Television and Terror Conflicting Times and the Crisis of News Discourse

The advent of the twenty-first century was marked by a succession of conflicts and catastrophes that demanded unrestrained journalism. Yet, the principle mass news medium of television has become torn between strategies of containment and the amplification of security threats. Hoskins and O#x19;Loughlin demonstrate that television, tarnished by its economy of liveness and its default impositions of immediacy, brevity and simultaneity, fails to deliver a critical and consistent exposition adequate to our conflicting times.

ANDREW HOSKINS is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK. He is founding co-editor of the journal Media, War & Conflict, founding editor-in-chief of the journal of Memory Studies, and Director of the Warwick Centre for Memory Studies. His Televising War: From Vietnam to Iraq (2004) develops his concept of 'new memory' in relation to conflict. He is co-editor of Save As... Digital Memories (2009).

BEN OLOUGHLIN is Lecturer in International Relations and Co-Director of the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He is co-investigator of research on media and radicalisation funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. He is Reviews Editor for the journal Media, War and Conflict.