Nossek Terrorist Acts as Media Events

8/11/2019 Nossek Terrorist Acts as Media Events

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News media-media events:

Terrorist acts as media events

HILLEL NOSSEK

Abstract

Based on longitudinal research on the media coverage of terrorist attacks,this article suggests a model of how the coverage of these attacks may beconceptualized as a media event and explores the function this serves withinsociety. The main assumption of the model is that journalists change theirritual of news coverage when dealing with exceptional terrorist attacks;they abandon their usual normative professional frame that encompassessuch activities as critical scrutiny of governmental actions, and assume a

national-patriotic coverage frame that seeks to reestablish normality andrestore order. The model can be useful in clarifying the medias role follow-ing terror event. While media run the risk of reinforcing the terror eventby giving it the public stage its perpetrators seek, by acting as patriots andnot as professionals, journalists subvert the message of the terrorists, sothat instead of passing on a message of terror, dread, and alarm, the media

give the attacked country and society a message of solidarity, partnership,and stubborn endurance against the terrorist threat. The model may alsobe useful for understanding media coverage of other crisis situations apart

from massive terror attacks.

Keywords: journalism, media events, news media, terrorism ritual

Introduction

The early years of the twenty-first century were characterized by the liveor almost live TV broadcasts of attacks by enemy terrorists, such as the

attack on September 11. The broadcasts portrayed the societies and theirgovernments as passive victims of the events and the media came acrossas passively involved (though perhaps also haunted by the spectacles).Television, though being the news producer, had no involvement in

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314 Hillel Nossek

creating the event and the audience was either its direct or indirectvictim.

However, researchers noted that media coverage of terrorist acts was

different from other types of media coverage and began researching ter-rorism and the special role of the media long before September 11 notonly with regard to television and not only in the US.

This article wishes to propose a model that can explain the mediasperformance during and after terrorist attacks. Its name is: the Newsmedia Media events model, and it is a modification of Dayan and Katzs(1992) media event theory.

The original definition of media events proposed by Dayan and Katz(1992) is based on social-functional theory. Social-functional theory con-

ceives media events as a ritual used by societies for self-mobilization andsolidarity purposes and also that media events mark meaningful eventsin the life of their nation or civilization. Examples of this were the in-ception of the peace process between Israel and Egypt and the first land-ing on the moon. Watching historical events on television makes peoplefeel a part of history and it is that act which defines events as mediaevents.

With this in mind, Dayan and Katz (1992) examined the impact of themodern television-based ritual on media event producers (usually leaders

of nations and leading figures in science and religion); the media in-volved in the production of the event (television journalists, directors,and producers), and the public, who participate in the event via theirtelevision screens rather than in public, face-to-face gatherings.

This article argues that in the cases of negative media events, such asmajor terrorist attacks, where the society perceives the event as a crisisand threat to its social order, the media at large (and not just televisionand live broadcasting) become an independent actor and perform a rit-ual that is functional in helping society cope with the perceived threat.

The ritual is a convention in which journalists, editors, producers,directors, photographers, and the audience all follow a familiar, highlyritualized script in which each has a part. One could in fact say thatsociety creates the ritual, which is dictated by the need of the hour, theperception of an existential threat, and that the journalists of theelectronic and print media automatically and unconsciously perform therequired ritual as proxies of their society

I suggest that the ritual that is performed by the media in such casesfollows a recognizable model that I suggest to title: News media-Media

events Model. In such cases the media ascribes social/cultural meaningto terrorist events that differs from the meaning the terrorist might havein mind when planning the event. It does this by establishing that anational affront has been committed and by mobilizing the societys pa-





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Terrorist acts as media events 315

triotic myths and narratives to arouse public solidarity and legitimizethe governments response to the attacks. This stance is clearly distinctfrom the media professionals normative-professional perception of the

task of providing information and critique of governments activities.This means that the medias role might be greater in negative events

than positive events, albeit in opposite direction to that sought by theterrorists. In this sense, the media defuse the narrative of disruption thatterrorists seek to write News, and rewrite the event instead in terms ofthe master narrative of the beleaguered society.

In the next section, I will present the theoretical background to myargument and follow this with the empirical case studies of media per-formance after a number of terrorist acts. Based on the empirical data,

I present my model of News Media-Media Events and follow that upwith the discussion and suggestions for further research.

Theoretical background

The basic assumption in the professional, normative approach to jour-nalistic work is that journalists and editors are gatekeepers who areresponsible for news selection and producing the media view of socialreality. The selection of what to report is a complex matter taking place

on several levels. Journalists choices of what and how to report are notbased on personal preference; they bow to a set of professional normsand standards. Journalists do not work in isolation. They belong to me-dia organizations with their own priorities that operate in a matrix withother organizations. The individual media organization forms part ofa wider social organization, the institution of the media, which enjoysreciprocal relations with other social institutions and is subject to theirinfluence. Hence, as Shoemaker neatly observed none of these ac-tors the individual, the routine, the organization, or the social institu-

tion

can escape that fact that it is tied to and draws its sustenancefrom the social system (Shoemaker, 1991: 75).

Media coverage of terrorist acts

The media are not unselective in their coverage of terrorist events. Theselection process is essentially a two-stage process involving the decisionto cover a particular story and another decision regarding how muchcoverage it should receive and for how many days or weeks. Whether

the news is domestic or foreign also affects terrorism coverage. The me-dia tend to cover terrorist events based on cultural and geopoliticalfactors. Thus, not only is the medias selection process influenced byprofessional norms, but also by the audiences the media serve. Television





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316 Hillel Nossek

news reporting tends to present social conflicts at the height of theirintensity and is consistent with the media predilection toward the dra-matic and unusual. According to studies of news, the criterion of prox-

imity, geographical, political and/or cultural, is important when decidingwhether or not to cover something and the type of coverage it shouldreceive (Nossek, Sreberny, and Sonwalkar, 2007).

In order to understand how the coverage of terrorist events in differentcountries is framed we must examine the practices of journalists as story-tellers in a given culture.

News as myth and narrative

Carey (1989) suggested two models of communication: transmission andritual.The transmission model better describes the normative professional

approach to the coverage of events, whereas the ritual model is morerelevant to media events in general and to the News media-Media eventmodel I propose. The news media perform the ritual by framing eventcoverage as a narrative known to a specific culture and using myth inthe news to ascribe a certain meaning to the event, thereby inviting theaudience to participate in a known symbolic ritual that is functional to

the situation created by the event. One might argue that the narrativesand myth are not a creation of the journalists and that the narrativesand myth of the late or post-modern era are not only created by society,but by media contents as well. This is probably relevant to the wholeidea of ritual, but less relevant to my arguments I think since I do nottrace the origins of the myths and narratives the media select, but try tounderstand the meaning they wish to create. This I attempt by suggestinga frame that is not necessarily the target frame of the initiators of theevent (Nossek and Berkowitz, 2006).

News of terrorism is shocking. It is marked by tragedy and a grimreminder of the frailty of daily life. It forces yet another glimpse of thechaotic nature of the world upon the news audience. In the long run,news of terrorism has a key role in building and maintaining social iden-tities, both by highlighting the identities of other nations that contrastwith the audiences world, and by re-familiarizing audiences with theirown identities. However, news of terrorism does more than this for thereaders and viewers of news: It retells the master narratives of a societycontaining the enduring views of a culture that reflect its core values,

prominent social institutions, and key social actors. The key point is thatjournalists accomplish their work by presenting a narrative duality.When reporting everyday news, journalists apply what we call a profes-sional narrative that represents a balance between their core journalistic





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values and the social pressures of their working world. When societyscore values are under attack, as during events of extreme political vio-lence, journalists switch to using a master narrative that shifts the public

mind to thinking about the dominant social/cultural order. To do so,news stories imply mythical quests and challenges and place their storyplot within familiar cultural narratives, while suggesting actors to fulfillthese mythical roles.

News in general and news of existential threats are products of thesocial culture in which the journalistic profession and media organiza-tions are embedded (Hall, 1982). All in all, news reflects not an objectivereality, but a socially constructed one (Adoni and Mane, 1984).

One strategy adopted by journalists to successfully manufacture their

cultural product, which is based upon mythical stories, is to tap into thecommon, typical, well-known narratives of the culture at large (Lule,2001; Zelizer, 1993). Being both members of the culture and storytellersfor that culture, journalists construct stories based on narrative conven-tions that resonate culturally for themselves and their audiences. Bydrawing on these narratives, journalists have guidelines for how theirstories are supposed to develop and what they must do to produce them(Berkowitz, 1992; Kitch, 2002). Thus, even when reporting on unusualand unexpected events, news workers are able to explain situations in a

way that sounds relatively familiar and natural.

Myth and narratives The underlying structure for news

The term myth here refers not to the notion of falsehood but to theidea of cultural story: an enduring yet dynamic conception of societyand its social institutions (Lule, 2001). Myths are stories with identifiablenarrative structures (Bird and Dardenne, 1988; Levi-Strauss, 1963). Theyare culturally resonant because they explain a cultures present and the

past as well as the future (Levi-Strauss, 1963, p. 209; Nossek, 1994).They are marked by definable narratives, familiar, acceptable, reassur-ing to their host culture (Silverstone, 1988). Myths also tend to be for-mulaic, that is, they provide an often-repeated interpretation that a cul-ture makes of itself, with common central actors and predictable out-comes (Cawelti, 1984; Lule, 2001; Silverstone, 1988). Myths gain mean-ing from the texts in which they are placed, but also from the contextsin which they appear.

As Barthes (1972) illustrated, myths can also be interpreted as ideo-

logical forms, namely, myths are cultural symbols that evoke particulartaken-for-granted interpretations about what a society has been andshould be. This ideological element gains symbolic power through persis-tent application to social narratives over time (Hall, 1982). Myths also





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318 Hillel Nossek

make certain aspects of society seem natural rather than defined byparticular historical, social, and economic circumstances that perpetuate

certain dominant interests (Slotkin, 1992).

Myth, then, is a form of communication that is publicly produced andcirculated within a culture. A basic myth or meta (master)-narrative is adramatic story, real or fictitious, that describes and lends meaning to

initial stages of a given human collective (Nossek, 1994; Sivan, 1991).Most importantly, narratives are stories told in a linear fashion, with abasic structure that survives across multiple renditions (Berger, 1997).

According to Drummond, a myth is primarily a metaphorical devicefor telling people about themselves, about other people, and about the

complex world of natural and mechanical objects which they inhabit

(Drummond, 1984: 27). In this paper, myth is defined as a text in whichdominant values are reproduced in narratives that are recognized by aspecific culture.

Studies of news have identified the function of news as story (Darnton,1975; Roeh, 1989) and the role of news in the reiteration of myths andapplied this idea to the analysis of terrorist events (see e. g., Lull, 1995a;Lule, 1995b; Lule, 1988a; 1988b; Nossek, 1994).

Terrorism, ideology, and cultural frames in new narrativesBecause journalists live in a cultural dyad of journalism and society, they

become both media producer and media audience, restating hegemonic

definitions when this is most needed. News of terrorism is a key site

of this ideological work, because news content can reify long-standing

characteristics of identities, narrowing and focusing them from their ev-

eryday cultural ambiguities. The real hegemonic discursive power lies in

how identities are socially constructed in the media to seem fixed in

nature by evoking bygone origins and traditions and creating a sense of

immutability (Nossek and Berkowitz, 2006).

In an earlier article (Nossek, 2004), I suggested a frame for analyzing

the coverage of political violence as foreign news. I suggested that when

a foreign news item is defined as ours, journalists professional practices

become subordinate to national loyalty, and when an item is theirs,

journalistic professionalism comes into its own. Thus, the argument

goes, there is an inverse relation between professional news values and

the national identity of the journalist and the newspapers editors. Ex-

pressed as a rule: the more national a report is, the less professionalit will be. In other words, the closer reporters and editors are to a given

news event in terms of national interest, the further they are from apply-

ing professional news values.





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Based on the theoretical and empirical background above, I suggestthat media coverage of major terrorist acts for a nation state publiccould be read as a symbolic ritual initiated by the media which follows

a narrative structure known to the audience. This narrative has deepcultural roots and is functional to the society attacked in terms of itsreaction to what is perceived as a threat to its existence or basic values.

In order to show how this narrative structure is present in the coverageof major terrorist acts, I will analyze the content of the coverage of somemajor terrorist events that happened in Israel and cite some work doneon the coverage of September 11, 2001 and the Madrid bombing in 2004that is congruent with my argument.

Methodology

The analysis of myth and narrative in news coverage

The methodological tools used here are the methodological tools used inNossek (1994), elaborated in Berkowitz and Nossek (2001), and appliedin Nossek and Berkowitz (2006). The main aim here is to identify thecultural myths embedded in specific news content. In Berkowitz andNossek (2001), we drew mainly on Altheide (1996) who suggests the ideaof Ethnographic Content Analysis, which he bases on the theoreticaland methodological conceptions of ethnographers like George HerbertMead, Herbert Blumer, Alfred Schutz, and Berger and Luckman. Al-theide recommends a methodology of repeated immersion in the contentand reflection on the findings, basing key decisions such as sample selec-tion and data analysis on both the research questions and theoreticalframework of the study. A key feature of Altheides approach is that:[] meanings and patterns seldom appear all at once they emergeor become more clear through constant comparison and investigation of

documents over time. (Altheide, 1996: 10) Altheides emergent ap-proach differs from traditional content analysis in its basic research pur-pose, which usually involves testing specific news content hypothesesusing predetermined measures derived from them. This is a major depar-ture from traditional content analysis since it means that the study ofthe cultural myths underlying news stories grows organically from thestudy process instead of being based on predetermined measures.

Choice of events and choice of the media

The empirical analysis focuses mainly on the newspapers, and their cov-erage of major terrorist attacks on Israel from 1968 to 1978 and onemajor attack in 1996. Israels long experience of terrorism, extensive me-





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320 Hillel Nossek

dia coverage, unique history, and unsolved political conflict with itsneighbors make it an ideal case study. In addition, newspapers coverageon the whole, is more extensive than other media coverage in terms of

time, space and depth, and better serves the analysis of the meaning thatthe media gives to such events. To discover whether there is also a com-mon pattern in the media coverage of major terrorist acts in other coun-tries, we examined the empirical research analysis of the media coverageof September 11 (2001) in the US and the Madrid bombing in the Span-ish media (2004).

After selecting the terrorist acts to be analyzed, all items referring tothe event, from the day of the terrorist act over the next two weeks, werecollected. (past experience of the coverage of terrorist acts shows that

the coverage usually fades out after two weeks). The items were exam-ined for key words indicating a professional frame, rhetoric of objectiv-ity, factuality, and so on; a national frame, reference to political andinternational policy, the war on terrorism, international law, and so on,and/or a cultural frame, evidence of myths and narratives specific tothe society, in Israels case, references to Jewish heritage, Jewish history,Zionism, and the re-birth of the Jewish state against a background ofthe Holocaust and its lessons (Nossek, 1994, Berkowitz and Nossek,2001, Nossek, 2004, Nossek and Berkowitz, 2006)

Findings

The Israeli media coverage of major terrorist attacks

The present study relates to six salient terrorist attacks in Israel from1968 to 1978, and the 1996 attack on the Dizengoff Center mall incentral Tel-Aviv (after the Oslo accord and the murder of Prime MinisterRabin). The attacks that happened in the first period of analysis wereanalyzed in an earlier study (Nossek, 1994) of Israeli media coverage of

the most salient terrorist attacks in that period. The most salient eventsin 1972 were; Munich, Sabena, and the attack on Ben-Gurion, thennamed Lod Airport, in 1974; the attack on the school in Maaloth, north-ern Israel, in 1976; the kidnapping and rescue of the passengers of theAir France plane from Entebbe, Uganda, and in 1978; the kidnappingand failed rescue of the bus at the northern entrance to Tel-Aviv; knownas the Coastal Road Bus event.

The analysis of all of the daily newspapers published in Israel at thetime demonstrates how the media utilized terrorist attacks to convey the

master narrative of the establishment of the state of Israel as a result ofZionism and the Holocaust. It also used these themes (The holocaustand the revival of the state of Israel) as a framework for understandingthe attacks and to consolidate attitudes toward them.





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Master narrative of Israeli society

In Israel, the meta-narrative of Zionism as the main force for the revival

of the Jewish state is a basic, underlying element in its news culture

(Herman, 1979; Liebman, 1978; Liebman and Don Yehiya, 1983). At the

same time, the Holocaust, as an historical event, played a central role in

the meta-narrative of the decision to declare an independent country and

is a major issue in Israeli culture. The meta-narrative that places Zionism

in binary opposition to the Holocaust has been told and retold in times

of national crises such as wars and also during terrorist attacks (Nos-

sek, 1994).

Coverage analysis revealed a recurring story used by the media to

cover such events. In this story the Jews, formerly helpless victims ofNazi aggression are saved by Israeli soldiers as proof of the revival of

the Jewish people in the state of Israel. The story also has another ending

when the rescue operation fails. In that case, the story is about the Holo-

caust and revenge; a revenge the Jews were denied when there was no

Jewish state. In sum, the media story of the terrorist attack is a celebra-

tion of Zionism as the real solution for the anti-Semitism Jews face in

other countries and an assurance that the Holocaust will not be repeated.

Thus, the media coverage calls for resilience and performs a kind of

social ritual aimed at counterbalancing the terrorist message of fear. Itreassures the people of Israel that although terrorist attacks bear some

resemblance to known episodes of the Holocaust retold in Israel, here in

Israel and all over the world, Jews can be assured that they are not

helpless victims and that the Israeli army will come to their rescue wher-

ever they are in danger (Nossek, 1994).

Dizengoff Center terrorist attack

(Tel Aviv, March, 1996, suicide bombing)

Main points of the event.At about four oclock in the afternoon, a suicide

bomber blew himself up at the pedestrian crossing of the Dizengoff shop-

ping center, in the center of Tel Aviv. The area was crowded with people;

mainly parents and children who were out celebrating the Purim holiday.

The attack killed thirteen people, including children, and injured over a

100. Note that this attack followed shortly after two separate incidents

when suicide bombers blew themselves up on public buses in Jerusalem.

Two national dailies were analyzed: Yedioth Aharonoth (will becited Yedioth), a popular newspaper with the greatest readership share

in Israel (about 50 %) and Haaretz an elite newspaper read mainly by

Israel intellectuals and liberals (about 9 % of the readership).





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Content analysis. On the normative professional journalistic level, theanalysis showed that both newspapers initially used the O What aStory (Berkowitz, 2000; Tuchman, 1973) paradigm. The attack was pre-

sented as an unexpected though familiar event, which meets this type ofstory format. This paradigm was strongest in Yedioth Ahronoth whereasHaaretz used the paradigm repair more (Berkowitz, 2000). Yedioths (5/3/96) O What a Story reading is marked. The main headline boomedCountry in fear and other headlines communicated anxiety and shock,for example, Dead bodies of children in fancy dress costume, Parentsanxiety, and so on. The Haaretz reading was less emotional: 13 killed The shock theme was also expressed more forcefully in the Yediothheadlines, descriptions, testimonies, and photographs, with shock and

horror (mostly in the first few days) defining the story: Like a horrorfilm (language of the report, Yedioth, 5/3/96), National anxiety(headline, same day), Horror (headline, same day), Like a disastermovie (photo caption, same day), Israel scared this week (opening ofarticle, Yedioth, 8/3/96), and headline We are afraid (Yedioth, 8/3). InHaaretz, the coverage was soberly headlined Suicide attack on Di-zengoff Center.

The paradigm repair was most conspicuous in Haaretz, the qualitynewspaper, which considers itself different from the other media. It

comes across in letters to the editor, opinion articles, and editorial arti-cles, as well as in the response of a television news personality (HaimYavin) who was criticized for collaboration with the enemy by showingthe close-up footage of the victims. It is interesting that in the columnhe wrote, he admitted there were lessons to be learned regarding theattack coverage, and that inadvertent mistakes had been made. He con-fessed the difficulty in remaining objective at such times and said he willlearn from it:

[] as for me, I plead guilty. When such events happen my face givesaway my feelings [] we made mistakes, what do you expect? When

you are working under such pressure, either in the electronic or printmedia, mistakes are inevitable. A headline like A Country in Fear isunacceptable, so is a comparison with the Holocaust and hysterical re-

ports from the field, and maybe I should have used a more matter of facttone of voice. The mistakes must be corrected: greater self control duringcoverage of traumatic events [] we made mistakes, but there is noneed to preach to us []

(Haim Yavin We are all Hamas collaborators, Haaretz, 8/3/96).

I think this is a particularly good example of adjustment and resumptionof the objectivity model. Shlomit Hareven wrote a piece called Journal-





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ist or citizen? in which she commented This time the media and notjust television made fear, panic, and tears almost fashionable. Profession-ally, television and some newspapers clearly showed a completely dis-

torted picture of the public mood after the attacks [] The lack of pro-fessional judgment is just a screw up, Mr. Yavin (Yedioth, 10/3/96).

On the national and cultural level, the attack is depicted as the loss(in a continuing process) of the Israeli citizens security (Hamas attackshave created a new existential threat to the individual at home, in theyard, traveling to work, at school, and in his daily life in the heartand depth of the home front, Haaretz, op ed, by Yoel Markus, 5/3/96;This is a war for the survival of the State of Israel, a speech by Presi-dent Weizman, Haaretz 6/3/96; We are in a state of all out war, Yedi-

oth, editorial article, 5/3/96; War in Tel Aviv, Yedioth, photographcaption, 5/3/96; Hell in Dizengoff, Yedioth, page headline, 5/3/96), andcoping with terrorism is presented as part of a war of survival. Thisbeing said, there are widely varying interpretations of the extent of thethreat; is it strategic or existential?

Coverage themes

Violation as noted this attack occurred in the heart of Tel Aviv, on the

day of the Purim festival. In the event descriptions, what stands out isthe very urban normalcy of Tel Aviv. This is clearest in Yedioth, inphrases such as: The very heart of Tel Aviv, The up market, store-lined street that is the very heart of Tel Aviv, (5/3/96); writer Yigal Sarnadescribes the location as a regular part of day to day life (Yedioth, 5/3/96); Mayor Milo described Tel Aviv as a cosmopolitan city, a true me-tropolis (Yedioth, 8/3/96). Stark against this mundane backdrop are hor-rifying descriptions of childrens corpses wearing fancy dress costumes,the forlorn baby carriage left in the street, and the headline: Dizengoff

Street was transformed into a killing field yesterday (Yedioth, 5/3/96).Stories about children who were out celebrating Purim are also common(both papers, 5/3/96).

Holocaust theme the first point here is that the attack coveragestrongly emphasizes the victims youth; children snatched away in theflush of youth. In addition to the report language, the intervieweesstatements underscore the Holocaust link. One injured woman declares:This is Jewish destiny: One day though, that little Jew is going to get up

and strike back (direct quote, Haaretz, 5/3/96). A Holocaust survivorreported, I thought of Auschwitz (Haaretz, 5/3/96). An article quotesYehuda Wachsman (Father of Nachshon Wachsman, an Israeli soldierthat was killed during a military rescue operation by terrorists that kid-





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324 Hillel Nossek

napped him) saying: We hunted Nazis for fifty years. What is happeningin Israel now is also a crime against humanity: the murder of innocentchildren, women and men (Yedioth, 11/3/96). The link can also be seen

in readers letters. For example, A collective death sentence has beenpronounced on the Jews. The desire of the Jewish people to survive ismore powerful (letters to the editor, 5/3/96). Another letter says:[] It is hard to tell the people of Tel Aviv, two hours after they havebeen through a pogrom, that they are not in a ghetto, that this is anindependent and mighty state. Maybe terrorism scares us because ittakes us back to the history we escaped from, and most of us believeourselves rid of, a history in which we were only objects, passive bodiesthat the hand of the terrorist turns into corpses (Haaretz, 6/3/96).

War of Independence theme the Dizengoff Center attack coverage con-tained multiple references to Israels War of Independence. In his col-umn, Yaron London wrote, Then we were a tiny community fightingfor our life. Now we are a strong nation and no longer tiny, comparinga car bomb attack in Tel Avivs Ben Yehuda Street in 1947 (Yedioth, 5/3/96) with the Dizengoff Center attack. Shlomit Hareven (Yedioth, 6/3/96) wrote that In the War of Independence, more people were killedhere in a day than have died in two years of terror. Former ambassador

to the US, Zalman Shoval used the sentence, The whole country is thefront line (Yedioth, 6/3/96), and in the conclusion to his article, AmosKeynan referred to the battle for Shaar Hagay on the road to Jerusalemin 1948 (Yedioth, 8/3/96). Interestingly, the front page of Haaretz (12/3/96) also carried a picture of armored convoys making their way to Jeru-salem in 1948 with no overt link to the events.

In this context, it is worthwhile to examine the links to the theme ofZionism. Uri Avneri wrote: We must draw strength from the founda-tions of Zionism and from the indomitable hope of realizing the Zionist

endeavor (Yedioth, 5/3/96). In the item above. Amos Keynan alsowrote: We already have a state, we are approaching the triumph ofZionism (Yedioth, 8/3/96). Shlomo Nakdimon linked his words to thetime when the state was declared (Yedioth, 13/3/96), and the Saturdaysupplement carried a leading article calling for Tzumud (steadfastness):This is our land, in which we chose to live (Haaretz supplement, 8/3/96). In Ran Kislevs article, Ehud Barak is quoted comparing terror toa deadly mosquito, and the battle against the mosquito as draining aswamp reference to draining the malarial swamps of Palestine by the

early Jewish pioneers), To fight it, we have to kill the mosquito anddrain the swamp where it lives. Draining the swamp, explained theChief of Staff, is the peace process. (Haaretz, 5/3/96). The link toZionism and Jewish settlement of the land also accompanies the descrip-





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tion of the victims; a little girl from a long-established moshav (agricul-tural community) was eulogized thus: This family personifies the valuesof settling the land. (Haaretz, 6/3/96). Another victim was active in the

Hagana (precursor to the IDF) (Yedioth, 6/3/96). The link to Zionismwas also used to describe the village of the Israeli Arab who ferriedthe bomber to Tel Aviv: it was near Nahalal (Israels first communalagricultural settlement) (both papers, 10/3/96). Hamas declared its targetto be Zionist Israel (Yoel Markus, Haaretz, 5/3/96; Ben Ami Fayat,Haaretz, 7/3/96 ).

As we can see, in the case of the Dizengoff Center attack, there is areturn to the basic story of the Holocaust and revenge. The Israeli armyand the security forces are expected to revenge the attack by attacking

the perpetrators or those that have sent them.

September 11, 2001

Schudson (2002) suggested that when faced with a public threat, repor-ters exchange objective professional norms for neighborly reassurance,seeking ways to express the societys feelings as a whole (which they, thejournalists, share as members of the public). They accompany this withefforts to provide practical information on coping with the crisis. The

press also sets impartial professional values aside when the nations secu-rity is threatened or catastrophe strikes. September 11 combined a threatto the public, a threat to national security, and a catastrophe, and Schud-son argues that the patriotic tenor of the coverage is understandable. Inhis article, Carey (2002) too describes the American TV networks patri-otic coverage of the tragedy and their efforts to provide a forum for thecollective national grief.

Waisbord (2002) maintains that patriotism is both an analytical frame-work for understanding the threat and a way of coping with it. The

media achieves this by making the threat understandable and thus defen-sible.

Madrid (train bombings, March 11 2004)

In their article, Teresa Sadaba and Teresa La Porte (2006) point out thatthe coverage of Basque terrorism is generally in the patriotic frame andmainly espouses democracy and solidarity. The same pattern seems tohave followed the Madrid bombing on March 11 2004, when of its own

accord the media mobilized democratic processes and called on Spanishcitizens to bolster democracy by rejecting government attempts to pinthe tragedy on the Basque separatists rather than investigating and pub-licizing the truth.





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part assigned to it in the script. One might actually say that the belea-guered society creates a ritual dictated by the need of the hour, namely

the perception of an existential threat, in which electronic and print me-

dia journalists automatically and unconsciously conduct the ritual asproxies of their society. The post-event event, namely the live broadcast

of the aftermath, forms part of a continuum of post-event events; con-

sisting of the evacuation and/or rescue of victims, funerals, and national

response-revenge.

The difference between a Media Event and a News Media-Media

Event is evident right at the beginning of the coverage. In media events,

the media are involved from a certain point in time in the production of

the event and are pre-positioned in crucial locations for the coverage. In

News Media-Media Events involving terrorist attacks, the mediareaches the location after the event has started, or even after it is closed

by the police or security forces. As soon as it is clear what has happened,

the ritual and the coverage become one. The aim, to defuse the threaten-

ing and alarming message of the terrorists, assuage societys anxiety and

shock, facilitate returning to normality, bolster the countrys resilience

in the face of terror, and confirm that conflicts can only be resolved

through the application of democratic values, without using extreme and

varying forms of political violence.

In a ritual calling for patriotic coverage, the media suspends itsnormative professional frame, especially criticism of the government, un-

til the storm passes and the country regains its sense of control and

security. The ritual increasingly reveals the identity of the victims and

their families who are redefined as having a role in the war against the

evil forces threatening the core values of the society; the nation.

Live broadcasts cover the subsequent sub-rituals of evacuation and or

rescue, funerals of the victims, government response-vengeance. The

event of the attack itself is not usually broadcast live unless there are

hostages. Then the event is ongoing and other media join in: radio, press,

and the Internet

The media thus has a greater role in rewriting and producing the cov-

erage of the event than the role ascribed to the media by the initiators

of positive media events, though in the opposite vein to that sought by

the terrorists. In this sense, the media neutralize the narrative of disrup-

tion that the perpetrators wished to write.

In contrast to the original television media event, News media-media

events involve other media, namely, radio, newspapers, newsmagazines,and the Internet, since these are instrumental in the initiation, pro-

duction, and on-going performance of the News media event as a so-

cial ritual.





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328 Hillel Nossek

Conclusions

The difference between the original Dayan and Katz (1992) Media Event

and the News media

Media event suggested here is based on distin-guishing terrorist events from events in which the media are dependent

on the government or other interested parties. Rather, we should con-

sider the terrorist event as an opportunity, at least for the media of the

attacked country, to act independently to cope with the dilemma of how

to cover the enemy, which essentially wishes to hijack the camera and

microphone and use them for their purposes. In its response, the media

takes back control of its social function by turning the tables on the

terrorists message. Instead of spreading a message of terror, dread, and

alarm, the media sends its country messages of solidarity, partnership,and great endurance against the terrorist threat. This is achieved through

a ritual, which reprocesses the master narrative of the society, using its

foundational myths in order to create a meaning that negates the threat

and triumphs over terror. It also gives meaning to the victims deaths

making the sacrifice no longer futile. The victims become heroic casual-

ties in the war against terror and the struggle to withstand it; by leading

their lives as normal and symbolizing the hope of triumphing over terror

and its supporters.

Further research should explore the models applications and limits. It

should examine which non-terrorist events we can class as News media-

Media events and which we cannot. I think we should term an event a

News media-Media event if it involves a media ritual performed under

the specific circumstances of a threat or perceived threat to the social

order or the nation at large. This should be a recurrent media ritual

which coverage frame contains the master narratives of a society and

audience, and entails a communicative ritual that gives meaning to what

might be conceived a breach of national or international routine and/ora major threat to the security of the state or the world, the safety of the

public, or the public order.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Ronie Kolker for the assistance with the data collection and content

analysis of the coverage of the Dizengoff Center case. Thanks are also due to Ruth

Freedman for editing the English. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of

the article as well as the editors of the special issue, Friedrich Krotz and AndreasHepp, for the comments and suggestions that improved the first versions of the article

a lot. Thanks also to Risto Kunelius for his thoughtful comments and suggestions on

various drafts of the article.





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Documents

Nossek Terrorist Acts as Media Events