“Terror in the Heartland” was CNN’s tag for its coverage of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. At the time, I was a freshman at the University of Oklahoma, and I think it was an important moment for me and the way that I thought and felt about the media. I found it painfully ironic that a bleak place filled with judgmental folks would be termed the “heartland.” In retrospect, I think the national news media was often unfair in its representations of Oklahomans, although I hardly identify with the dominant values of the place.