Tom Ridge and the Cooked Terrorism Alerts: Selling Fear Works

By Brigitte L. Nacos, Yaeli Bloch-Elkon and Robert Y. Shapiro

Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security, is in the headlines because he reveals in a book he authored that he was pressured by top advisers to President George W. Bush to raise the national terrorism threat alert level just before the 2004 election. Actually, as noted on this blog in fall 2006, Ridge had voiced this suspicion after he resigned as Secretary of Homeland Security in early 2005, when he told reporters that "there were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it [the color-coded alert level], and we said, ‘For that?" The White House and others in the administration knew exactly for what: they believed that raised alert levels increased the fear of Americans and their support for the crisis-managing president. They were right as our systematic research has demonstrated.

Terrorists, policy-makers, and terrorism scholars have long assumed that the mere threat of terrorist strikes affects societies that have experienced actual terrorist attacks. But so far research has neither validated this conventional wisdom nor demonstrated in detail how mass-mediated threat communications by terrorists and terror alerts and threat assessments by government officials affect the public in targeted countries. Our research fills this gap.

To begin with, we found that in the 39 months after 9/11, network TV-newscasts devoted large amounts of airtime to threats communicated by Osama bin Laden and his associates and to terror alerts and threat assessments issued by administration officials. In the evening newscasts of ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News, the average length of news segments devoted to Al Qaeda threat messages was close to four minutes and five-and-a-half minutes for those reporting that the administration had increased the color-coded terror alert level. In contrast, when the official terror alert was lowered by the administration, television devoted on average only one-and-a-half minutes to this news. Similarly, all cases of increased terror alerts levels were reported as lead stories, whereas only thirteen percent of the lowering of terror alerts were lead stories–if they were reported at all.

These coverage patterns played into the hands of the Al Qaeda leadership whose communications left no doubt about their intent to make the American public more fearful. But President George W. Bush and his administration, too, benefited from the generous coverage of their terror alerts, warnings, and assessments in that this reminded the public frequently why the "war on terrorism" had to be fought. Shortly after 9/11, the administration urged the TV-networks not to air bin Laden/Al Qaeda tapes, but there were no follow-up complaints. Obviously, the White House did no longer object to the media’s attention to Al Qaeda communications. After all, President Bush himself told a White House reporter with respect to a bin Laden tape that  was released and heavily covered five days before the 2004 presidential election, "I thought it was going to help. I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden does not want Bush to be president, something must be right with Bush."

Americans’ concerns about the threat of terrorism in their own country remained quite high in the post-9/11 years and intensified frequently when more threats were made and more terror alerts were issued. The public’s worries about catastrophic terrorism were especially persistent and in the wake of last year’s terrorist attacks on London’s transit system actually more pronounced than after 9/11.

Not surprisingly, New York City residents were far more concerned about more strikes in their own community than their compatriots in other parts of the country. Women were more worried than men, African-Americans more than Whites,  Americans 35-years old and older more than the younger generation, and less educated more than better educated adults.

Finally, we found strong correlations between actual threat statements and mass-mediated threat messages and the public’s evaluation of terrorism as the country’s major problem. President Bush and administration officials were the most potent sources in this respect. But we found also that bin Laden’s communications affected the public — in particular with respect to Americans’ concerns that they and their families could become victims of future terrorist attacks.

Whereas bin Laden’s threats did not win him the sympathies of Americans but rather helped him to spread fear, President Bush’s overall public approval ratings and especially the public’s evaluation of his handling of terrorism improved as a result of threat and alert messages. It seems that administration insiders were aware of these effects. Again, after he resigned as Secretary of Homeland Security in early 2005, Tom Ridge spoke to reporters to "debunk the myth" of his department’s responsibility for repeated terror alerts. Ridge said, "There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it [the color-coded alert level], and we said, ‘For that?’"

In sum, our research demonstrates that when terrorists threaten more violence in the U.S. and when decision-makers issue terror alerts and warnings, television news — and evidently other news media as well — magnify those messages that intensify the concerns and fears of the public and elevate the public approval ratings of the president

Comments

[Chris]

It is upsetting because terror alerts scare the public. This should have never been used to promote a political agenda.