What is the War on Terror? Framing through the eyes of journalists

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 86, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 85-102

  Lewis, Seth C ^a   Reese, Stephen D ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

^b Austin (Tex) Community College   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

MEDIA ROLE; POLICY APPROACH; TERRORISM; WAR;

NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 67749139872     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900908600106     Document Type: Article

References (80)

1. In our terminology, War on Terror (capitalized with no italics) is a catchphrase for the Bush administration's military, political, and legal policies to combat terrorism after the 9/11 attacks-the overarching frame under study in this paper. The phrase appears lowercased in quotations from journalists to better delineate between their words and ours.
2. Robert M. Entman, "Cascading Activation: Contesting the White House's Frame after 9/11", Political Communication 20 (4, 2003): 415-32.
3. Stephen D. Reese, "Militarized Journalism: Framing Dissent in the Gulf Wars", in Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime, ed. Stuart Allan and Barbie Zelizer (NY: Routledge, 2004) : 247-65, 247.
4. Stephen D. Reese, "The Framing Project: A Bridging Model for Media Research Revisited", Journal of Communication 57 (1, 2007): 148-54.
5. Entman, "Cascading Activation"; Robert M. Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U. S. Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
6. Stephen D. Reese, "Framing Public Life: A Bridging Model for Media Research", in Framing Public Life, ed. Stephen D. Reese, Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., and August E. Grant (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001), 7-31, 10.
7. Zhongdang Pan and Gerald M. Kosicki, "Framing Analysis: An Approach to News Discourse", Political Communication 10 (1, 1993): 55-75;
8. Zhongdang Pan and Gerald M. Kosicki, "Framing as a Strategic Action in Public Deliberation", in Framing Public Life, ed. Stephen D. Reese, Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., and August E. Grant (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001), 35-65.
9. Stephen D. Reese and Seth C. Lewis, "Framing the War on Terror: The Internalization of Policy in the U. S. Press", Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism (in press).
10. Noam Chomsky, "Journalist from Mars: How the 'War on Terror' Should Be Reported", Extra! 15 (2, 2002): 10-16.
11. Quoted in Entman, "Cascading Activation", 415.
12. George W. Bush, "Freedom at War with Fear", address to a joint session of Congress, Washington, DC, September 20, 2001, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html (accessed January 14, 2009).
13. Reese, "Militarized Journalism."
14. George Lakoff, "'War on Terror', Rest in Peace", Rockridge Institute, available at http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/gwot- rip (accessed May 1, 2007).
15. Compare with W. Lance Bennett and David L. Paletz, eds., Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U. S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994);
16. Jack Lule, Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of Journalism (NY: Guilford Press, 2001);
17. Jack Lule, "War and its Metaphors: News Language and the Prelude to War in Iraq, 2003", Journalism Studies 5 (2, 2004): 179-90;
18. Ann S. Pancake, "Taken by Storm: The Exploitation of Metaphor in the Persian Gulf War", Metaphor & Symbolic Activity 8 (4, 1993): 281-95.
19. Richard W. Stevenson, "President, Marking Anniversary of War, Urges World to Unite to Combat Terrorism", New York Times, March 20, 2004, sec. A, p. 7.
20. Chomsky, "Journalist from Mars"; Jill A. Edy and Patrick C. Meirick, "Wanted, Dead or Alive: Media Frames, Frame Adoption, and Support for the War in Afghanistan", Journal of Communication 57 (1, 2007): 119-41;
21. Entman, "Cascading Activation"; Mark Falcous and Michael Silk, "Manufacturing Consent: Mediated Sporting Spectacle and the Cultural Politics of the 'War on Terror'", International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 1 (1, 2005): 59-65;
22. Jacob Levenson, "The War on What, Exactly? Why the Press Must Be Precise", Columbia Journalism Review 43 (4, 2004): 9-11;
23. Nel Ruigrok and Wouter van Atteveldt, "Global Angling with a Local Angle: How U. S., British, and Dutch Newspapers Frame Global and Local Terrorist Attacks", Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 12 (1, 2007): 68-90.
24. Levenson, "The War on What, Exactly?" 10.
25. Michael Ryan, "Framing the War against Terrorism: U. S. Newspaper Editorials and Military Action in Afghanistan", Gazette: International Journal for Communication Studies 66 (5, 2004): 363-82.
26. E.g., Chomsky, "Journalist from Mars"; Falcous and Silk, "Manufacturing Consent"; Philip W. Graham, Thomas Keenan, and Anne-Maree Dowd, "A Call to Arms at the End of History: A Discourse-Historical Analysis of George W. Bush's Declaration of War on Terror", Discourse & Society 15 (2/3, 2004) : 199-221;
27. David Hoogland Noon, "Operation Enduring Analogy: World War II, the War on Terror, and the Uses of Historical Memory", Rhetoric & Public Affairs 7 (3, 2004): 339-65.
28. Most notably "From the Editors: The Times and Iraq", New York Times, May 26, 2004, sec. A, p. 1.
29. E.g., Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (NY: Crown Publishers, 2006);
30. Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina (NY: Penguin Press, 2006).
31. Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 356;
32. see also Bob Woodward, The War Within (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2008).
33. Jill Abramson, "The Final Days", New York Times, September 28, 2008, sec. BR, p. 1.
34. Edy and Meirick, "Wanted, Dead or Alive."
35. David Domke, God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, The "War on Terror", and the Echoing Press (Ann Arbor, MI: ML Pluto Press, 2004).
36. Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner, "Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration's Rhetoric", Perspectives on Politics 3 (3, 2005): 525-37, 526.
37. Levenson, "The War on What, Exactly?" 9.
38. William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani, "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach", American Journal of Sociology 95 (1, 1989): 1-37.
39. Kevin M. Carragee and Wim Roefs, "The Neglect of Power in Recent Framing Research", Journal of Communication 54 (2, 2004): 214-33;
40. Reese, "The Framing Project."
41. Baldwin Van Gorp, "The Constructionist Approach to Framing: Bringing Culture Back In", Journal of Communication 57 (1, 2007): 60-78, 63.
42. Paul D'Angelo, "News Framing as a Multiparadigmatic Research Program: A Response to Entman", Journal of Communication 52 (4, 2002): 870-88.
43. Reese, "Framing Public Life", 11.
44. Gamson and Modigliani, "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power."
45. Christian Spielvogel, "'You Know Where I Stand': Moral Framing of the War on Terrorism and the Iraq War in the 2004 Presidential Campaign", Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8 (4, 2005): 549-69.
46. Levenson, "The War on What, Exactly?"
47. Reese, "Framing Public Life", 11.
48. Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman, The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories that Shape the Political World (NY: Oxford University Press, 2003), xv.
49. W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion, 8th ed. (NY: Longman, 2008).
50. Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What's News (NY: Random House, 1979);
51. Leon V. Sigal, Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking (Lexington, MA: DC Heath, 1973).
52. Mark Fishman, Manufacturing the News (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980);
53. Gaye Tuchman, "Making News by Doing Work: Routinizing the Unexpected", American Journal of Sociology 79 (1, 1973): 110-31.
54. Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (NY: Free Press, 1978);
55. see also Robert A. Hackett, "A Hierarchy of Access: Aspects of Source Bias on Canadian TV News", Journalism Quarterly 62 (summer 1985) : 256-65.
56. E.g., W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston, "None Dare Call It Torture: Indexing and the Limits of Press Independence in the Abu Ghraib Scandal", Journal of Communication 56 (3, 2006): 467-85;
57. W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston, Why the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007);
58. Entman, "Cascading Activation. "
59. Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston, "None Dare Call It Torture."
60. Thomas R. Lindlof and Bryan C. Taylor, Qualitative Communication Research Methods (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002, 2d ed.), 173.
61. E.g., Pablo J. Boczkowski, Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004);
62. Fishman, Manufacturing the News; Gans, Deciding What's News; Chris Paterson and David Domingo, eds., Making Online News: The Ethnography of New Media Production (NY: Peter Lang, 2008);
63. Tuchman, Making News by Doing Work: Routinizing the Unexpected; Gaye Tuchman, "The Production of News", in A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies, ed. Klaus B. Jensen (NY: Routledge, 2002) : 78-90.
64. E.g., Mark Deuze, "Popular Journalism and Professional Ideology: Tabloid Reporters and Editors Speak Out", Media Culture & Society 27 (6, 2005): 861-82;
65. Seth C. Lewis, "News, Nationalism, and the Imagined Community: The Case of Bilingual Journalism in Spain", Journalism Studies 9 (3, 2008): 409-28;
66. Bill Reader, "Distinctions that Matter: Ethical Differences at Large and Small Newspapers", Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 83 (winter 2006) : 851-64;
67. Sue Robinson, "'Someone's Gotta Be in Control Here': The Institutionalization of Online News and the Creation of a Shared Journalistic Authority", Journalism Practice 1 (3, 2007): 305-21.
68. Names and identifying information have been excluded from this paper, as stipulated in the interview request. Those interviewed hereafter will be referenced as "Journalist A", "Journalist B", and so on. Please contact the first author for additional details about those interviewed.
69. Reese and Lewis, "Framing the War on Terror."
70. Among the questions we asked: What comes to mind when I mention "war on terror"? In your view, what are some of the issues or events that tend to fall under that label? In your view, what do you think people mean when they use that phrase? Do you think the administration and the press, when they use the "war on terror" phrase, are more or less talking about the same thing? (If so, in what respect?) Now that "the war on terror" has become such a common phrase, do you have any reservations about whether it describes the issues adequately? Do you have any qualms about how journalists have used that phrase-or thoughts on how they ought to use it? The President often has expressed that "everything changed after 9/11." What would be your thoughts on that position? It seems like a subtle distinction, but would you see any major difference between the "war on terrorism" and the "war on terror"? Are there any in-house style guidelines on using that terminology? Do you think journalists' usage of those phrases has changed over time? Finally, reflecting back on media coverage of administration policy following 9/11, what lessons do you think journalists may have taken with them from this period?
71. While our initial study introduced some of the findings from these interviews, it did so only as a complement to the textual analysis, leaving underexplored the full range of meaning-making on the part of these journalists.
72. Reese and Lewis, "Framing the War on Terror."
73. In an e-mail exchange, one journalist identified "war on terror" as part of his beat reporting assignment after 9/11, as if it had been an official job label.
74. Reese, "The Framing Project."
75. Journalist C later said: "The most powerful thing about the war on terror is that it fits into a headline really nicely. [Laughs] It doesn't have a lot of letters. That's probably the biggest reason it caught on. It's a great headline phrase."
76. Across the major news outlets, according to our electronic retrieval search, there were about as many articles containing mentions of the War on Terror between 9/11 and the Iraq invasion on March 20, 2003, as between that date and the end of the first quarter of 2006: the New York Times (2, 191; 2, 132);
77. The Washington Post (3, 121; 3, 072);
78. Wall Street Journal (1, 325; 1, 130);
79. ABC (192, 272); CBS (228, 261); and NBC (560, 602).
80. Reese and Lewis, "Framing the War on Terror."