Date of Award

Spring 8-1-1991

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Communication

First Advisor

Joseph P. Tenerelli

Second Advisor

Paul Younghouse

Third Advisor

Michael Buchholz

Abstract

Terrorism and its news coverage have demonstrated to be a concern of the entire broadcast industry. Previous literature and studies suggest that terrorists rely heavily upon broadcast news response to their actions. Not only has it been suggested that news media actually become players in terroristic incidents, some have gone so far as to accuse networks of terrorism itself. This criticism contends that the networks depict an unbalanced representation of the activities that transpire. The network coverage of an incident that has been most notably criticized has been the TWA flight 847 hijacking and hostage taking in June of 1985. This project performed an investigation of CBS Evening News' coverage of this incident. The study included eight broadcasts during the 17 day crisis. The general question which guided this research was: how was the TWA flight incident portrayed in television news coverage on the CBS Evening News? In general, this study analyzed whether the coverage delegated to the TWA crisis was extensive and balanced. Videotapes of the hostage reports broadcast were obtained from the Vanderbilt University Television News Archive. A content analysis was performed to examine the extent of the coverage. Each story was coded individually. The data interpreted were based upon an SPSS-X analysis. TWA related stories held a prominent role throughout the newscast. Tactics of the hijackers were more often reported than were objectives, goals and causes. CBS Evening News was found to have covered the TWA hijacking excessively without offering explanation of the terrorists' actions.

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