Busy saying nothing new: Live silence in TV reporting of 9/11
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Adam Jaworski
Abstract
News of the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11th 2001 spread fast, mainly through dramatic images of the events broadcast via a global television media, particularly 24-hour news channels such as BBC News 24 and CNN. Following the initial report many news channels moved to dedicated live coverage of the story. This move, to what Liebes (1998) describes as a ‘disaster marathon’, entails shifting from the routine, regular news agenda to one where the event and its aftermath become the main story and reference for all other news. In this paper, we draw upon recordings from the BBC News 24 channel on September 11th 2001 during the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon to argue that the coverage of this event, and other similar types of events, may be characterised as news permeated with strategic and emergent silences. Identifying silence as both concrete and metaphorical, we suggest that there are a number of types of silence found in the coverage and that these not only act to cover for lack of new news, or give emphasis or gravitas, but also that the vacuum created by a lack of news creates an emotional space in which collective shock, grieving or wonder are managed through news presented as phatic communion.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction: Silence in institutional and intercultural contexts
- ‘You do not have to say anything …’: Instructing the jury on the defendant’s right to silence in the English criminal justice system
- A fair share: Gender and linguistic space in a language classroom
- Silence as a means of preserving the status quo: The case of ante-natal care in Ireland
- Managing talk and non-talk in intercultural interactions: Insights from two Chinese–British business meetings
- Negotiating silence and speech in the classroom
- Untold stories and the construction of identity in narratives of ethnic conflict on the Polish–German border
- Busy saying nothing new: Live silence in TV reporting of 9/11
- Book reviews
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction: Silence in institutional and intercultural contexts
- ‘You do not have to say anything …’: Instructing the jury on the defendant’s right to silence in the English criminal justice system
- A fair share: Gender and linguistic space in a language classroom
- Silence as a means of preserving the status quo: The case of ante-natal care in Ireland
- Managing talk and non-talk in intercultural interactions: Insights from two Chinese–British business meetings
- Negotiating silence and speech in the classroom
- Untold stories and the construction of identity in narratives of ethnic conflict on the Polish–German border
- Busy saying nothing new: Live silence in TV reporting of 9/11
- Book reviews
