Analyses of war coverage address its relation to historical fact, propaganda, and
bias, but I see a great need to position war coverage within the context of the industry that
produces and distributes news content. To divorce televised war coverage from the
entertainment industry is to decontextualize it in the most fundamental way. This
dissertation investigates the way in which Cable News Network (CNN) and Fox News
Channel (FNC) positioned and packaged the U.S. military’s invasion of Iraq in March
2003 for a domestic audience. I place those two networks and the 2003 invasion of Iraq
within the context of post-classical Hollywood filmmaking, one offshoot of which is high
concept. I argue that high concept—a filmmaking practice inextricably linked to
conglomeration, new technologies, and an incessant, self-preserving drive to market—
can be applied productively to the study of television news. When infused with critical theory, high concept is a valuable way to understand the politics and construction of
entertainment-driven war coverage.
The industrial development of television news has yielded a media artifact that
mimics the practice of high concept filmmaking narratively, stylistically, ideologically,
and commercially. By using high concept as an alternative approach to television news, I
propose that studies that disregard or marginalize visuals, sound, narrative, and the
industry that profits from the spectacular packaging of those elements cannot fully
capture the thrust of television news. By stripping television news of its stature as
somehow divorced from and above the rest of television programming, I aim to re-insert
it into the entertainment industry. My intent is to bring together theoretical and practical
insights from different disciplines so that I can contextualize contemporary television
news in a unique and compelling way. In doing so, this dissertation aims to contribute to
the pursuit of democratic media. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/2540 |
| Date | 28 August 2008 |
| Creators | Jaramillo, Deborah Lynn |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works. |
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