The central aim of both of these texts is to examine frameworks of representation in the United Kingdom and the United States following the events of September 11, 2001. There are also significant differences. Selling Fear emanates from a US model of mass communications with a strong empirical emphasis. It focuses on US news coverage of the Bush administration's counterterrorism measures, as well as its relationship to public opinion (agenda setting). Framing Muslims examines the representation (framing) and stereotyping of Muslims in both the United States and the UK in a range of genres, excluding news, and can be located within a cultural studies approach that draws on a number of disciplines, including English literature and postcolonial studies. However, the aim of both is to demonstrate the selective representation of issues that favor dominant policies and ideas and contribute to an environment that marginalizes particular “out-groups.” While there is an extensive literature around the representation of Muslims and of terrorism, these texts contribute something new to their fields of study, both in terms of their focus and in furthering debates about the dynamic relationships among power brokers, representation, and audiences.

Selling Fear is premised on the notion of a free press existing in the United States as a “public sphere,” serving to inform its citizens in order to function as a “watchdog” of government for the operation of a healthy democracy. Yet this role is at odds with its position as a commodity existing in a private marketplace. The authors argue that during the Bush years following 9/11, the US news media operated more as a “lap dog” faithfully reproducing the policies of counterterrorism favored by government with little critical analysis. The media were manipulated by government to promote a climate of fear. An examination of opinion polls demonstrates the correspondence between news coverage and public attitudes. However, later analysis of coverage, including reporting of Hurricane Katrina and related opinion polls, demonstrates how this relationship cannot be taken for granted.

The book is based on a substantive quantitative and qualitative analysis of the main US network news departments (ABC News, CBS News, and NBC news), additional significant talk shows, and newspaper coverage. In contrast to previous studies on terrorism, the focus of this book is on counterterrorism measures, including the Iraq war. Five topics are examined: 1) the threat of terrorism in the form of both government warnings and warnings from Al Qaeda, 2) the post-9/11 curbs on civil liberties in the fight against terrorism, 3) the buildup to the invasion of Iraq as part of the “war on terror,” 4) domestic terrorism-prevention efforts, and 5) US preparedness for terrorism at home. The authors examined post-9/11 coverage for a period of 39 months, from October 2001 to December 2004, plus 18 months of coverage leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. More information about the sample (newspapers included) and sampling decisions, such as how items were selected for qualitative analysis, would have been a useful addition here. The unit of analysis was the message alongside the source of the message, an evaluation of this unit (positive, negative, ambiguous), as well as further information relevant to specific topics, for example, site of area vulnerable to attack, means of attack, and so on. Public opinions polls from September 11, 2001, to December 2005 and a sample from December 2006, from various polling organizations and archives, were studied. Responses to identical question were tracked over time to identify short- and long-term trends.

For two of the five issues studied—the terrorist threat and the justification for going to war with Iraq—the Bush administration received prominent coverage, the largest share apart from media professionals, such as anchors, correspondents, and so on. Other officials, such as military officers and intelligence experts, tended to echo the government line. For the authors, this demonstrates how TV networks largely “indexed” the news (see W. Lance Bennett, “Towards a Theory of Press State Relations in the United States,” Journal of Communication 40 [Spring 1990]: 103–25) the news according to the fairly narrow range of views expressed by members of Washington's elite circle (p. 183). By framing their policies through the war on terror and presenting it as a melodrama, in which the possibility of further attacks from the “evil antagonists” Al Qaeda and later Saddam Hussein were highlighted, the Bush administration united the nation behind its “moral protagonists” in the justification to go to war, stifling debate on counterterrorism measures. The high volume of coverage of the first and third topics meant that there was less need to provide significant spin in relation to the second topic—of policies, such as the Patriot Act, that curb civil liberties. This accounts for the lower visibility of officials in relation to this topic. Similarly, the government did not commit their resources to “spin” around the issue of terrorism prevention or preparedness. The study reports only moderate coverage of these topics. In other words, when the government launched public relations campaigns to secure support for specific policies, more attention was given to these topics in the news.

News outlets did not pursue their own investigations into issues of low government interest. Analysis of coverage of Hurricane Katrina, however, “departed strikingly from the symbiotic relationship between the press and government officials to reclaim their watchdog role by reporting extensively and compassionately on the human suffering” (p. 187). In this case, the media were proactive. Coverage highlighted the lack of preparedness, which forced the administration to engage in this debate. In a different context and under different circumstances, it took a manmade disaster to force discussion around terrorism prevention and preparedness.

In addition, the study found a similarly strong correlation among news coverage of these issues, the questions asked in opinion polls, and public perceptions of specific cases. The correspondence was particularly strong between coverage of the terrorist threat and public belief that terrorism was a major problem to the country, and that a further attack was likely, boosting the approval rating of the president in relation to this issue. The strongest variable in attitudes to counter terrorism measures was, unsurprisingly, political partisanship, with some differences attributable to gender and race.

The study found the strength of agenda setting in the period post-9/11 whereby, under certain conditions, the Bush administration was able to control the media agenda. By “selling fear,” hyping up the possibility of a terrorist attack, the government was able to ensure coverage of its case and dominate the news while simultaneously limiting attention to issues of civil liberties and security. This worked for a sufficiently long time to allow the government to adopt its policy without much attention or criticism. However, later analysis of coverage of Hurricane Katrina demonstrates how this support cannot be assumed or maintained. The authors further question how in an increasingly diversified and digitalized media environment at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, this type of support may be harder to maintain and illustrate in relation to the presidency of Barack Obama, which has been further complicated by political dissension.

Although evidence of correlations between media reporting and public opinion polls should be treated with caution, given the cumulative evidence drawn from the methodological approach, the authors make a strong case supporting the symbiotic relationship among government, media, and public, or at least explaining what they term the “government-media-public perception nexus” (p. 18).

In Framing Muslims, Peter Morey and Amina Yaqin critically examine representations of Muslims in a range of cultural forms and products within the US and UK, including realist film, docudrama, and the manufacture of Muslim dolls. The book emerged out of a project, initially funded by the AHRC in the UK, which aimed to develop an international research network exploring the “representation of Muslim identities in continuing cultural discourses” (see http://www.framingmuslims.org). The authors demonstrate the simplification, problematization, and homogenization of Muslims, yet do so in a particularly nuanced way. The book demonstrates an in-depth, highly sophisticated approach with a significant knowledge of histories, contexts, and theoretical approaches to the field of study. The authors draw on a range of cultural theorists, including Edward Said, Homi K Bhabha, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Zygmunt Bauman, to offer some examples. Concepts are used reflexively and arguments carefully qualified. While arguments relating to the representation of Muslims, including the role of the production context, are now well rehearsed, the field is broadened in a number of ways: 1) extending the analysis to a wider range of cultural forms using a range of analytical tools, 2) recognizing the dynamics between political contexts and media production that goes beyond simplistic notions of anti-Islamic agendas, and 3) incorporating a model of dialogic framing (that the representation of the Other exists within a mutual stereotype). Hence, what is represented is a version of Muslim-ness that can only be understood with reference to “the West.”

The central argument of the book is that through a dialogic process, Muslims are “framed;” that is, the way in which news about Muslims is organized—“selected, emphasised, excluded and elaborated”—not only results in dominant ideas about groups of people but also offers a way of defining, interpreting, evaluating and solving the problems they pose (Maxwell McCombs, Setting the Agenda 2004, 87). These “framing structures” (p. 21), termed the “Muslim issues matrix” (p. 63), extends beyond media and cultural forms, outlets, and genres and across national boundaries. Within this frame, Muslims are invited to “join a one sided dialogue” that they cannot change or “remain outside the boundaries of political discourse” (p. 2). These repertoires then inform political action. The authors forefront the circulation of the “clash of civilizations” thesis and the gap that exists between reality and representation. While this in itself is problematic, they state that it is not their intention to disprove the stereotypes but show how representations should move beyond this “clash” discourse through a recognition of “encounter” and “connectedness” in the relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds, revealing “the depth and complexity of Muslim experience” rather than replacing them with straightforward positive representations (p. 204).

Chapter 1 deals with processes and geneologies of stereotyping, “how images are deployed and circulated” (p. 22). Chapter 2 provides an extensive analysis of the debates around multiculturalism, including “political multiculturalism” and multiculturalism as “lived experience.” Chapter 3 examines the desire among politicians and the media for authentic representative sources (based on a politics of misrecognition) and the implications and fallout for Muslims and Muslim groups in this process. Chapters 4 and 5 critically analyze specific texts, such as television crime thrillers and popular action series (24 [Fox], Sleeper Cell [Showtime], and Spooks [BBC]) and show how Muslims are positioned, often outside the “discursive boundaries of the nation,” through performance, metonymy, and framing. The authors' analysis demonstrates the complexities and ambiguities of representation that exist, even in conservative productions, yet continue to bind Muslims to the all-encompassing frame that is the subject of the book. Chapter 6 explores gendered representations through an analysis of the production of Islamic dolls, as well as the ways in which the framework of representation may be broken or extended with particular reference to comedy as a more subversive genre.

The analysis is wide ranging in its scope and depth. It brings together diverse approaches to the study of Muslims in the media and, as such, the book provides an excellent resource for students, in particular postgraduate students given its heavy, and sometimes assumed, cultural referencing and knowledge.

Both of these texts provide a complex understanding of the ways in which the media relate to wider socioeconomic and political forces. They show how political elites are able to frame events to suit particular policy agendas and how the media often (inadvertently) work within these agendas in an uncritical, unquestioning way. But they also show the complexities of these relationships, which cannot be simplified or fixed but shift according to circumstances. From the excellent, but differing, scholarship seen here, it is evident that the media have become a key terrain in which political debates and struggles play out.