Selling Fear

Counterterrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion

Brigitte L. Nacos, Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, Robert Y. Shapiro

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780226567198, 9780226567181
• eBook ISBN: 9780226567204
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

While we've long known that the strategies of terrorism rely heavily on media coverage of attacks, Selling Fear is the first detailed look at the role played by media in counterterrorism—and the ways that, in the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration manipulated coverage to maintain a climate of fear.

            
Drawing on in-depth analysis of counterterrorism in the years after 9/11—including the issuance of terror alerts and the decision to invade Iraq—the authors present a compelling case that the Bush administration hyped fear, while obscuring civil liberties abuses and concrete issues of preparedness. The media, meanwhile, largely abdicated its watchdog role, choosing to amplify the administration's message while downplaying issues that might have called the administration's statements and strategies into question. The book extends through Hurricane Katrina, and the more skeptical coverage that followed, then the first year of the Obama administration, when an increasingly partisan political environment presented the media, and the public, with new problems of reporting and interpretation.

            
Selling Fear is a hard-hitting analysis of the intertwined failures of government and media—and their costs to our nation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Series
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. The News as Commodity, Public Good, and Political Manipulator
• Chapter 2. Selling Fear: The Not So Hidden Persuaders
• Chapter 3. Civil Liberties versus National Security
• Chapter 4. Selling the Iraq War
• Chapter 5. Preventing Attacks against the Homeland
• Chapter 6. Preparing for the Next Attack
• Chapter 7. Mass-Mediated Politics of Counterterrorism
• Postscript. President Obama: Underselling Fear?
• Notes
• References
• Index