A prolonged crisis forced the US media into more self-critical coverage of Iran
Evidence
I believe there is little doubt that such articles would not have been written if in fact the hostages had been released. The embassy seizure — immoral, illegal, and outrageous, politically useful in the short run but wasteful for Iran in the long run — had quite literally forced a crisis of awareness in the United States. From being an almost forgotten, taken-for-granted colony in Asia, Iran had intermittently become an occasion for self-examination on the part of the United States. The Iran story’s very persistence, its anxious, unseemly duration, gradually had modified the media’s early single-mindedness and narrow focus into something more critical and useful. In short, the embassy seizure instituted process where there had only been static anger; in time this process acquired a history of its own, through which the media — and Americans generally — saw more of themselves than they had hitherto. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 299
Categorization
- XREF: Extends the book’s running argument that prolonged events can outrun the media’s initial reductive frames, echoing the chapter’s own theme of static anger becoming process.