Grand Valley State University ScholarWorks@GVSU Peer Reviewed Articles Political Science and International Relations 4-2008 Imag(in)ing September 11: Ward Churchill, Frame Contestation, and Media Hegemony Erika G. King Grand Valley State University, [email protected] Mary deYoung Grand Valley State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/pls_articles Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation King, Erika G. and deYoung, Mary, "Imag(in)ing September 11: Ward Churchill, Frame Contestation, and Media Hegemony" (2008). Peer Reviewed Articles. 5. https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/pls_articles/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science and International Relations at ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Peer Reviewed Articles by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Journal of Communication Inquiry Volume 32 Number 2 April 2008 123-139 ©2008 Sage Publications Imag(in)ing September 11 10.1177/0196859907311670 http://jci.sagepub.com Ward Churchill, Frame Contestation, hosted at and Media Hegemony http://online.sagepub.com Erika G. King Mary deYoung Grand Valley State University This study analyzes the Denver Post’s reportage on the frame contest between the dom- inant narrative of the September 11 terrorist attacks set out by President Bush and a challenge to that narrative in an Internet essay by Professor Ward Churchill. The authors find that by refusing to interrogate Churchill’s sociopolitical argument, reduc- ing it to the offensive rhetorical trope “little Eichmanns” he used to describe the victims of the attacks, and pillorying Churchill as a person and scholar, the Post assured his counterframe would not achieve parity with the dominant frame. The authors interpret this as an example of media hegemony and situate the Post’s coverage within a crisis of hegemony that left the “sacred core” of the Bush frame—American innocence and moral exceptionalism—vulnerable to contestation. Because the Churchill counterframe flagrantly transgressed that “sacred core,” it became the irresistible target of media hegemony strategies by the Denver Post. Keywords: counterframe; frame contestation; media hegemony; September 11 ter- rorist attacks; Ward Churchill n September 11, 2001, three hijacked commercial airliners slammed into the OU.S. Pentagon and the twin towers of the World Trade Center; a fourth airliner, reportedly headed for the White House, crashed in a Pennsylvania field. The images of September 11—exploding airliners piloted by shadowy terrorists, dead and dying people, emergency personnel racing to the scenes, spectators running for their lives when buildings collapsed—are certainly, as the old saying goes, worth a thousand words. But just exactly what words are used to construct the meaning of this horrific event, and by whom they are spoken, written, and repeated, not only “frame” the event but also reveal something of interest about the working of power. In this article, we analyze the “frame contest” (Entman, 2003, 2004) between the dominant narrative of the September 11 attacks set out by President Bush in a speech to the nation just hours after the event and a challenge to that narrative in the form of an essay titled “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” by University of Colorado ethnic studies professor and Indian activist Ward Churchill, dis- covered on the Internet more than 3 years after the attacks. We are particularly interested 123 Downloaded from jci.sagepub.com at GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIV LIB on June 5, 2013 124 Journal of Communication Inquiry in how the Denver Post, as an exemplar of the mainstream media, represented both the counterframe and its author, why the newspaper reacted as it did, and what the conse- quences of that reaction to the outcome of the frame contest are. Our analysis is informed by the media hegemony thesis. Briefly stated, hegemony refers to “the process by which ruling elites secure consent to the established politi- cal order through the production and diffusion of meanings and values” (Carragee & Roefs, 2004, pp. 221-222). The media are essential to that process in two ways. First, as one of an array of “cultural workers,” in Gramsci’s (1971) sense of the term, the media can reproduce, represent, and renew dominant meanings and values or, in the terms of this present article, a dominant frame to a variety of different audiences but with the single goal of securing their “consent” to that dominant frame, that is, their acceptance of it as “common sense.” Second, because hegemony can be resisted, altered, and challenged, the media serve as a site for frame contests (Artz & Murphy, 2000; Condit, 1994; Gitlin, 2003). Although not without its critics (Altheide, 1984; Carragee, 1993; Mumby, 1997), the media hegemony thesis, with its emphasis on the working of power, provides the most robust explanation for both how and why the Denver Post represented and reacted to the Churchill counterframe in the manner it did. Framing September 11 The official frame of the September 11 attacks came within hours of the events themselves. In a brief address to the nation that evening, President Bush portrayed the attacks as “evil, despicable acts of terror” that resulted in the mass murder of thousands of innocent civilians. He declared that Americans were targeted for being “the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.” And he went on to warn, “No one will keep that light from shining....None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in this world.” Asking for prayers for all affected by the horrific attacks, President Bush asserted that America, its friends and allies, and all those who want peace and security in the world “will stand together to win the war against terrorism” (Bush, 2001a). In another statement the following morning, the president declared, The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our coun- try were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war. This will require our country to unite in steadfast determination and resolve. Freedom and democracy are under attack....The United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy....This battle will take time and resolve. But make no mistake about it: we will win....This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil. But good will prevail. (Bush, 2001b) Downloaded from jci.sagepub.com at GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIV LIB on June 5, 2013 King, deYoung / Imag(in)ing September 11 125 The Bush frame of the September 11 attacks, according to Entman (2003), defines a problematic effect (the death of thousands of civilians in an act of war), its cause (the unprovoked and unwarranted acts of terrorists), a moral judgment (struggle of good versus evil), and a remedy (war against terrorism). Anker (2005) fleshed out the frame and argued that it presents a compelling melodramatic story line of villainy, victimization, and vengeance by reducing the event and its resolution to a Manichean battle of right versus wrong, morality versus immorality, and, in Bush’s starkly polarized characterization, good versus evil. This melodramatic plot line fur- thermore constructs an American national identity “that establishes its own moral virtue through victimization and heroic restitution” (p. 25); in short, its “sacrilising language” (Jackson, 2005, p. 35) forges a moral community, unsullied by immoral- ity or evil and unified by shared values and the practices of freedom and democracy. Attacked precisely because of this constructed moral exceptionalism, this powerful victim, in the Bush frame, has no choice but retribution through engaging the evil “other” in war (Coe, Domke, Graham, John, & Pickard, 2004; Domke, 2004; Hutcheson, Domke, Billeaudreaux, & Garland, 2004; Karim, 2002; Silberstein, 2002; Waisbord, 2002). Central to the melodrama of the Bush frame are the casualties of the attacks and what their victimization represents. In characterizing them as ordinary people who were engaged in the routines of everyday life on that fateful day, he not only stressed their absolute moral innocence but also, in doing so, underscored the risk for all ordi- nary Americans. In the Bush frame, the innocent victims of the September 11 attacks represent and symbolize each and every American as well as the moral community that is America (Lule, 2002). The hegemony of the Bush frame was ensured by its uncritical repetition by politicians on both sides of the aisle, military leaders, non-administrative elites, and the mass media over the months after the September 11 attacks (Domke, 2004; Entman, 2003, 2004; Jackson, 2005; Kellner, 2002; McChesney, 2002; Norris, Kern, & Just, 2002). The wave of patriotism, indeed of nationalism, that followed the attacks gives face validity to the Bush frame’s success in securing public consent. Public opinion polls taken over those months showed an unprecedented level of approval for President Bush, a robust optimism that the nation would be successful in its newly declared “war on terrorism,” and an emphatic expression of support of the “American values” of liberty, freedom, and equality (Huddy, Khatib, & Capelos, 2002). Over the ensuing year and a half, Bush would draw on this initial reservoir of consent to expand the war on terrorism from skirmishes in the mountains of Afghanistan in search of the diabolical mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, to an indefinite battle against an “axis of evil” in Iraq, the home- land of a more familiar nemesis, Saddam Hussein. Bush’s strategy of linking Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, and the threat of more terrorist attacks on American soil to his frame of the September 11 Downloaded from jci.sagepub.com at GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIV LIB on June 5, 2013 126 Journal of Communication Inquiry attacks crafted a persuasive justification for a war in Iraq that garnered much initial political and public support (Entman, 2004).