The British See Things Differently

British newspapers responded to the attacks of September 11 just as American papers did: saturation coverage and outrage. But it didn't take long before reporting and commentary in Britain revealed essential differences between journalism in the U.K. and the U.S. -- differences in style and substance as well as in the trans-Atlantic perspective.

On September 12, Britain's famously competitive national press spoke with one voice, with full-page photographs of the collapsing World Trade Center towers on nearly every front page. The Sunday Times of September 16 included a twenty-four-page ad-free section headlined america at war.

The Guardian's media critic, Roy Greenslade, was struck by the rare unanimity. "What was so notable about all the coverage was the way in which British newspapers treated the United States as 'one of us,'" he wrote in his review a week later.