News Norms, Indexing and a Unified Government
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some influence upon a decision. Additionally, “power” indexing seems to support
Communications scholar Grace Ferrari Levine’s (1977) findings that show the more
power sources have, the more likely they are to be shown as making events happen and
thus, arguably, more newsworthy. Contrastingly relatively powerless sources are
portrayed as victims where events have happened to them.
Conclusion
This study endeavored to investigate how the indexing theory and its follow up findings
would work within news coverage gathered from thousands of news stories featured
during the first tumultuous weeks preceding and into the war on terrorism. The patriotic
zeal and determination demonstrated by most Americans in the autumn of 2001 hadn’t
been experienced in this country since the weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor in 1941 – a war most Americans know only from stories or movies. Arguably,
these conditions offered a most unique position from which to investigate how, when and
where a myriad of mediated voices would ultimately find themselves within the elite
media’s foreign policy discourse.
Some of our findings, such as early and dominant presidential coverage, easily met the
expectations offered by indexing theory, while others did not. Without dissident
Congressional voices or much if any official debate journalists scrambled to meet their
news norm of objectivity. We found lesser elites and foreign voices filling this
objectivity hole in the resultant news void. But these “other” voices, when featured, were
unlikely to see front-page coverage and, as their ability to make a difference in U.S.
foreign policy was reduced, so too was their opportunity to break into U.S. news
coverage at all. Although findings to our research questions remain interesting, the
authors of this study believe it is important to remember the rallying, nationalistic public
and governmental atmosphere that was operating during this period. This atmosphere,
we argue, could have muffled potential dissident voices available to journalists (e.g.
spiral of silence or fear) as much keeping journalists themselves, concerned for their
careers, far from any taboo, controversial or nationalistic issues. Certainly hypothesizing
Convention