News Norms, Indexing and a Unified Government
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News Norms, Indexing and a Unified Government
Reporting during the early stages of a Global War on Terror
A number of journalists and popular commentators have suggested that the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, were defining moments in United States history (e.g.,
Gibbs, 2001a; Morrow, 2001; Zakaria, 2001). The terrorist attacks upon the United
States began an unprecedented level of United States foreign policy news coverage.
This point is highlighted by public opinion data that indicated the “news interest” of U.S.
adults was markedly high in the days, weeks, and months after the terrorist attacks. For
example, well into December 2001 roughly half of randomly sampled U.S. adults
indicated they were “very closely” following news about the September 11 attacks and
subsequent U.S. campaign against terrorism, the highest level of sustained public interest
in the news in more than a decade (Pew, 2001).
President Bush laid out his foreign policy strategy only nine days after the attacks in his
address before the U.S. Congress and a national television audience on September 20,
2001. During this speech, he articulated his administration’s plans for a “war on
terrorism.” Included in his address were claims that the conflict would be lengthy in
duration and would not specifically target Muslims (Bush, 2001).
Over the next four weeks the President and his top aides routinely and aggressively
emphasized specific and worst-case expectations for a pending global military campaign.
Among the administration’s popularly communicated themes, including those mentioned
in his national speech, included the possibility of unfortunate-but-perhaps-unavoidable
civilian deaths, probable U.S. military casualties, the challenges of defining an exit
strategy and the challenge of rebuilding a post war Afghanistan. Indeed, administration-
led discussion on these six topics, referred to as "war themes," appeared 58 times in
Washington Post and New York Times news content between September 12 and October
7, 2001. These numbers, calculated in the days before the actual Afghan military