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.
2.1 The Bush Administration and the Events of 9/11 Leading to War
2.2 Overview on Protest Music against Bush
2.3.1 Green Day – “American Idiot”
2.3.2 A Perfect Circle – “Counting Bodies like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums”
2.4 The Changing Role of the Media in America
2.5 The Media’s Role during the Bush Administration
2.5.1 The Media during 9/11 and the Iraq War
3. Conclusion
4. List of Works Cited
1 Introduction
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 powerful strategic 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. Both of these factors have to be looked at in more detail in the course of this paper. On the other hand, the voices criticizing the media and its cooperation with Bush’s Administration also have to be analyzed. Especially artists in Rock music tried to make young people realize how the government influenced them and started a movement against voting for Bush a second time. As we know they did not succeed, because Bush was actually reelected.
Before continuing, it has to be kept in mind that the media’s role in Bush’s system and the reasons for this are very complicated and connected to a series of social, economic and political issues in the United States, which I will try to outline in this paper. However, the topic is very controversial and complex in itself, therefore I will focus on selected aspects of how the media got into the position and why it willingly supported the Bush Administration and thus even helped to misinform the public and to silence critics.
In order to fully understand the role of the media in helping Bush silence critique and how it has changed over time and therefore also became receptive to Bush’s manipulation, I will first shortly describe the Bush Administration, the events of 9/11 and their impact on Bush’s presidency leading to the “War on Terror” and the Iraq War. Furthermore, I will already take a look at Bush’s rhetoric at that time and how he made use of values and ideologies inherent to the American culture. This will be especially important when analyzing Bush’s “marketing campaign”. Then I will give a short overview of protest music against Bush. Two particular songs, Green Day’s “American Idiot” and A Perfect Circle’s “Counting Bodies like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums” will be examined in greater detail, as they reveal the critic’s point of view on the role of the media and make clear that the media helped the government in silencing the people, before real protest could even take root. After that I will further analyze the changing role of the media up until 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, as well as how it could even come to this and why the media took up this role, which will be discussed in the following two chapters.
2. Main Part
2.1 The Bush Administration and the Events of 9/11 Leading to War
On the morning of September 11, 2001 the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, visited an elementary school in Florida. Meanwhile, terrorists hijacked four planes and attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, with another plane meant to hit the Capitol in Washington D.C., but crashing into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after the passengers tried to overcome the hijackers. This event cost the lives of approximately 3000 people. In just one day it brought enormous changes to so many areas of American life.
But as filmmaker Michael Moore shows in his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 Bush’s presidency already did not get off to a good start. There were already demonstrations on the day of his inauguration in January 2001 and Bush was not able to do the traditional walk to the White House. The first months of his presidency also turned out to become very difficult for him as he could not keep Republican control of the senate and struggled to get his legislation passed (6:10-7:15). Moore also suggests that the demonstrations were the result of Bush having cheated in the election, as in the state in question, Florida, his brother Jeb Bush was the governor at that time. He also uncovers that George Bush had other relations that could have been beneficial to him in this election. Many people felt betrayed and complained that they had been disenfranchised. This incident remains a highly debated issue, since many are convinced that a recount would have revealed that Al Gore had actually won the election instead of Bush. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court voted for Bush to become the new president of the United States of America (1:20-3:11).
While his approval ratings began to sink in the months following the election, 9/11 changed this. The support for Bush increased significantly:
Prior to the events of 9/11, the polls indicated that George Bush’s approval rating was less than 60 percent. One month after 9/11, the president’s approval rating had spiked to nearly 90 percent. (Secunda and Moran 147)
This sudden increase of consent with the Bush Administration was due to Bush’s reactions to the attacks. Within days, on September 20th, Bush gave a speech in a joint session of Congress, in which he declared a “War on Terror” against Al Qaeda and every government that supported them (Address to Joint Session of Congress, Sept, 20th). Bush tried to act like a strong leader and reassure the American people that measures against these atrocious acts would be taken. Therefore, there was widespread support for the war in Afghanistan among Americans. By the time the Bush Administration announced that the U.S. would go to war again, this time against Iraq, it was already harder to convince the nation of these plans:
While the invasion of Afghanistan was generally applauded by the U.S. populace and widely supported abroad, nothing approaching a consensus existed at the advent of the Iraq War. (Garofalo 13)
It can be seen by the shift in Bush’s popularity before and after 9/11 that his presidency was rather unstable, at times even controversial. Immediately after 9/11 though, there were not so many critical voices, as most Americans were in shock and confused about the events. Bush’s strong rhetoric in this time, especially in the time leading to the War on Iraq, clearly aimed at evoking an even stronger patriotic feeling among the American people, but also at spreading certain images and ideas of terrorism and of America itself. Just as the terrorists had the symbolic meaning of the World Trade Center for the American way of life in mind when attacking America, Bush also used symbols of American culture to promote his policies. It is clear that the words for Bush’s speeches and addresses were chosen very carefully and with specific intentions in mind. By continuously using phrases like “freedom is under attack”, he emphasized that terrorists are “enemies of freedom” and therefore evil, because they hate everything America stands for. American values and symbols of freedom, prosperity and democracy on the other hand are praised and depicted as good and right compared to the wrong beliefs and values held by the terrorists (Address to Joint Session of Congress, Sept, 20th). In his speech on the evening of September 11 to the nation he already used phrases like “we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world” and “America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world” (Address to the Nation, Sept. 11th). The notion of America having to defend freedom and justice again and again is omnipresent:
Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done. (Address to Joint Session of Congress, Sept, 20th)
Bush operates on a very emotional level here, mentioning the feelings of the American people and assuring them that their desire for revenge will be satisfied, all, of course, to prevent more danger and ensure security and freedom. These terms of freedom and justice are used very symbolically and with the intention to further involve people in the subject emotionally and convince them of the necessity to fight this war. Through this rhetoric Bush laid the groundwork for his later plans to invade Iraq, where the goal again was to rally the American nation for war and to gain more support for his operations. This was widely achieved through a widespread media coverage of the events of 9/11 and the wars, making the media an important tool for the selling of the war.
By the time Bush announced the start of military actions in Iraq called “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in a speech on March 19th 2003, he still made use of the same kind of word choice. He declared that military operations were under way to “[…] disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger”. To the soldiers in the armed forces he said that the oppressed put all their hope in them and that “[t]he enemies [they] confront will come to know [their] skill and bravery. The people [they] liberate will witness the honourable and decent spirit of the American military”. In this speech he also made the claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (Iraq War Speech, March 19th). In their book All the President’s Spin, Fritz, Keefer and Nyhan describe Bush’s major strategies to “spin the press and the public, ranging from outright falsehood to subtle half-truths and suggestive language” (27). Bush has managed to perfect these methods to the point where it is very hard for the population to understand the facts of the policy debates and to denounce his actions. His most effective tactic though, as suggested by the authors of the book is the “strategic use of language to imply controversial conclusions or outright untruths he wouldn’t dare state publicly” (28). The assertions that there were in fact really weapons of mass destruction or that Iraq had been involved in the attacks of September 11 were unprovable or false (27-28).The focus of his word choice is always on pointing out that America represents freedom and democracy and that its task is to ensure these values for every people in the world, especially for those in countries where the government is taking away the freedom of its people and as Bush states Iraq is one of these countries with “no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality”. This makes it a direct enemy to the U.S. and its values and therefore America has to help “Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country” (Iraq War Speech).
In the aftermath of 9/11, actions were also taken in terms of national security with the Patriot Act (“Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”) of 2001. In short this law is a response to terrorism and should help “widen the intelligence net” against terrorists. But critics also see a threat to constitutional rights in the law “as it allows law enforcement agencies to conduct secret searches, tap phone and e-mails, and access medical, financial, mental health, and student records” (Encyclopedia of American Studies). This basically means that to a certain extent national security was valued more than the personal rights of citizens. Critical voices also often argue that although what happened on September 11 shocked the whole nation, it was still not totally unpredictable: “Islamist extremists had stated many times their intent to kill as many Americans as humanly possible” (Smith and Hung 3). The problem was that before 9/11, the legal situation prevented intelligence agents to share information on their targets or communicate their findings to other agents. Therefore, important information that might have helped to stop the terrorist attacks on September 11 just did not get passed on properly (5).
In his film, Moore also mentions that a security briefing with the information that Osama bin Laden was in fact “planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes” had been handed to Bush, but he ignored it. In addition to that he had not held one meeting since taking office “to discuss the threat of terrorism” and he had also cut counterterrorism funds from the FBI (Fahrenheit 9/11 18:08-18:35). In general it can be said that before 9/11 the FBI lacked an effective and uniform system to gather, distribute and examine information on terrorist threats. As Smith and Hung state “Up until 9/11, the Bureau had never seriously analyzed the terrorist menace facing America” (14). Of course there were more changes besides the signing of the Patriot Act, for example, the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security, but this would go beyond the scope of this paper, since the main focus here is the role of the media in promoting the president’s decisions and operations and the Bush Administration’s and media’s methods in doing so.
In this chapter we have taken a general look at Bush and the situation in America after 9/11 and the reactions to it. Furthermore, we have already examined Bush’s use of ideologies, which will again become important when analyzing the administration’s strategies to manipulate the media and the public.
2.2 Overview on Protest Music against Bush
As I have already mentioned above there were not so many critical voices against the Bush Administration in the days and months after 9/11 and against the War on Terror. Leading up to and during the War in Iraq though, support for the war also in popular culture got less vocal or as one quote suggests, it was just not really dealt with anymore: “One sign of the war’s falling popularity was the almost total absence of its coverage by popular culture” (Secunda and Moran 177). Nevertheless, especially in Rock music efforts to spread awareness against Bush’s policies and decisions e.g. the war in Iraq started quite early. Probably one of the best known movements against the Bush Administration was the “Rock against Bush” project. It consisted of two compilations released on the punk label “Fat Wreck Chords” in 2004. Each CD had songs by leading performers and bands of the Punk and Alternative scene on them that were against the Bush Administration and tried to take a stand against his policies. The records were also meant as a way to get young people to vote and educate them about politics. On Fat Wreck Chords website the second record is introduced as follows:
28 more Bush-hating bands give you a slew of unreleased and rare songs that will make you wanna march on DC with pitchforks and torches. We don’t suggest you do that however, cuz they’ll come get you and torture the shit out of you. (see works cited)
This already shows that these bands were really against the current government, its practices and way of handling things. Both records were released before the elections of 2004, in hope of having any effect on the outcome and to prevent Bush from serving a second term as president. One band on the first record is NOFX, whose singer and bassist “Fat” Mike Burkett launched the Punkvoter project, including a website and concerts. Other bands on the compilations include Pennywise, Sleater-Kinney, Bad Religion or Green Day. Many other songs were released besides these two records though. The critique varied from song to song. Some were directly against Bush as in NOFX’s “Idiot Son of an Asshole”, in which they basically claim that he is not smart enough to be the president and not worthy of ruling the United States. They hint at Bush always using his family ties and cheating in entering the White House, although the people did not even want him as a president. While NOFX’s song seems to be purely about insulting and making fun of Bush, the song “When the President Talks to God” by Bright Eyes is written in the form of a conversation Bush might have with God. The song criticizes the president’s war policies, but also his domestic policy. Other songs deal with the president’s immediate reaction to 9/11. Sleater-Kinney judge the president for “hiding”, while “working men” gave their lives to rescue the victims of the attacks. There are also, of course, many anti-war songs, for example, “B.Y.O.B” by System of a Down, in which they condemn that the government plans the war, but mostly the poorer portion of the population has to fight it and suffer from it (all lyrics see works cited).This was just an overview of the different kinds of protest songs there were during that time, but since my focus in this paper is on the role of the media, the songs dealing with media coverage and its influence on the population are more relevant to my topic.
In the next chapters, I will further examine the role of the media in the aftermath of 9/11 and the reasons why it got to this position. I will do this with the aid of two protest songs against the Bush Administration and the media coverage at this time. Through connecting my findings, I will show how critical voices barely stood a chance of taking root and initiating change among a population that was influenced in such a way.
2.3 The Role of the Media As Depicted in Protest Songs against the Bush Administration and the Media Coverage
2.3.1 Green Day – “American Idiot”
In their song “American Idiot” off the album with the same title, which was released on September 8th, 2004, the band makes a clear statement concerning the American media after 9/11. They say that it turns the American population into a people that is easily intimidated and influenced into believing everything they are told and shown by the media (lyrics see works cited). With lines like
Don't wanna be an American idiot
Don't want a nation under the new media
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind fuck America
their opinion on the role of the media becomes clear. Green Day tries to show that the media has been and is still spreading “paranoia”, “tension” and “hysteria” among the population. Basically, they suggest that the American people are being brainwashed and manipulated by the Bush Administration and the media: “The subliminal mind fuck America”.
It sounds like they are saying that the media reports in a certain way in order to build up even more tension and keep up the already strong intimidation among the people e.g. in lines like “Welcome to a new kind of tension – all across the alien nation – Where everything isn’t meant to be okay”. The word “propaganda” is also used in this context. Propaganda can be defined as “[t]he systematic dissemination of information, especially in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view” (Oxford English Dictionary). They are clearly presenting the belief that the media is playing with people’s minds by promoting a certain atmosphere of fear and tension “all across the alien nation”. The people are being influenced and manipulated emotionally and psychologically in order for them to support this “redneck agenda”. Through creating a sense of insecurity and fear, the Bush Administration pushes people towards agreeing with and supporting all of its decisions and actions. The band is positioning itself against this, saying they will not follow this way of forcing acceptance, lies and beliefs onto people by basically turning them into ignorant “idiots” blind with fear and anger. In addition to that they also criticize American obsession with consumption and capitalism as well as the people’s materialistic attitudes. With sentences like “Television dreams of tomorrow” and “[…] a nation under the new media”, they depict American society as very negative and overly influenced by images and stereotypes presented by the media. To Green Day, the media spreads these images and the American population readily consumes them. The people are just fed easy answers and given preformed opinions to believe in. The term “redneck agenda” also hints at a rejection of the patriotism in the nation, which was, as we have seen, strongly employed by Bush. This can also be seen in the music video to the song, when the American flag and its stripes are washed away (see works cited). The band distances itself from Bush’s rhetoric and the American values and lifestyle he praises.
Since the song was released during Bush’s campaign and before the election on November 2nd it was clearly meant to get the listener to think about the position they are in. With lines like “We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow” and “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda”, they are trying to encourage the audience to form their own opinions and question authority. The quotation indicates that the listener has to realize that only they have the power to change something about how they are being influenced by the government and the media. Green Day uses strong language, calling everyone who lets the media intimidate them an “idiot” and making Bush the biggest “American idiot” to open people’s eyes to the seriousness of the problem. People should not believe everything they see on TV and are told by the government, they should also question these “facts” they are presented with and think for themselves, because a lot of it is just to build up on the already prevailing fear of terrorism. Through exaggerations and dramatizations the population is persuaded to believe in the government and its actions which is mainly achieved through the media’s methods of covering certain events and presenting Bush’s decisions.
2.3.2 A Perfect Circle – “Counting Bodies like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums”
This sentiment towards the Bush Administration and the media was shared by quite a lot of rock bands during that time. Another example of this would be the band A Perfect Circle and their song “Counting Bodies like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums”. This song was also released in 2004 and is very critical of the Bush Administration and its methods of gaining support for its war. While the lyrics stay quite monotonous and do not have as strong of a message as “American Idiot”, the intention behind the song becomes much clearer by watching the music video (see works cited). Nevertheless, the song makes use of many symbols and never really seems to state its true meaning openly, it’s an appeal to the audience to interpret all the little hints given in the video and the lyrics. At the beginning, the audience sees a peace sign, which is falling apart. The next picture shows an installation for oil extraction, which pumps up blood, instead of oil, while blood begins to pour all over the screen. This is probably an allusion to Bush’s oil business and the role oil played in the invasion of Iraq. As Duffield suggests, oil played a significant role in the Bush Administration’s decision to go to war against Iraq (145).
Throughout the whole video images of television sets are shown with mouths opening and closing or “stealing” children’s brains. This apparently symbolizes the role of the media and how they “feed” the population with information. The televisions are also presented to children who start watching and then turn into sheep. At first, a man who is obviously supposed to portray George W. Bush rides into view on a horse, while a kid is playing outside. He opens a flag on which the letters “G.O.P.” are written. This stands for “Grand Old Party” or the Republican Party. Throughout the entire song Bush is shown luring in children with ice cream in the form of small TV’s or setting their schoolbooks on fire and handing them televisions. Thus, the symbolic “feeding” of information through the media, especially that information that is beneficial to the government and leaving out what could make them question the government’s actions, is again hinted at. Bush is also shown on his way to the city through a sea of blood and on a carriage pulled by a sheep through the desert. On his march through the city his way is paved with television screens and all of his sheep follow him. In the background we can see the burning Capitol.
Bush is portrayed as a father figure, protecting his sheep from harm and making sure that they are safe and have nothing to worry about. While the lyrics suggest that everything is fine and they can trust the leader, in reality he leads his sheep over the edge of the cliff and most of them jump without hesitation. Only three “awaken” from their sleep. One tries to escape and is marked with an “S” by another sheep, the hand that picks it up to throw it into a grinder has the Republican elephant on it. The sheep is then made into a cardigan. This also implies a disgust with capitalism and materialistic thinking in America. In between Bush is shown in uniform with burning money in his hands, a hint at the wasting of money for the war in Iraq. After that two other sheep try to destroy two televisions. The sheep are spiked and labeled as “Traitors”. Meanwhile, all the other sheep just follow the ones before them. At the end of the video, Bush’s face is shown with spirals in his eyes, emphasizing the notion that Bush is drawing people in and making them support his policies through using the media.
The visual part is not the only thing that makes the message of this song so powerful. The sentence “Go back to sleep” is repeated multiple times and really has the effect of creating an atmosphere of sleepiness, but also intimidation, since it is basically yelled at the listener like a command. The seemingly endless repetitions of the same sentences definitely have the effect of almost hammering it into the listeners head and creating a certain atmosphere. The listener is almost being played into a trance-like state. In the lyrics Bush comes across as a kind and loving person, but the band clearly plays with this image:
Don't fret precious I'm here, step away from the window
Go back to sleep
Safe from pain and truth and choice and other poison devils,
See, they don't give a fuck about you, like I do.
In combination with the musical background and the pictures it creates a somewhat disturbing counterpart to the seemingly warm and nice lyrics (see works cited). The text seems reassuring, telling the children not to worry and just listen to what he says and everything will be fine, but by doing so, the band suggests, they also lose their capability to choose for themselves: “I’ll be the one to protect you from your enemies and your choices son”. It is implied that Bush will protect his “sheep” from all “enemies”, but the band also makes it sound like these enemies are “truth”, “a will to survive and a voice of reason”. All of this is mostly sung in a nice, calm, and comforting voice, so that it does not even come across as a threat to the personal rights or choices, it just sounds like the figure in the video really does want the best for his “sheep”.
The message of the song is similar to the one presented in Green Day’s “American Idiot”, namely that this feeding of information through the media is slowly turning the population into fools who believe everything they are told and follow blindly even into death as is shown at the end of the video when Bush leads “his” sheep down the edge of the cliff and they jump without hesitating.
In the next chapters of my analysis I will look at the reasons of how it was possible for the Bush Administration to turn the media into its cooperation partner. To do this, I will first look at the factors lying in the media landscape itself. In order to do this, I will trace back how the role of the media changed by giving an overview of the role of the media in the past and what has changed in reporting since then. After that the Bush Administration’s own strategy of manipulating journalists into consenting with its policies has to be described.
2.4 The Changing Role of the Media in America
In this chapter, I will present a short overview of the changes in the media that are important to understand how Bush could gain journalist’s support. This chapter then will deal with the issues of the media and how these issues have put it into the position it was in during the Bush Administration.
At the time of the attacks on September 11, 2001, the media was still in the early stages of what is commonly referred to as “new media” and the “information age”, as Green Day also mention in their song. During that time journalism was going through a period of change. Howard Tumber argues that two main factors are contributing to this changing role of journalism within the public sphere: “First, the globalisation of the media industries and, second the development of new electronic communications technologies” (17). He says one issue is that the prevalent concentration within the media industry leads to competition. To maintain dominance, huge corporations are formed by broadcasting, publishing and telecommunications companies (17). There is a financially driven “redefinition of news” in the United States due to these concentrations of ownerships, because “news workers […] have to comply with corporate interests” (18). The consequences are a cutback of “newsgathering”, a decline in “importance of political coverage”, particularly of the State Department and the Congress and a reduction of foreign news. The effect of this is “that the public is starved politically of the workings of the democratic system” (18). Overall Tumber says that in the last 15 years before 2001 the quality not only in television news, but also in print media has decreased due to competition for advertising, “leading to a lack of interest in both foreign news and investigative journalism” (18). He adds that the news has become “another branch of entertainment” (18).
The media in America has moved more towards “assertion” rather than “verification”. Where in the past the task of journalism was to expose corruption in government, now it is more about creating media scandals. Tumber says, “A journalist’s job is to sift out facts from allegations and to provide citizens with accurate, reliable information upon which they can self-govern and that process is now at risk” (19). The information age is not so much about gathering information, but more about making assertions and spur speculation, making it harder for the public to separate “fact from spin”, therefore it becomes easier to manipulate them (18/19). Through the new media and the possibility of a “continuous news cycle”, verification has become more of a problem (19).
- Citar trabajo
- Katharina Gerhardt (Autor), 2016, ''One Nation Controlled by the Media''. The Role of the Media in America after 9/11, Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1609099
