American Behavioral Scientist

http://abs.sagepub.com/

Media and Public Diplomacy in Times of War and Crisis

Holli A. Semetko
American Behavioral Scientist 2009 52: 639
DOI: 10.1177/0002764208324602
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://abs.sagepub.com/content/52/5/639

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for American Behavioral Scientist can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://abs.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations: http://abs.sagepub.com/content/52/5/639.refs.html

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Andra Alexandru on September 8, 2010

Editors Introduction

Media and Public Diplomacy

in Times of War and Crisis

American Behavioral Scientist

Volume 52 Number 5
January 2009 639-642
2009 Sage Publications
10.1177/0002764208324602
http://abs.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Holli A. Semetko
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

s technology has made possible a global media environment that is hardly

constrained by location, citizens in countries around the world have more options
for news, information, and entertainment than ever before. The Internet has added a
welcome layer of opportunity for individuals, groups, and organizations dissatisfied
with a government to put forward their own agendas and critiques in compelling and
often sophisticated Web channels (Oates, Gibson, & Owen 2006). The Internet has
moved from being a largely text-driven media to a largely video-driven one, and
research on the processing of political information shows that audiences experience
an enhanced learning environment with visuals (Graber, 2001). Government departments in many rich and poor countries around the world now have even more reason
to take their online public communications very seriously (Norris, 2001).
Despite the abundance of information sources in localities everywhere and the fact
that audiences are increasingly dispersed, there continue to be global news stories. The
global news agenda is like the local news agenda in that if it bleeds, it leads. Natural
disasters, crimes against humanity, and wars and crises are likely to be the stories that
are followed by news organizations and thus attentive publics around the world. At the
same time, there are many planned events that carry global import. The annual meetings of the United Nations, G8, and WTO often receive attention in news media around
the world. Yet, the story and the issue might be framed very differently in different news
outlets and in different national and transnational contexts. Part I of this special issue is
about how news organizations are responding to global stories and how they are creating and reporting news in times of war and crisis.

Challenges Facing News Organizations

The challenges faced by reporters, editors, and news organizations as a whole become
crystal clear in times of war, when the news media in a country can be observed to shift
from a pluralist to a propaganda model of production. Although some hegemony
Authors Note: Please address correspondence to Holli A. Semetko, Office of International Affairs and
The Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning, Emory University, Box 52, Administration Bldg.,
Atlanta, GA 30332; e-mail: holli.semetko@emory.edu.
639

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Andra Alexandru on September 8, 2010

640 American Behavioral Scientist

theorists argue that the news media are producing propaganda for the state all the time
(Herman & Chomsky, 1988), critics of the pluralist model have shown a more subtle
relationship between those elected leaders and government circles on the one hand and
journalists and news organizations on the other (Entman, 2003). Highlighting more
recent examples of failures of the U.S. press, Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston (2007)
write
There is little doubt that reporting which challenges the public pronouncements of
those in power is difficult when anything deviating from authorized versions of reality
is met with intimidating charges of bias. Out of fairness, the press generally reports
those charges, which in turn reverberate through the echo chambers of talk radio and
pundit TV, with the ironic result that the media contribute to their own credibility problem. Yet it is precisely the lack of clear standards of press accountability (particularly
guidelines for holding officials accountable) that opens the mainstream news to charges
of bias from all sides. In short, the absence of much agreement on what the press should
be doing makes it all the more difficult for news organizations to navigate an independent course through pressurized political situations. (p. 13)

Commenting on this books stinging critique of the Bush administration, especially its policies in Iraq, journalist Marvin Kalb writes between the lines is a cry
for the media to wake up to its social and political responsibilities (http://
www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/042848.html).
In Part I of this special issue, authors of five articles discuss the news in times of
war and crisis, particularly in the context of the war in Iraq. In the first article,
Christian Kolmer and Holli Semetko show how television news in Britain, Czech
Republic, Germany, South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom as
well as the transnational channel Al-Jazeera reported on the day-to-day events in the
first weeks of the war in Iraq in March and April 2003. The picture that emerges
when one compares the volume and tone of news about the Allies in the war is one
in which the news organizations in each country are close to the position of their
government on the war, with the United States media closer than most. Embedded
journalism might be a part of the reason for this finding, and the second article by
Andrew Cortell, Robert Eisinger, and Scott Althaus explains why the Bush
Administration decided to embed reporters in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the third
article, Piers Robinson, Peter Goddard, and Katy Parry critically evaluate news and
news management in Britain during this early phase in the war. Robert Entman,
Steven Livingston, and Jennie Kim, in the fourth article in this section, offer a harsh
assessment of how the news on Iraq has actually repeated itself over the last 5 years.
In the final article in this section on war and crisis, Frank Esser takes us back to the
Gulf War in 1991 to discuss how the German press framed the role of the media and
the process of news management in 1991 and 2003.

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Andra Alexandru on September 8, 2010

Semetko / Media and Public Diplomacy 641

Challenges Facing Public Diplomacy

As news about the war in Iraq, controversial political cartoons, and terrorism have
reverberated in media around the globe in recent years, people involved in the daily
practice of public diplomacy are challenged by both the speed and the stature of
these issues in the news and infotainment industries. Public diplomacy has broadened its avenues of access as channels of communication have increased over the
past decades.
The Edward R. Murrow Center at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University was established in 1965 in memory of a man with a distinguished career as
reporter, analyst, and diplomat, who led the United States Information Agency and who
set a standard of excellence in the field that, at the time of his career, was defined by a
much narrower range of media choices (http://fletcher.tufts.edu/murrow/about.html).
One of the early brochures of the Murrow Center describes public diplomacy in a way
that continues to be relevant in todays environment of transnational and digital media:
Public diplomacy . . . deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and
execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations
beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other
countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with those of
another; the reporting of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communication
between those whose job is communication, as between diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the processes of inter-cultural communications. (What Is Public
Diplomacy? n.d.)

The University of Southern Californias new Center on Public Diplomacy offers

a growing list of definitions of the term public diplomacy that includes examples
from official government documents, academic publications, and speeches on the
topic given by scholars and diplomats since the center was established in 2003.
Public diplomacy encompasses the soft power described by Joseph Nye, university distinguished professor and former dean of Harvards Kennedy School of
Government. Nye (2005) sees popular culture, infotainment, public events, and digital media as occupying a position of influence in the domains of a countrys foreign
policy and national interests. Public diplomacy concerns the process of communication between government elites, organizations, and citizen groups, via public and
private channels, and not just the deliberate but also the unintentional communications and effects on citizens in different national and cultural contexts.
In Part II of this special issue, examples of how public diplomacy works and
doesnt work can be found in five articles. Doris Garber identifies U.S. entertainment
television as an unintended structural impediment to the public diplomacy messages
disseminated by the U.S. Department of State in the Middle East and the Muslim
world. These older programs, many no longer available on U.S. television, can be

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Andra Alexandru on September 8, 2010

642 American Behavioral Scientist

purchased for less abroad and still draw large foreign audiences. The proactive efforts
of Karen Hughes, secretary of state for public diplomacy, to communicate effectively with Arabic-speaking publics though her interview on Al-Jazeera is the subject
of the second article. Sam Cherribi critically assesses how Arabic-language media
responded to the Hughes interview. Phillip Seib focuses on the ethical issues and
parallels between public diplomacy and journalism. Finally, we hear from American
practitioners on both sides of the fence: one lawyer-scholar turned journalist living
in Germany for more than 2 decades and one lawyer-scholar turned diplomat who
moved back to the United States recently after 20 years in England. Melinda Crane,
a German-speaking Tufts and Harvard Law graduate, anchors news and current
affairs programs on Deutsche Welle, Germanys global public broadcasting organization. She also placed guests on one of the Germanys most popular political discussion programs. Crane offers examples from the field of German television to
show how effectively public diplomacy can be practiced through this medium.
Colleen Graffy, one of the comparatively few Americans to be called to the Bar of
England and Wales as a Barrister of the Middle Temple, an exclusive group of
highly trained and powerfully speaking lawyers, left London for Washington, D. C.,
to work for the U.S. Department of State in 2005 as deputy assistant secretary of
state for public diplomacy in the European and Eurasian Affairs. Graffy provides an
insiders account of the strategy and practice of U.S. public diplomacy in recent years.

References
Entman, R. M. (2003). Projections of power: Framing news, public opinion, and U.S. foreign policy.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Graber, D. A. (2001). Processing politics: Learning from television in the Internet age. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media.
New York: Pantheon.
Bennett, W. L., Lawrence, R. G., & Livingston, S. (2007). When the press fails: Political power and the
news media from Iraq to Katrina. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty and the Internet worldwide.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Nye, J. (2005). Soft power. New York: Public Affairs.
Oates, S., Gibson, R., & Owen, D. (Eds.). (2006). The Internet and politics: Citizens, voters, and activists.
London: Routledge.
What is public diplomacy? (n.d.). Available at http://fletcher.tufts.edu/murrow/public-diplomacy.html.

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Andra Alexandru on September 8, 2010