Military Metaphors, Masculine Modes, and Critical Commentary

Abstract

This article analyzes the rhetoric that surrounded September 11 in trade publications that cater to journalism professionals. Approaching journalists as an interpretive community, the author examines the ways in which reporters and editors narrate their experiences of producing news about the events of September 11, 2001. The analysis shows that journalists' public memories of their work relied on masculine metaphors of military and sport, privileged empiricist tasks of news production over complex processes of internal reflection, and elevated the work of male anchors. Stories aimed at improving journalists'skills in covering crises bolster their sense of competence, fragment the community along the axis of technology, teach lessons about the profession's responsibilities, and reproduce orientalist tropes of Muslim men. In conclusion, the article considers the implications of the author's analysis of September 11 in trade media for journalists'collective identities.

Fake News as a Critical Incident in Journalism

“…This process of self-reflection by journalism's interpretive community usually unfolds through journalistic works. For example, Parameswaran (2006) examined the September 11 terror attack in the US as a critical incident where the industry press used remembrances of the challenges journalists faced in reporting the story to frame journalists as heroes who continued their work even in the midst of chaos. The incident also revealed hierarchies in different types of news media largely favoring print and addressed journalists' shortcomings, such as lack of questioning of government agendas (Parameswaran, 2006).…”

“…For example, Parameswaran (2006) examined the September 11 terror attack in the US as a critical incident where the industry press used remembrances of the challenges journalists faced in reporting the story to frame journalists as heroes who continued their work even in the midst of chaos. The incident also revealed hierarchies in different types of news media largely favoring print and addressed journalists' shortcomings, such as lack of questioning of government agendas (Parameswaran, 2006). In making sense of Princess Diana's death in August 1997, mainstream news organizations distanced themselves from the paparazzi, who were blamed for the accident, through their articles and editorials that reaffirmed the boundaries of professional journalism and located the paparazzi outside these boundaries (Bishop, 1999).…”

The Poetry of Suheir Hammad: Transnational Interventions in the Age of Islamophobia and Digital Media

“…In these scholarly footsteps, a significant number of studies subsequently delineated the formation of colonial tropes in language, and their material consequences in terms of justifying various forms of discrimination and marginalization. Literature that particularly focuses on the representation of Muslim women in the dominant media (Abu-Lughod 2002; Ayotte and Husain 2004;Bradford 1999;Butler 2006;Hirji 2011;Jiwani 2006;Khan 1998;Macdonald 2006;Parameswaran 2006;Razack 2008;Todd 1998;Yeğenoğlu 1998) identifies the ways in which they are portrayed as oppressed, and in need of saving, while also being framed as exotic and erotic. Indeed, colonial domination has typically involved the sexual objectification of the mysterious land and peoples they sought to subjugate.…”

News Framing as Identity Performance

“…Both publications framed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq along the dimensions of values/norms and goals, using similar rhetorical strategies. The invasion occurred soon after 9/11, when Islamophobia was rising sharply (Kumar, 2010;Parameswaran, 2006). The Bush administration framed this invasion as part of its so-called "global war on terror."…”