is tends to give media coverage what Karim identifies as a mythic depth, one that
makes that coverage very persuasive even when not logical. For example, our reaction to
coverage of 9/11 or the Iraq War cannot be separated from nearly two thousand years of
Christian discomfort with Islam, and the antipathy to Muslims and Arabs that the West has
expressed in the crusades, in colonialism, and in the popular imagery of the harem girl, the
suicide bomber, and the mullah. This discourse regarding the Islamic and Arab “Other”
takes the form of what the late literary scholar Edward Said called “Orientalism.” Developing the point about the mythic nature of reportage, Karim also addresses the ritual
character of news practice. Journalism is a highly ritualized cultural practice. As they do
their research, conduct their interviews, then fit the world into the inverted pyramid
structure often used to organize news stories, reporters engage in a highly routinized
round of behaviour. Questions are put to politicians, widows, and athletes, answers and
quotations solicited, and the story about the cabinet shuffle, the tragic car accident, or the
championship game written. Reporters talk to familiar sources and usual suspects in their
beats before submitting their material; section editors rewrite the stories, and submit them
to headline writers; and the TV news program or the newspaper frames the day’s events
into a single intelligible whole. The news cycle ge英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】nerates similar kinds of stories, and after
a time, the reader finds it difficult to distinguish between one natural disaster, horrific
crime, or stock market crash and another. As transformed by the ritual nature of news
reportage, the news assumes the quality of myth, not fact, confirming deeply held views
about reality rather than providing us new information.
Integration propaganda dramatizes the legitimate violence of the state versus the
illegitimate actions of the named threat. This can often result in what some have called a
“culture of fear,” one that binds a frightened populace to their state, institutions, and
officials. The more terrifying the representation of the threat, the more power can states
accrue to themselves and the more paralyzed a public can become. This can lead to
absurdity: witness instructions from the U.S. Homeland Security office that duct tape—this
generation’s “stop, drop, and roll”—might be adequate to stopping terrorists.
e. constructing the violent world order
Structural violence is inherent to the making of the modern world. The Western nation-
state, with its monopoly on violence, was imposed arbitrarily on peoples around the world.
A number of regional wars today, such as the genocidal conflict between the Muslim-
dominated Sudanese government and traditional peoples in the western part (Darfur) of
that African country, are to a degree the result of groups with no historical relationship
com
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