Saeid Reza Ameli; Touraj Shiralilou
Abstract
American mass media’s relation with the US government in foreign policydecision-making has been the subject of numerous studies in the interdisciplinaryfield of political communication. ...
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American mass media’s relation with the US government in foreign policydecision-making has been the subject of numerous studies in the interdisciplinaryfield of political communication. This paper reexamines the interaction betweenthe media and the government in the US foreign policy decision-making process,analyzing the possible congruity and/or incongruity between The WashingtonPost’s commentaries and former US President Barack Obama’s anti-terrorismcampaign. A Critical Discourse Analysis of two Obama statements oncounterterrorism, one Washington Post Op-Ed and one editorial suggest thatthere is an agreement between Obama’s speeches and the correspondingnewspaper articles in topics such as choosing defense over offense, changing theconventional war trend, deploying troops, closing down GTMO, avoiding tortureand the violation of American citizens' privacy, freedom of press, avoidinggiving too much importance to terrorists, and increasing air marshals on flights.Hence, this study confirms the theory of Robinson, which argues that the mediastaterelation, i.e. the relationship between The Washington Post’s commentariesand President Barack Obama’s statements, is a bidirectional process in whichboth American elite media and the US government are involved in attempting toinfluence the other party under certain conditions.
