Communication and media: articles review
The nature of US news media coverage of the political responsibility for the September 11, 2001 terror attack is the point of concern that is highlighted in both articles. The big question across many journalists and political minds are whether the attacks could have been a defining event for the journalism fraternity in the United States? This could be attributed to the common saying that the incidence changed so many things about our world today (Hutcheson, et al., 2004).
In my response, it is not wrong to argue that the coverage of the political response by the US press following the event of the September 11 attacks was an exact indication of what many would expect from looking at the historical dilemma. However, concerning journalism, the attack merely highlighted the already existing anti-democratic tendencies. In their public communications, most US military and government leaders have distinctly articulated their pro-American themes which are widely covered by the media following the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001.
Further arguments claim that such national identity discourse was at the heart of the U.S. government’s attempt to mobilize support for the ensuing tough war on terrorism and to unite the American public at large (Hutcheson, et al., 2004). Findings of the analysis of two main news magazines, i.e. Newsweek and Times in this respect found out that journalists closely paralleled the common nationalist themes in their languages to identify potential communication strategies, secondly, they suggested that both government and military officials were in the constant emphasis of the American core themes and values of the United States power and strength as they simultaneously demonized the terrorist, being the enemy in this case (Zelizer, & Allan, 2002).
It can also be noted from the articles that studying government leaders’ mode of communication strategies through analysis of news content simply means studying the elites’ communications filtered by news media. However, it is the same media that has the potential of overemphasizing others or masking certain strategies. Since government leaders are aware of this, they simply craft public statements with the main objective of creating, distributing, controlling, and mediating messages as a political resource. Besides, political leaders with wishes to widely inculcating, affirming, and disseminating certain views widely among the citizenry are fully aware of this, and therefore in modern nation-states, they do so by use of the mass media (Zelizer, & Allan, 2002). Non-government opinion leaders have also been successful in getting their points of view and voices into the media.
To get experts’ viewpoints, journalists have become increasingly sensitive to their too-great reliance upon government sources, for this, they have sought non-government particularly those with a flair for public communication are in most cases approached by news media. Among the news source populations contrastingly, citizens seem to be the least strategic, therefore, the most likely to be at the “mercy” of journalist discretion.
A strong picture that affirms the US, national identity has been offered by the significant findings of Newsweek. In other words, the differences have been emphasized between news organizations and their distraction from the clear role of both of these news organizations concerning the discourses of post–September 11 national identity (Zelizer, & Allan, 2002). Lastly, in a similar manner, previous research has found relatively minor differences in news coverage between major U.S. news organizations, i.e. whether network television newscasts, newspapers, or newsmagazines.
References
Hutcheson,J., Domke,D., Billeaudeaux,A., & Garland., P.(2004).U.S. National Identity, Political Elites, and a Patriotic Press Following September 11, Political Communication, 21:27–50. Taylor & Francis Inc.
Zelizer, B., & Allan, S. (2002). Journalism after September 11, London and New York, Routledge.