[Seattle-editorial] Lecture on Bush administration and press

[David Domke]

Dear Seattle Indy Media leaders,

On September 11, 2002, some of my graduate students and I gave a talk at
the Seattle Indy Media facility about the Bush administration's strategic
communications and the reaction of the press after September 11.  This
talk came about through my ties with Victor Pickard, who at the time was a
graduate student in the School of Communications at the UW.

This research has expanded in the months since, and I am going to be
giving a talk March 18 on the Bush administration's religious
fundamentalism and the echoing response of the press between September 11
and the Iraq war. This talk will be a public lecture, followed by a panel
discussion, at Town Hall, and I was hoping to bring this event to the
attention of Indy Media members and supporters.  I see that the Seattle
Indy Media is on hiatus for this month, but I also see that stories and
event information are being posted on the web site.

Is it possible to post information about this lecture on the Indy Media
web site, or to circulate it via a listserv?

Information about the lecture is below, and more information can be found
at http://www.washington.edu/alumni/activities/lectures/2004election.html.

If I can answer any questions, please let me know.

David Domke

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Lecture Title:
"God Willing? Religious Fundamentalism, the 'War on Terror,' and an
Echoing Press"

Date & Time
March 18, 7 pm

Location
Town Hall, located at Eighth Avenue and Seneca Street in downtown Seattle.
The address is 1119 8th Ave.

Overview of talk
This lecture will argue that President Bush and his administration has
offered a "political fundamentalism" strategically crafted to capitalize
upon the post-September 11 anomic state felt by many Americans. Political
fundamentalism is the adaptation of a conservative religious worldview,
via strategic language choices and communication approaches, into a policy
agenda that feels political rather than religious. Following September 11
the Bush administration turned a religious paradigm into a political one
by choosing language and communication approaches that were grounded in a
conservative religious outlook but were political in content and
application - and therefore became more likely to be received favorably by
the U.S. news media and broader public. These communications engendered
strong media and public support for President Bush for months on end, but
came with a significant price.

In particular, instead of opening up the discourse and allowing a
democratic dialogue to take place about the meaning of the terrorist
attacks and the direction of the nation, the administration's political
fundamentalism closed off a substantive societal - and international -
conversation through a set of politically calculated, religiously grounded
communication strategies. These included declarations regarding the
desires of God for America and the values of freedom and liberty,
consistent framing of the campaign against terrorism as the nation's
"mission" and "calling," an antipathy toward complexity and nuance, a
moral certainty that resisted reflection, a linking of temporal actions
with eternal outcomes, and an intolerance for dissent. This public
discourse effectively ended the discussion about the significance and
implications of September 11, thereby denying to U.S. citizens important
opportunities for national self-examination and wide public hearing of
diverse viewpoints - and also shutting out the world, much of which was
extending unprecedented sympathy for Americans and the nation.

The administration had help in this process. Mainstream news media in the
United States responded to the terrorist attacks with a nationalism driven
by a journalistic dependence upon political leadership (its sources) and
commercial dependence upon advertisers (its financial benefactors) and
consumers (its audiences). The mainstream press consistently echoed the
administration's communications from September 11 to Saddam and Iraq -
thereby disseminating, reinforcing and embedding the administration's
fundamentalist worldview and helping to keep at bay Congress and any
serious questioning among much of the public. Even in press criticisms of
the administration, which were present during this period, the
administration's communication emphases resounded.

Information on Lecturer
David Domke is a professor of communication at the University of
Washington, specializing in matters of political communication and
journalism.  He is a former working journalist, and earned his PhD from
the University of Minnesota in 1996.  He joined the University of
Washington's faculty in 1998. His research examines the interactions of
political leaders and the press in the shaping of public discourse and
public opinion. He has a forthcoming book, to be released in summer 2004,
titled "Fundamentalism in the White House: God, the 'War on Terror,' and
the Echoing Press."


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David Domke
Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Coordinator
Department of Communication
Adjunct Faculty, Political Science
Box 353740
University of Washington
Seattle, WA  98195

Office Phone: (206) 685-1739
Fax: (206) 616-3762
Office Location: Communications 225
Email: domke at u.washington.edu
http://faculty.washington.edu/domke
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