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Note: On October 30, 2001 I participated on a forum panel dealing
with the "love-hate relationship" existing between the United States
and the rest of the world, especially the Middle East. Also on the
panel were: Serhat Khan, a student at UW Oshkosh from Pakistan;
Syrian native Nihal Shahbandar of Appleton who has lived in the
United States for 30 years; Dr. Daniel Shaw, a UW Oshkosh visiting
professor of religious studies and a specialist in Islamic studies;
and UW Oshkosh political science professor Thomas Bickford. About 150
people attended the forum. I was asked to speak about the way
American media frame issues. Below is the handout material I provided
the audience, along with some additional commentary.
Contents:
"News frames are almost entirely implicit and taken for granted. They do not appear to either journalists or audiences as social constructions but as primary attributes of events that reporters are merely reflecting. News frames make the world look natural. They determine what is selected, what is excluded, what is emphasized. In short, news presents a packaged world." (William Gamson, quoted in Charlotte Ryan's Prime Time Activism: Media Strategies for Grassroots Organizing. Boston: South End Press, 1990, p. 54).
An important point to remember about news frames is that they represent choices made by reporters and editors about what parts of a story to emphasize or minimize. Of course it is very difficult--and it would be unreasonable for us to expect, that any reporter or editor could be completely "objective" when making such choices. On the other hand, it is not unreasonable to expect that reporters and editors would be fair when making choices.
Take a look the example news frames below, and ask yourself which
one seems to be the most fair way of presenting a story about an
infant being bitten by a rat.
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An infant left sleeping in his crib was bitten repeatedly by rats while his 16-year-old mother went to cash her welfare check. A neighbor responded to the cries of the infant and brought the child to St. Joseph's Hospital where he was treated and released into his mother's custody. The mother, Angie Burns of Milwaukee, explained softly, "I was only gone five minutes. I left the door open so my neighbor would hear him if he woke up. I never thought this would happen in the daylight."
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An eight-month-old Milwaukee boy was treated and released from St. Joseph's Hospital yesterday after being bitten by rats while he was sleeping in his crib. Tenants said that repeated requests for exterminations had been ignored by the landlord, Henry Brown. Brown claimed that the problem lay with the tenants' improper disposal of garbage. "I spend half my time cleaning up after them. They throw the garbage out the window into the back alley and their kids steal the garbage can covers for sliding in the snow."
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Rats bit eight-month-old Michael Burns five times yesterday as he napped in his crib. Burns is the latest victim of a rat epidemic plaguing inner-city neighborhoods labeled the "Zone of Death." Health officials say infant mortality rates in these neighborhoods approach those in many third world countries. A Public Health Department spokesman explained that federal and state cutbacks forced short staffing at rat control and housing inspection programs. The result, noted Juan Nunez, M.D., a pediatrician at St. Joseph's Hospital, is a five-fold increase in rat bites. He added, "The irony is that Michael lives within walking distance of some of the world's best medical centers."
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Notice how the first version of the story finds relevance in the fact that the child's mother is a teenager on welfare. As with much reporting about poverty in the United States, the story implies that ignorance and lack of personal responsibility are at the root of America's urban problems. The second version of the story is another typical way of discussing poverty in the United States, as a kind of "contractual dispute" between parties. The implication of such stories is that "if we had better landlords" (or better teachers, doctors, etc.) and "more responsible tenants" (or more responsible students, patients, etc.), then horrible things like children getting bitten by rats would not happen. Stories like this often lead to calls for "more effective communication" between the parties.
The third version of the story frames the rat bites as a sympton of a broader public health crisis facing a poor community. This story assumes a relationship between public policy choices (e.g. cutbacks in housing inspection programs) and human behavior. Unlike the first two versions, version 3 implies that the reader must share some responsibility for this state of affairs; after all, anti-poverty programs would not be cut if the people would put pressure on politicians to fund them.
A final important point to remember is that rarely if ever is the dominant story frame obvious and/or explicitly identified by the reporter or speaker. Clark Kent and Lois Lane never come out and say "we are framing our stories about street-widening in Metropolis as a contest between bureaucratic city planners and neighborhood activists concerned with urban sprawl." Many times news reporters are not even themselves aware of how a story is framed; for some it simply feels "natural" to cover stories in a certain way. Often news reporters learn "that there are certain ways to cover stories around here and certain ways not to cover them." Regardless of how or why a story gets framed in a particular way, critical readers, watchers, and/or listeners are good at identifying news frames and making an assessment as to their appropriateness for the topic under discussion.
Let's try to identify some common news frames employed to cover
issues of war and peace. The current war in Afghanistan will serve as
our test case.
3. Media Framing Of United States Intervention In Afghanistan: Look For Core Frame, Core Position, Metaphor, Historical Example, Catch-Phrases, Depictions, Visual Images, Roots, Consequences, Appeals To Principle
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Freedom v. Terror |
The issue is whether we will permit evil to destroy civilization and rule the world. |
The US must defend civilization against terrorists and those who harbor them. |
United States as symbolic of civilized values that will perish if global terror network is not rooted out and destroyed. |
War against fascism in the 1930s and 1940s |
"America's New War,""You are with us or you are with the terrorists" |
US as protector of freedom, al Qaeda, Taliban, and Bin Laden as evildoers who have hijacked Islam |
Ground Zero, Pentagon,Flag raising (Iwo Jima allusion)Bin Laden, Palestinian celebration |
Hatred and envy of the US |
Taliban, al Qaeda and Bin Laden will export terror around the globe. |
This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom |
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Humanitarian Intervention
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The issue is whether the US will help the suffering Afghan people.
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The US must demonstrate that it is at war with the Taliban and al Qaeda, not with the Afghan people |
US as benevolent superpower. |
Kosovo, Somalia |
"bombs and bread," "our war is with the Taliban, not with the Afghan people,""humanitarian crisis" |
US as motivated by the cause of advancing human rights, Taliban willing to poison food |
Food drops, grateful Afghans, Taliban intolerance |
Hunger breeds instability, keep anti-terror coalition together. |
"Moderate" Arab governments will fall if US is seen as inflicting misery on Afghan people |
Help the poor and suffering.
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Quagmire
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The issue is whether the US will get itself stuck in another costly war |
US should avoid sticky entanglements
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Quagmire
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Vietnam, Soviet experience in Afghanistan
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Another Vietnam
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Afghanistan as a trap, Vietnam as a mistake or well-meaning blunder |
Vietnam soldiers returning in body bags |
US can't continue as world's police. |
Military solution will cause international and domestic trouble. |
Cost-benefit suggests resulting deaths and discontent too costly. |
4. Problems With Mainstream News Frames Regarding Afghan War:
5. Coverage Review: TV/Radio Form
Note: Use This Form To Try And Make More Sense Out Of News That You Watch.
Basic Information:
Station___________________ Date__________________ Time____________________
News Program_______________________________________________________________
Reporter's Name_____________________________________________________________
Order of Appearance____________________ Time Allotted__________________________
Content:
Main Message Conveyed
How It Was Conveyed:
Reporter's Lead
Visuals
Key Phrases
Interviews
Reporter Commentary
Other
On what constituencies did the coverage focus? (e.g. government officials, academics, religious leaders, suburbanites, white, people of color, etc.)
Summary: Did you find the coverage sympathetic to a point of view, mixed, carefully neutral, negative, confusing, erroneous, boring, other?
*Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
*Institute for Public Accuracy
*Solomon, Norman and Lee, Martin (1990). Unreliable Sources: A Guide To Detecting Bias In News Media. New York: The Carol Group.
*Bagdikian, Ben (2000). The Media Monopoly, 6th Edition. Boston: Beacon Press.
*Two Stories on "Auto Culture"
1. Ebert Story On Auto Culture Incomplete