After the shocking events of September 11th American peoples’ lives seemed to change tremendously. In reaction to the attacks, the Bush Administration initiated a “War on Terror” meant to prevent such atrocities from happening again in the future and to stop terrorism once and for all. There was widespread support for the war and after a modest start into his first term as president of the United States, Bush had now also gained far more citizen approval. To maintain steady support, the Bush Administration itself developed effective strategies such as using the media and its power to reach the biggest part of the population. Bush’s ideological and patriotic rhetoric in his reaction to the events of 9/11 aimed at positioning himself as a strong leader and this image was mostly supported by journalists.
This role of the mass media in contributing to the administration’s goal to gain support for its decisions and interests is highly discussed among scholars. Many are convinced that media coverage was influenced by politics and the administration’s manipulation and that it therefore also helped to “sell” the administration’s second war in Iraq to the American public. But by doing so, the media also neglected its most important task, namely acting as an agent between the public and the government and representing public interest. Through supporting and spreading Bush’s strategic use of ideologies and misinformation, the media helped to discourage critique before it could even form. Therefore, I argue that through the Bush Administration's powerfulstrategic manipulation of the mainstream media and the public, critical voices did not even stand a chance to initiate change. By giving up its former purpose, the media has become nothing more than a tool for the government to gain more support for its interests.
However, the reasons for the media’s decline do not only lie in the Bush Administration’s deliberate manipulation through the promotion of fear and ideologies or the construction of an enemy image as well as the silencing of critics. Changes in the media landscape, due to the developing consolidation of media ownership and the emergence of new technologies over a longer period of time made such actions possible in the first place. The news media changed in quality and the content of the news became less objective and aimed more towards being entertaining, while political topics were not covered as much anymore.
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- Katharina Gerhardt (Author), 2016, ''One Nation Controlled by the Media''. The Role of the Media in America after 9/11, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1609099
