Moving On From 9/11: How Australian Television Reported the Ninth Anniversary

Abstract

This article investigates how five Australian television stations reported and framed the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. In Australia, Eid, the Muslim festival held to celebrate the end of Ramadan, coincided with the ninth anniversary of the events of 9/11. This provided an opportunity to examine how television news treated these two events. Our findings are situated within the literature around media coverage of terrorism post–September 11 because of the identified tendency of media to conflate terrorism with Islam and Muslims. This literature provides a context for understanding whether Australian television coverage of the ninth anniversary of 9/11 and the 2010 Eid festival replicated identified patterns of media coverage of Muslim and Islam or if there was evidence of change in the handling of these types of reports.

Notes

¹It should be noted that Australia's free-to-air commercial television stations broadcast local editions from each of Australia's capital cities. The content analyzed for this study was based on the Brisbane broadcasts.