American Television S Live Coverage Of The 9 11 Attacks

This book analyzes the narratives and news coverage of 9/11 across ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News, arguing that television coverage shaped the cultural meaning, collective memory, and language of 9/11 in ways that continue to resonate throughout American culture.

This book analyzes the narratives and news coverage of 9/11 across ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News, arguing that television coverage shaped the cultural meaning, collective memory, and language of 9/11 in ways that continue to resonate throughout American culture.

The Fox-TV series 24 might have been in production long before its premier just two months after 9/11, but its storyline—and that of many other television programs—has since become inextricably embedded in the nation's popular consciousness. This book marks the first comprehensive survey and analysis of War on Terror themes in post-9/11 American television, critiquing those shows that—either blindly or intentionally—supported the Bush administration's security policies. Stacy Takacs focuses on the role of entertainment programming in building a national consensus favoring a War on Terror, taking a close look at programs that comment both directly and allegorically on the post-9/11 world. In show after show, she chillingly illustrates how popular television helped organize public feelings of loss, fear, empathy, and self-love into narratives supportive of a controversial and unprecedented war. Takacs examines a spectrum of program genres—talk shows, reality programs, sitcoms, police procedurals, male melodramas, war narratives—to uncover the recurrent cultural themes that helped convince Americans to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and compromise their own civil liberties. Spanning the past decade of the ongoing conflict, she reviews not only key touchstones of post-9/11 popular culture such as 24, Rescue Me, and Sleeper Cell, but also less remarked-upon but relevant series like JAG, Off to War, Six Feet Under, and Jericho. She also considers voices of dissent that have emerged through satirical offerings like The Daily Show and science fiction series such as Lost and Battlestar Galactica. Takacs dissects how the War on Terror has been broadcast into our living rooms in programs that routinely offer simplistic answers to important questions—Who exactly are we fighting? Why do they hate us?—and she examines the climate of fear and paranoia they've created. Unlike cultural analyses that view the government's courting of Hollywood as a conspiracy to manipulate the masses, her book considers how economic and industry considerations complicate state-media relations throughout the era. Terrorism TV offers fresh insight into how American television directly and indirectly reinforced the Bush administration's security agenda and argues for the continued importance of the medium as a tool of collective identity formation. It is an essential guide to the televisual landscape of American consciousness in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

In its exploration of some of the most influential, popular, or critically acclaimed television dramas since the year 2000, this book documents how modern television dramas reflect our society through their complex narratives about prevailing economic, political, security, and social issues. Television dramas have changed since the turn of the 21st century—for the good, many would say, as a result of changes in technology, the rise of cable networks, and increased creative freedom. This book approaches the new golden age of television dramas by examining the programs that define the first 15 years of the new century through their complex narratives, high production value, star power, popularity, and enthusiastic fan culture. After an introduction that sets the stage for the book's content, thematic sections present concise chapters that explore key connections between television dramas and elements of 21st-century culture. The authors explore Downton Abbey as a distraction from contemporary class struggles, patriarchy and the past in Game of Thrones and Mad Men, and portrayals of the "dark hero protagonist" in The Sopranos, Dexter, and Breaking Bad, as a few examples of the book's coverage. With its multidisciplinary perspectives on a variety of themes—terrorism, race/class/gender, family dynamics, and sociopolitical and socioeconomic topics— this book will be relevant across the social sciences and cultural and media studies courses.

It ranked among journalism’s finest hours. That is what was heard in the weeks following September 11, 2001. They made mistakes, of course, but in covering one of the biggest disasters ever to hit the United States, journalists used their training, their experience, their understanding, and their sensitivity to provide coverage that helped bring understanding and a sense of calm to the chaos. Their performance did not end with reporting the immediate impact of the catastrophe. They continued to analyze what happened, the impact to property and human lives, the impact on government and foreign relations. Lessons from Ground Zero’s examines journalism’s efforts to cover a crisis, while analyzing journalism itself. Many lessons were evident to journalists as they sought to cope with the challenges of covering 9/11. The long-term question, however, is whether the answers they found served as catalysts for better journalism in the future, or whether they have been forgotten, put into the closet of old memories with no noticeable long-term impact. This book analyzes journalists’ response to 9/11 through scholarly research and interviews with many of the journalists who covered 9/11. Sometimes they do not agree, but all are thoughtful and each adds to understanding. Public opinion polls show clearly that citizens appreciated and responded to media coverage. Given that this occurred in a time frame in which public approval of American journalism had declined, it is reasonable to ask what the media did that was different from their normal practices. This book provides some of the answers.

How Did the World¡ ̄s News Media React to 9/11? Not surprisingly, most of the world¡ ̄s news media criticized the terrorists and offered sympathy and support to the United States in the days right after the September 11, 2001, attacks. But this phase didn¡ ̄t last long. With a week or two, many of the world¡ ̄s news media, even some in Western countries, were putting some of the blame for the attacks on the United States, citing its history of heavy-handed politics around the world. Many hoped the attacks would ¡°wake up¡± the United States to this fact. But the subsequent U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dashed these hopes. Today, much of the sympathy and support generated from the tragedy has dissipated ¡a replaced, instead, by a widespread belief that political leadership in the United States is more arrogant, intransigent and self-absorbed than ever. This is the major theme of How the World¡ ̄s News Media Reacted to 9/11, which contains 22 chapters, written by scholars and experts from around the world, that examine news media coverage of 9/11 from more than two dozen countries. The ¡°arrogance¡± theme isn¡ ̄t one that many U.S. politicians, journalists and citizens want to hear. But it¡ ̄s the message that the world¡ ̄s news media have been sending, and the question now is: Will U.S. media and politicians listen? Other key highlights in this book: ¡ñ American TV news channel news executives deliberately excluded controversial U.S. guests and opinions from their news coverage of 9/11 (Chapter 20). ¡ñ Media in Australia, Canada and other countries demonized Muslims and Arabs after 9/11 (Chapters 18 and 21). ¡ñ Ordinary Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East have distorted views of the United States, partly because their media do not provide all of the facts (Chapter 15), but Americans, too, misunderstand Muslims and Arabs, because U.S. media have failed to help Americans understand why much of the world hates their political leadership (numerous chapters).

This book offers analyses of the roles of race, gender, and sexuality in the post-apocalyptic visions of early twenty-first century film and television shows. Contributors examine the production, reproduction, and re-imagination of some of our most deeply held human ideals through sociological, anthropological, historical, and feminist approaches.

Satiric TV in the Americas is the first book to focus on Latin American TV satire in order to understand their critical role in challenging the status quo, traditional journalism, and the prevalent local media culture. It introduces the notion of "critical metatainment" as negotiated dissent, a key concept for the study of postmodern satire.