US Media and Post-9/11 Human Rights Violations in the Name of Counterterrorism

This article adds to earlier research revealing that the American news media did not discharge their responsibility as a watchdog press in the post-9/11 years by failing to scrutinize extreme and unlawful government policies and actions, most of all the decision to invade Iraq based on false information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction arsenal. The content analyses presented here demonstrate that leading US news organizations, both television and print, did not expressly refer to human rights violations when they reported on the torturing of foreign detainees during “enhanced interrogations” in US-run prison facilities abroad and the killing of civilians, including children, in US drone strikes overseas and outside theaters of war. Moreover, by framing torture and the “collateral damage” caused by drone-launched missile attacks episodically rather than in the context of human rights, the news media failed to alert the American public to the grave humanitarian violations in the so-called war on terrorism during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.     

Self-legitimation in the face of politicization: Why international organizations centralized public communication

International organizations (I0) have centralized their public communication to a large extent over recent decades by undertaking a broader codification of communication tasks as well as a departmentalization of these tasks within units of IO bureaucracies. The paper provides the first systematic analysis of this important development in institutional design using a novel data set on the organization of public communication in 48 IOs between 1950 and 2015. It identifies self-legitimation as a key driver of centralization in the face of increased levels of politicization, that is, public awareness and activism directed at IOs. Empirically, the study suggests that the centralization of public communication significantly increases as transnational civil society organizes and gains access to IO decision-making. Further, politicization in terms of contentious activism and public scandals substantially accounts for varying levels of centralization across IOs.