While we've long known that the strategies of terrorism rely heavily on
media coverage of attacks, Selling Fear is the first detailed look at
the role played by media in counterterrorism--and the ways that, in
the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration manipulated coverage to
maintain a climate of fear.
Drawing on in-depth analysis of counterterrorism in the years after
9/11--including the issuance of terror alerts and the decision to invade
Iraq--the authors present a compelling case that the Bush administration
hyped fear, while obscuring civil liberties abuses and concrete issues
of preparedness. The media, meanwhile, largely abdicated its watchdog
role, choosing to amplify the administration's message while downplaying
issues that might have called the administration's statements and
strategies into question. The book extends through Hurricane Katrina,
and the more skeptical coverage that followed, then the first year of
the Obama administration, when an increasingly partisan political
environment presented the media, and the public, with new problems of
reporting and interpretation.
Selling Fear is a hard-hitting analysis of the intertwined failures of
government and media--and their costs to our nation.