Difficult Memories as Institutional Narrative: U.S. Journalists’ Recollections of 9/11 Across Three Anniversaries

Abstract

ABSTRACT Due to professional norms like objectivity, the emotional experiences U.S. journalists have while reporting tend to be obscured. However, occasions of memory-making, particularly around traumatic events, not only permit expression, but channel these emotions into promoting romanticized visions of journalism. The observances of 9/11 anniversaries in the U.S. serve as one critical site where sanctioned display of journalists’ emotions feed into assertions about journalism’s social value and, by extension, its legitimacy. Drawing on Zelizer’s interpretive communities with Hanitzsch and Vos’s discursive institutionalism, this study examines U.S. journalists’ retellings of difficult memories, or the emotional, painful, and/or traumatic experiences endured in the course of covering the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Thematic analysis of the first, tenth, and twentieth anniversaries reveals how these recollections reinforce idealized notions of journalists as uniquely compassionate, heroic individuals driven by a sense of duty. In doing so, the analysis establishes difficult memories as unruly rhetorical tools that can both bolster and undermine institutional authority. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how the persistence of nostalgized narratives, exemplified by 9/11 anniversaries, impacts journalism’s ability to navigate its past, present, and future amidst ongoing industry decline.