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This book analyses British news media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It describes the analytical framework that serves as the basis for theoretically informed and systematic analysis of wartime media performance. The book synthesises a range of models, hypotheses and explanatory variables to set out a framework composed of three models of news media performance: the elite-driven model, the independent model and the oppositional model. It provides three case studies which, in different ways, illuminate each model of news media performance in wartime. The three case studies include the case of Jessica Lynch, the case of Ali Abbas and the case of the anti-war movement. The book then presents an account of how the relationship between foreign policy, news media and war might be expected to operate, based on current theoretical understanding. In order to place British coverage of the invasion in context, the book offers brief summaries of the structure and character of Britain's television news services and its press. The book provides an analysis of the ways in which the news media's visual depictions of the war reinforced supportive coverage. It is devoted to documenting and analysing evidence for negotiated and oppositional coverage. The book also examines the representation of civilian casualties, military casualties and humanitarian operations across both television and press, three subject areas that generated a good deal of media criticism.
what that coverage would actually look like in practice. Finally, associated with this academic uncertainty are a variety of methodological issues concerning how researchers should go about measuring news media coverage in order to provide accurate assessments of news media performance during war. It is in this context of contrasting claims, normative disagreements and empirical uncertainty that this book analyses British news media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Central to our analysis is a systematic and detailed content and framing analysis of mainstream
8 Conclusion: Patterns of support, negotiation and opposition Overview The conclusion starts by drawing together our multi-channel, multi-newspaper analysis, reviewing our aggregate-level findings from each chapter and summarising the overall performance of UK news media. In so doing, we provide a substantive assessment both of British news media performance during the 2003 Iraq invasion and of the implications of these findings for general claims regarding the elite-driven, independent and oppositional models. In particular, we discuss the implications of our
-strategic motives for the war, such as the projection of US power. We return to this issue in presenting conclusions from our study in the closing chapter. Summary In many ways, at least at an aggregate level, British news media coverage of the Iraq invasion conformed to the predictions of the elite-driven model. Press and television news relied heavily on coalition sources and supportive battle coverage prevailed even among newspapers that had opted to oppose the war. At the same time, there was substantial support for the WMD and humanitarian rationales for war. Battlefield
, an Iraqi child maimed in a coalition strike, provides a poignant illustration of the opportunities for more negotiated and oppositional reporting in wartime. Finally, an analysis of how effectively the anti-war movement maintained positive news media representation during the invasion helps to delineate the ‘outer limits’ of political dissent when British troops are in action. For each case study, we offer an account of the background to the relevant events, provide a detailed review of British news media coverage and, finally, assess its implications for our
Bordering intimacy is a study of how borders and dominant forms of intimacy, such as family, are central to the governance of postcolonial states such as Britain. The book explores the connected history between contemporary border regimes and the policing of family with the role of borders under European and British empires. Building upon postcolonial, decolonial and black feminist theory, the investigation centres on how colonial bordering is remade in contemporary Britain through appeals to protect, sustain and make family life. Not only was family central to the making of colonial racism but claims to family continue to remake, shore up but also hide the organisation of racialised violence in liberal states. Drawing on historical investigations, the book investigates the continuity of colonial rule in numerous areas of contemporary government – family visa regimes, the policing of sham marriages, counterterror strategies, deprivation of citizenship, policing tactics, integration policy. In doing this, the book re-theorises how we think of the connection between liberal government, race, family, borders and empire. In using Britain as a case, this opens up further insights into the international/global circulations of liberal empire and its relationship to violence.
At a time when monolingualist claims for the importance of ‘speaking English’ to the national order continue louder than ever, even as language diversity is increasingly part of contemporary British life, literature becomes a space to consider the terms of linguistic belonging. Bad English examines writers including Tom Leonard, James Kelman, Suhayl Saadi, Raman Mundair, Daljit Nagra, Xiaolu Guo, Leila Aboulela, Brian Chikwava, and Caroline Bergvall, who engage multilingually, experimentally, playfully, and ambivalently with English’s power. Considering their invented vernaculars and mixed idioms, their dramatised scenes of languaging – languages learned or lost, acts of translation, scenes of speaking, the exposure and racialised visibility of accent – it argues for a growing field of contemporary literature in Britain pre-eminently concerned with language’s power dynamics, its aesthetic potentialities, and its prosthetic strangeness. Drawing on insights from applied linguistics and translation studies as well as literary scholarship, Bad English explores contemporary arguments about language in Britain – in debates about citizenship or education, in the media or on Twitter, in Home Office policy and asylum legislation – as well as the ways they are taken up in literature. It uncovers both an antagonistic and a productive interplay between language politics and literary form, tracing writers’ articulation of linguistic alienation and ambivalence, as well as the productivity and making-new of radical language practices. Doing so, it refutes the view that language difference and language politics are somehow irrelevant to contemporary Britain and instead argues for their constitutive centrality to the work of novelists and poets whose inside/outside relationship to English in its institutionalised forms is the generative force of their writing.
’s constitutional integrity ( Baker 2018 ). In parallel, Brexit’s implications for Northern Ireland and the border were ‘marginalised’ in British press and broadcast coverage ( Deacon et al. 2016 : 34). The British news media were among the decisive factors in tilting the vote towards Leave. When measured by audience reach, British newspapers and their online platforms heavily favoured the Leave
business perspective they'd done the right thing, but they all came in and complained. And then there was the British news media. They had been highly critical of the EU for years. They were also inclined to savage any frontbench politician when it suited them, but they normally ignored the grey, backroom officials of Whitehall. Not so now. Along with judges, woke academics and Remoaner MPs, Treasury officials were placed in the ranks of the ‘enemies of the people
Most importantly for the case presented in this book is the news coverage of Islam in Britain. News media corporations rely on an increase in ratings and larger viewership following the airing and covering of what are considered shocking stories. 24 News media corporations play a vital role in the production of ideological frames. The foci of stories have the potential to scare people into acting and believing a crisis exists. The viewers, in turn, demand action to end the crisis and to restore calm among the public