Islam, Security and Television News

Islam, Security and Television News

Islam, Security and Television News Christopher Flood Emeritus Professor, School of Politics University of Surrey, UK Stephen Hutchings Professor of Russian Studies School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, University of Manchester, UK Galina Miazhevich Gorbachev Research Fellow in Global Media, Christ Church, University of Oxford, UK and Henri C. Nickels Programme Manager Research Social Sciences, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Vienna

Christopher Flood, Stephen Hutchings, Galina Miazhevich and Henri C. Nickels 2012 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-31717-2 ISBN 978-1-137-00688-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137006882 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

Contents List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgements viii x Introduction 1 The research context 5 The countries and the broadcasters 8 Questions of method and purpose 12 Coda 17 Part I The Broad View: Patterns and Preoccupations Preface to Part I 21 1 The Political Context: International and Domestic Security Concerns 25 The foreign policy dimension 26 The domestic security dimension 33 Spillover to immigration and integration 40 Conclusion 51 2 The Ten O Clock News : Anxious Attention 53 Patterns of representation 56 Fighting the good fight? 62 On the home front 72 Conclusion 77 3 The Journal de Vingt Heures : A Degree of Detachment 79 Patterns of coverage 81 France as an international actor 86 Questions of rights, freedoms and security 92 Conclusion 99 4 Vremia : Compliance and Complicity 102 Overview of Islam coverage 103 Foreign policy and international events 110 v

vi Contents Reporting unrest: criminalization and dissimulation 118 Pacification and normalization 123 Conclusion 126 Part II The Close-Up View: Significant Differences Preface to Part II 131 5 Islamic Extremism and the Brokering of Consensus 136 Introduction 136 Hegemony as conflict 137 Case studies 140 Conclusions 161 6 Television Genre and Islamist Terror 163 Terror, genre, representation 163 Genre as organizing principle 165 Aims and methods 166 Emergent types 167 Terror incident, legal story, counterterrorism report: attributes 168 Ten O Clock News : case studies 175 Journal de Vingt Heures : case studies 180 Vremia : case studies 185 Conclusions 189 7 The War on Terror as Intercultural Flow 192 Introduction: from glocalization to the semiotics of intercultural dialogue 192 The implications of intercultural flow: from cross-cultural comparison to synchronic cross-section 195 Pinpointing the traces of the flow 197 Case 1: French and Russian reports on Glasgow/London 199 Case 2: British and Russian reports on the North African bombings, April 2007 203 Case 3: French/British/Russian coverage of the German terror alert, 5 September 2007 205 Case 4: Russian coverage of the Moscow alert, January 2007 208 Case 5: British/Russian coverage of the Litvinenko scandal, November 2006 July 2007 209 Conclusions 214

Contents vii 8 Commemorating 9/11: The Struggle for the Universal 217 Introduction: commemoration and comparison 217 Commemoration narratives and the struggle for the universal 219 Conclusions: commemoration, comparison and the cosmopolitan 239 Conclusion 243 Key findings 244 Overarching themes and central thesis 254 Interdisciplinarity: a creative tension 256 Transnationalizing the national 257 Television news: data or text(s)? 258 The obtruding subject 263 The missing audience and the all-too-present image 265 The elusive object 266 Future directions 267 Bibliography 270 Index 289

Figures and Tables Figures 2.1 Islam-related news stories and news time on Ten O Clock News as a percentage of all news stories and news time, November 2006 October 2008 57 2.2 Monthly distribution of Islam-related news items on Ten O Clock News as a percentage of all news items, November 2006 October 2008 57 2.3 Running order as a percentage of Islam-related stories on Ten O Clock News, November 2006 October 2008 58 2.4 Story length as a percentage of Islam-related items on Ten O Clock News, November 2006 October 2008 58 2.5 Topic areas by frequency on Ten O Clock News as a percentage of all Islam-related news items, November 2006 October 2008 59 2.6 Islam-related topic areas by intensity on Ten O Clock News (cumulated news time), November 2006 October 2008 60 3.1 Islam-related news items and news time on Ten O Clock News and Journal de Vingt Heures as a percentage of all news items, November 2006 October 2008 82 3.2 Monthly distribution of Islam-related news items on Ten O Clock News and Journal de Vingt Heures as a percentage of all news items, November 2006 October 2008 83 3.3 Running order of Islam-related stories on Ten O Clock News and Journal de Vingt Heures as a percentage of Islam-related items, November 2006 October 2008 84 3.4 Islam-related story length on Ten O Clock News and Journal de Vingt Heures as a percentage of Islam-related items, November 2006 October 2008 84 3.5 Topic areas by frequency as a percentage of Islam-related news on Ten O Clock News and Journal de Vingt Heures, November 2006 October 2008 85 viii

List of Figures and Tables ix 3.6 Islam-related topic areas by intensity on Ten O Clock News and Journal de Vingt Heures (cumulated news time), November 2006 October 2008 86 4.1 Percentage of Islam-related news items and news time on all three programmes, November 2006 October 2008 103 4.2 Running order of Islam-related stories on all three programmes, November 2006 October 2008 104 4.3 Islam-related story length on all three programmes, November 2006 October 2008 105 4.4 Monthly distribution of Islam-related news items on all three programmes as a percentage of all news items, November 2006 October 2008 106 4.5 Monthly distribution of Islam-related news items on all three programmes as a percentage of Islam-related news items, November 2006 October 2008 106 4.6 Topic areas of Islam-related news on all three programmes, November 2006 October 2008 107 Tables I.1 Islam-related coding categories: Ten O Clock News, Journal de Vingt Heures, Vremia 2.1 Running order of Ten O Clock News, 3 November 2006 23 61

Acknowledgements This book is the culmination of several years of work to which many individuals and organizations contributed. We thank the UK s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for funding the three-year project (2006 9) of which the book represents the primary outcome. The AHRC award (grant number AH/D001722/1) enabled us to record, archive and digitize the large corpus of news bulletins on which the book is based. In this context our gratitude goes to Donal O Brien and Abdul Pathan, our indefatigable and unflappable technicians. The Universities of Manchester and Surrey, which jointly hosted the AHRC project, should also be thanked for their valuable contribution to its success. We do not have the space here to name the many individuals whose comments on draft chapters, and on the articles or conference papers which preceded them, helped shape them for the better. Nevertheless, we thank them collectively for their help. Finally, we are grateful to the editors at Palgrave Macmillan for agreeing to publish the book, and for their help and support with its production. x