Hegemony in the News

In Wednesday's class we spent a period of time talking about the effect news had in the aftermath of 9/11. Shanique posed the question: was the patriotic tone and content of the news following 9/11 a good or bad thing? I honestly think that the pro USA rhetoric that was common place after the attacks were incredibly harmful for this country because the hegemony that the news propagated was so constrictive. Probably the worst bit of hegemony that the news helped to sew was that the terrorists were "evil" and the attacks were unprovoked. I think that neither of these things are true but they should have been open to national debate. The news could have had a hand in encouraging public discussion about US foreign policy, and about the possible motivations for the attacks. Ward Churchhill, a proffesor at the University of Colorado, was fired after writing an essay voicing his opinion about how imperilaist US actions overseas made the 9/11 attacks almost inevitable. The highly charged tone of the public after the attacks, made his ability to excersize his free speech right without consequence almost impossible.

There is no way of knowing what the past eight years would have been like if news organizations took a more objective view after 9/11, but I believe that without their involvement the public might not have gotten into such a nationalistic frenzy. The case of 9/11 shows exactly why it is that hegemony is so bad for the public. Through hegemony the news and the government were able to do much more than sway our opinion towards going to war; they were able to restrict the very discussions we could have about our government and its actions. Now, politicians and the media are once again using hegemony to restrict the debate on health care by talking about it only in a overly dramatic way. I believe if the news were more conscious of refraining from propagating the hegemony of the day, then the public would not only be better informed but more able to form their own opinion without the help of others.