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ABSTRACT Nationwide Newspaper Coverage of Detainee Rights: The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the subsequent war in Afghanistan has created some unique problems for the United States government. One of the issues to be dealt with is what to do with the former Taliban fighters who have been captured in Afghanistan. The most dangerous have been transported to the detainee camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where they are being held under heavy guard indefinitely. A controversy has arisen over how to treat the detainees. The issue has not only created a partisan spit, it has polarized parts of the Bush administration and put the U.S. at odds with the rest of the world. This study uses a “community structure approach” to explore the connection between city characteristics and nationwide newspaper coverage of extending Prisoner of War status to the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo, Cuba. A sample of all the longest articles over 150 words in a nationwide cross-section of twenty-two newspapers in the sample period January 1 to March 15, 2002, yielded 302 articles. These were coded for “prominence” and article “direction” (favorable, unfavorable, or neutral) and combined to calculate Pollock’s “Media Vector” for each newspaper. The results confirmed Pollock’s “stakeholder” hypothesis. Contrary to expectation, Pearson correlations revealed significant relationships between voting Republican and favorable detainee rights coverage. By contrast, higher percentages of Catholics, Democrats, and Hispanics were found significantly related to negative coverage of detainee rights. Regression analysis revealed that five variables accounted for 95% of the variance: “stakeholders” (% Republican); “media access” (% cable-subscribers); “buffer” (% Income over 100,000); “Position in Lifecycle” (families with children 8-18); and “violated buffer” (% Crime). Paper presented at the annual conference of the International Communication Association, May, 2003. |