While the cannon of objectivity has recently been called into question as the means for evaluating news merit, objectivity continues to harbor public expectation of the news media, especially during times of conflict. Results of past and current objectivity studies of conflict reporting, however, were shown to produce inconsistent and conflicting interpretations of whether the news media is presenting objective coverage of conflicts.To determine objectivity of news coverage, this content analysis examined objectivity differences between three newspapers--the Chicago Tribune, the Indianapolis Star, and the Anderson Herald Bulletin--and how they collectively presented front-page conflict and mainstream straight news stories.The study evaluated the newspapers' collective presentation of the September 11 h terrorist attack for a two-week period from September 12 through September 26, 2001. Presentation of the conflict was compared to a proportionate sample of mainstream straight news stories randomly selected from the months of January through December of 2001.Because the literature review indicated researchers most commonly evaluate news objectivity according to the presence of balance, attribution, or gatekeeping bias, the study assessed differences in objectivity level between conflict and straight news based upon the integration of all three objectivity variables The study's findings suggested that reporting of mainstream straight news was more objective than reporting of the September 11 terrorist attack conflict in the combined three newspapers. Reporting of the terrorist attack was found to be less balanced than reporting of straight news stories, as evidenced by a disproportionate amount of quotations afforded in support of United States war efforts. In addition, conflict stories were found to contain a significantly higher use of negative attributes-non-essential adjectives, inferences, collateral language and non-speech quotes--than straight news stories. Differences between page placement and revelation of theme were found to have no effect on objectivity differences. / Department of Journalism

My dissertation focuses on a set of Anglo-American novels that deal with the events of 9/11. Identifying thematic and stylistic differences in the fiction on this topic, I distinguish between novels that represent directly the jolts of trauma in the wake of the attacks, and novels that, while still holding the events as an underlying operative force in the narrative, do not openly represent them but envision their long-term aftermath. The first group of novels comprises Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s The Writing on the Wall (2005), Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007) and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005). The second one includes Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs (2009), John Updike’s Terrorist (2006) and Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland (2008). Drawing on concepts from trauma theory, particularly by Cathy Caruth and Dominick LaCapra, and combining them with the ethical philosophies of Levinas and Heidegger, I argue that the constructions of 9/11 in Anglo-American fiction are essentially twofold: authors who narrate 9/11 as a tragic human loss in the city of New York turn it into an occasion for an ethical dialogue with the reader and potentially with the “Other,” whereas authors who address 9/11 as a recent sociopolitical event transform it into a goad toward a bitter cultural indictment of the US middle-class, whose ingrained inertia, patriotism and self-righteousness have been either magnified or twisted by the attacks. Considering processes of meaning-making, annihilation, ideological reduction and apathy that arose from 9/11 and its versions, I have identified what could be called, adapting Peter Elbow’s expression from pedagogical studies, the “forked” rhetoric of media and politics, a rhetorical mode in which both discourses are essentially closed, non-hermeneutic, and rooted in the same rationale: exploiting 9/11 for consensus. On the contrary, in what I call the New-Yorkization of 9/11, I highlighted how the situatedness of the public discourses that New Yorkers constructed to tell their own tragedy rescues the Ur-Phaenomenon of 9/11 from the epistemological commodification that intellectual, mediatic and political interpretations forced on it. Furthermore, pointing to the speciousness of arguments that deem 9/11 literature sentimental and unimaginative, I claim that the traumatic literature on the attacks constitutes an example of ethical practice, since it originates from witnesses of the catastrophe, it represents communal solidarity, and it places a crucial demand on the reader as an empathic listener and ethical agent. Ethical counternarratives oppose the ideological simplification of the 9/11 attacks and develop instead a complex counter-rhetoric of emotions and inclusiveness that we could read as a particular instantiation of an ethics of the self and “Other.” As much as the 9/11 “ethical” novels suggest that “survivability” in times of trauma depends on “relationality” (J. Butler), the “cultural” ones unveil the insensitivity and superficiality of the actual US society far away from the site of trauma. The binary framework I use implies that, outside of New York City, 9/11 is narrated neither traumatically (in terms of literary form), nor as trauma (in terms of textual fact). Consequently, on the basis of a spatial criterion and in parallel to the ethical novels, I have identified a category of “cultural” fiction that tackles the events of 9/11 at a distance, spatially and conceptually. In essence, 9/11 brings neither shock, nor promise of regeneration to these peripheral settings, except for Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, a story in which we are returned to a post-9/11 New York where different ethnic subjects can re-negotiate creatively their identities. The cultural novels are ultimately pervaded by a mode of tragic irony that is unthinkable for the ethical novels and that is used in these texts to convey the inanity and hubris of a politically uneducated and naïve America – one that has difficulties to point Afghanistan on a map, or to transcend dualistic schemes of value that embody precisely Bush’s Manichaeism. The potential for cultural pluralism, solidarity and historical memory set up by the New York stories does not ramify into the America that is far away from the neuralgic epicenter of historical trauma. This proves that the traumatizing effects and the related ethical calls engendered by 9/11 remain confined to the New York literature on the topic.

This thesis is an examination of representations of Muslim women in the American print media. I focus on one particular publication, The New York Times within a time frame surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. Articles were selected from this publication that fell within the time period of September 11, 2000 to September 11, 2002, in selecting articles, I chose those based on their inclusion of any discussion that clearly identified those discussed as Muslim women, through the use of the words "Muslim" or "Islamic" in their descriptions. The case study was carried out by reading through each daily edition of The New York Times in order to identify any articles that fell within my criteria. I also used an online database containing abstracts of the publication to verify that no article of relevance was overlooked. I then devised 5 categories within which to analyze the representations of Muslim women that were found within these articles, "Veil", "Biographical", "Women's Issues", "Politics" and "Muslims in the West". The main goal of this thesis is to determine how Muslim women are represented within this particular publication and to analyze whether the events of September 11, 2001 had any effect on how Muslim women were portrayed in The New York Times articles.

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, 2009. / Bibliography: leaves 82-84. Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-200).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toledo, 2008. / Typescript. "Submitted as partial fulfillments of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Sociology." "A thesis entitled"--at head of title. Bibliography: leaves 57-63.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 23-24).

Thesis (M.SS. (Political Sciences))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (PH.D.)--Michigan State University. Sociology, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Aug. 11, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 132-154). Also issued in print.

Thesis (M.A. in communication)--Washington State University, August 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Sept. 21, 2009). "Edward R. Murrow College of Communication." Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-124).