Logo image
Back
Abuse, Torture, Frames, and the Washington Post
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Abuse, Torture, Frames, and the Washington Post

Douglas V. Porpora, Alexander Nikolaev and Julia Hagemann
Journal of communication, v 60(2)
01 Jun 2010
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01481.x

Abstract

Communication Social Sciences
W. Bennett, R. Lawrence, and S. Livingston (2006, 2007) argue that the press-and the Washington Post in particular-acquiesced to Bush administration framing of the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The administration, they say, framed the events as the isolated abuse of prisoners by "a few bad apples" unreflective of higher responsibility or administration policy. Absent-or near absent, Bennett et al. maintain, was a Post counterframe of the mistreatment as a systematic effect of high level policy, better captured by the word torture. Such pattern of framing, Bennett et al. conclude, supports the Indexing model of U.S. press behavior. This article shows that Bennett et al. understate the strength and consistency of Post counterframing. When articles in the Post are searched not for individual words but for more extended frames, it becomes clear that the Post did in fact engage in considerable counterframing even in the absence of elite political opposition. This case, it is therefore concluded, does not in fact support the Indexing model as Bennett et al. maintain but is rather the kind of case described by R. M. Entman (2004) in which the press exercises greater independence of elite political opinion than the Indexing model admits.

Metrics

11 Record Views
15 citations in Web of Science
15 citations in Scopus

Details

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Web of Science research areas
Communication
Logo image