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September 11, the Media, and War Fever

In the followinganalysis, I want to suggest how the images and discourses of the U.S. television networks framed the September 11 terrorist attacks to whip up war hysteria while failing to provide a coherent account of what happened, why it happened, and what would count as responsible responses. In an analysis of the dominant discourses, frames, and representations that informed the media and public debate in the days following the September 11 terrorist attacks, I will show how the mainstream media privileged the “clash of civilizations” model, established a binary dualism between Islamic terrorism and civilization, and largely circulated war fever and retaliatory feelings and discourses that called for and supported a form of military intervention. I argue that such one-dimensional militarism could arguably make the current crisis worse rather than providing solutions to the problem of global terrorism. Thus, while the media in a democracy should critically debate urgent questions facing the nation, in the terror crisis the mainstream U. S. corporate media, especially television, promoted war fever and military solutions to the problem of global terrorism. On the day of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the networks brought out an array of national security state intellectuals, usually ranging from the right to the far right, to explain the horrific events of September 11. The Fox Network presented former UN ambassador and Reagan administration apologist Jeane Kirkpatrick, who rolled out a simplified version of Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations, arguing that we were at war with Islam and should defend the West. Kirkpatrick was the most discredited intellectual of her generation, legitimating Reagan administration alliances with unsavory fascists and terrorists as necessary to beat Soviet totalitarianism. Her 1980s propaganda line was premised on a distinction between fascism and communist totalitarianism that argued that alliances with authoritarian or right-wing terrorist and