Network TV dramas were split on whether crisis justified suspending civil rights.

Evidence

Another episode of The Practice, “Inter Arma Silent Leges,”20—from the Latin, “In war, law is silent”—again represents the plight of Arab and Muslim Americans post-9/11. This episode, first aired on December 9, 2001, also sympathizes with Arab/Muslim American characters while simultaneously narrating a story of the United States as a nation in crisis, invoking a necessary logic of exceptionalism and ambivalence and lamenting the need for security over liberty. However, unlike the episode discussed above, this one articulates a preferred meaning that does not justify the suspension of civil rights in times of crisis but rather objects to it. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 393