terrorist’ used for Paul Hill and other self-described Christians who commit acts of terrorism,” he said.

When President Bush described the attacks as ‘evil,’ it was critical in how Muslims were framed by the news media, said David Bulla, assistant professor of journalism, in an e-mail.

“He said it was an act of evil. Of course, it was. But in the minds of many Americans evil and Muslim became synonymous,” Bulla said.

Bulla said there is a theory called cultivation, that shows there are only minimal effects on consumers from media messages.

“It could be difficult to assess how much the news media is to blame for this association,” Bulla said. “I wonder what the cultivationists would say about the image of Muslims in America after Sept. 11, and the effect on that image the news media had.”

Bulla said the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 made people think the Oklahoma City bombings were initially done by someone of Middle Eastern descent.

“The 1993 attack in New York had people on edge, and the news media and the country as a whole just assumed that terrorism was a Middle Eastern phenomenon,” Bulla said.

The media provided extensive commentary and investigative journalism regarding the race, religious and military backgrounds and organizational ties of McVeigh and the Sept. 11 actors, said Daniel Krier, assistant professor of sociology.

The investigations into the Oklahoma City bombing drew attention to McVeigh because of his retaliation of Waco and his ties to anti-government, para-military organizations, Krier said.

“The ‘whiteness’ of McVeigh came into the case primarily because these right-wing groups maintained network ties to white supremacist groups,” Krier said.

Krier said journalists had a difficult time dealing with the distinctions between the “internal terrorist threat” of right-wing extremist groups as compared to “external terrorist threat” from al-Qaida. He said journalists focused on what went wrong in McVeigh’s life because he was “one of us” who turned into a homicidal terrorist.

“Yes, he was white, but also his military credentials, unassuming demeanor, Christian beliefs and middle-American origins seemed eerily familiar,” Krier said.

Because the Sept. 11 hijackers were much less “familiar,” it made it easier to externalize the threat of terror, Krier said. The media lumped them together as a group into the category of “other.” This made the media less prone to look into their personal lives and motivations.

Krier said those who carried out the attacks on Sept. 11 shared common features, such as Middle-Eastern apperance, religion and participation in a foreign terrorist organization. These “otherness” traits drew attention away from their individual motives and backgrounds.

Staff comments:

"I didn’t realize the impact at the time, couldn’t believe that someone would do what they did."

— James Heggen, news editor