Political Scandals as a Democratic Challenge| Blunders, Scandals, and Strategic Communication in U.S. Foreign Policy: Benghazi vs. 9/11

Authors

  • Robert Entman George Washington University
  • Sarah Stonbely Montclair State University, New York

Keywords:

scandal, strategic communication, political communication, textual analysis

Abstract

Scholars have paid little attention to the role of media scandals in U.S. foreign policy discourse. This article suggests that journalists’ treatment of foreign policy failures as scandalous bears little relationship to the nature or effects of officials’ malfeasance. Scandalized news coverage is instead more fruitfully viewed through the lens of skilled strategic framing. Contrasting the news about two terrorist attacks on Americans—9/11 and Benghazi—reveals how politicians can successfully promote or deflect potential foreign policy scandals without much regard for evidence. Benghazi suggests that unsubstantiated or minor failings can spawn major scandals. Conversely, 9/11 shows how and why well-documented and massive miscues may not ignite scandal. Much depends on party elites’ strategic communication choices. The ability of savvy communicators to foster or evade scandal regardless of underlying facts and severity of malfeasance has important implications for democratic accountability and prudence in U.S. foreign-policy making and democracy more broadly.

Author Biographies

Robert Entman, George Washington University

Robert M. Entman is J.B. and M.C. Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs and Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University. Author most recently of Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion and US Foreign Policy (Chicago, 2004), he is working on Framing Failure with GW colleagues Sean Aday and Steven Livingston as well as a book tentatively entitled Media Biases. His Scandals of Media and Politics is scheduled for publication by Polity Press in 2010. His other books include Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy (Cambridge, 2001, edited with Lance Bennett); The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America (University of Chicago, 2000, with Andrew Rojecki), which won Harvard's Goldsmith Book Prize, the Lane Award from the American Political Science Association, and other awards; and Democracy Without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics (Oxford, 1989). He has also published dozens of journal articles, reports, and book chapters in such fields as political communication, public opinion, race relations, and public policy. For his work on media framing, he won the 2005 Woolbert Research Prize from the National Communication Association. In 2006 Entman won the American Political Science Association's Murray Edelman Distinguished Career Achievement Award in Political Communication, and in 2007 was recognized as a Distinguished Scholar by the National Communication Association. Dr. Entman edits the book series Communication, Society and Politics (with Lance Bennett) for the Cambridge University Press. He lectures frequently at universities in the U.S. and abroad, most recently Zhejiang University (China), City College of London, the University of Vienna, and the University of Porto (Portugal). He served as the Lombard Visiting Professor at Harvard for the fall semester of 1997, visiting professor of communication at the University of Rome during May 2005 and Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Duke for the academic year 2008-09.

Sarah Stonbely, Montclair State University, New York

Project Manager School of Media and Communication

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Published

2018-08-06

Issue

Vol. 12 (2018)

Section

Special Sections

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