Criticism of the War on Terror addresses the issues, morals, ethics,
efficiency, economics, and other questions surrounding the War on Terror
and made against the phrase itself, calling it a misnomer. The notion
of a "war" against "terrorism" has proven highly contentious, with
critics charging that it has been exploited by participating governments
to pursue long-standing policy/military objectives, reduce civil
liberties, and infringe upon human rights. It is argued that the term
war is not appropriate in this context (as in War on Drugs), since there
is no identifiable enemy, and that it is unlikely international
terrorism can be brought to an end by military means.
Other
critics, such as Francis Fukuyama, note that "terrorism" is not an
enemy, but a tactic; calling it a "war on terror", obscures differences
between conflicts such as anti-occupation insurgents and international
mujahideen. With a military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and its
associated collateral damage Shirley Williams maintains this increases
resentment and terrorist threats against the west. There is also
perceived U.S. hypocrisy, media induced hysteria, and that differences
in foreign and security policy have reduced the US image in most of the
world.
Researchers in the area of communication studies and
political science have found that American understanding of the war on
terror is directly shaped by how the mainstream news media reports
events associated with the war on terror. In Bush's War: Media Bias and
Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age[52] political communication
researcher Jim A. Kuypers illustrated "how the press failed America in
its coverage on the War on Terror." In each comparison, Kuypers
"detected massive bias on the part of the press." This researcher called
the mainstream news media an "anti-democratic institution" in his
conclusion. "What has essentially happened since 9/11 has been that Bush
has repeated the same themes, and framed those themes the same whenever
discussing the War on Terror," said Kuypers. "Immediately following
9/11, the mainstream news media (represented by CBS, ABC, NBC, USA
Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post) did echo Bush, but
within eight weeks it began to intentionally ignore certain information
the president was sharing, and instead reframed the president's themes
or intentionally introduced new material to shift the focus."
This
goes beyond reporting alternate points of view, which is an important
function of the press. "In short," Kuypers explained, "if someone were
relying only on the mainstream media for information, they would have no
idea what the president actually said. It was as if the press were
reporting on a different speech." The study is essentially a
"comparative framing analysis." Overall, Kuypers examined themes about
9-11 and the War on Terror that the President used, and compared them to
the themes that the press used when reporting on what the president
said.
"Framing is a process whereby communicators, consciously or
unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that encourages the
facts of a given situation to be interpreted by others in a particular
manner," wrote Kuypers. These findings suggest that the public is
misinformed about government justification and plans concerning the war
on terror.
Others have also suggested that press coverage has
contributed to a public confused and misinformed on both the nature and
level of the threat to the U.S. posed by terrorism. In his book, Trapped
in the War on Terror[6] political scientist Ian S. Lustick, claimed,
"The media have given constant attention to possible terrorist-initiated
catastrophes and to the failures and weaknesses of the government's
response." Lustick alleged that the War on Terror is disconnected from
the real but remote threat terrorism poses, and that the generalized War
on Terror began as part of the justification for invading Iraq, but
then took on a life of its own, fueled by media coverage.Scott Atran
writes that "publicity is the oxygen of terrorism" and the rapid growth
of international communicative networks renders publicity even more
potent, with the result that "perhaps never in the history of human
conflict have so few people with so few actual means and capabilities
frightened so many."[53]
Media researcher Stephen D. Cooper's
analysis of media criticism Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers As the Fifth
Estate[54] contains many examples of controversies concerning
mainstream reporting of the War on Terror. Cooper found that bloggers'
criticisms of factual inaccuracies in news stories or bloggers'
discovery of the mainstream press's failure to adequately check facts
before publication caused many news organizations to retrack or change
news stories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticis...
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