Bloggasm

Cori E. Dauber is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies (and Adjunct Professor of Peace, War, and Defense) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Research Fellow at the Triangle Institute for Security Studies. She has published in journals such as Security Studies, Armed Forces and Society, Contemporary Security Policy, and Rhetoric and Public Affairs. Her research focuses on the way the media represents war, the military, and terrorism, and since 9/11 her work has focusesd on the press coverage of the War on Terror, including the war in Iraq. She has presented her work in a variety of forums, including the US Army War College, the Canadian Forces College, and the Kennedy Center for Special Warfare. Her blog, Rantingprofs.com, offers daily commentary on the press coverage of the War on Terror.

Simon Owens: One of the hot new political issues right now is the distribution of security funds for anti-terrorism. Did you agree with this distribution? How should it have been done differently?

Cori Dauber: I agree with the general notion that the money should be distributed according to a risk formula, but it seems as if the cuts in New York and DC’s funding were awfully sharp. So I would say that I agree with the general approach that was supposed to be used, but it seems to me that without more explanation of the way they went about applying that approach, it’s hard to understand the result they got.

Simon Owens: As a professor, how do you feel when pundits like Bill O’reilly call for the firing of professors for their political rhetoric? Do you find this notion dangerous?

Cori Dauber: I don’t generally watch O’Reilly, so I can’t comment on anything he’s said specifically, but I would make two comments. One is that in general people (and I would include many of my colleagues in this, actually) often confuse the political and free speech rights that professors have, the same as any other citizen, and academic freedom. I have the same rights you or anyone else does to express myself in the public square. That’s different from academic freedom, which is my right to express my best judgment on matters pertaining to my field in my research and in the classroom. (It doesn’t mean, by the way, that I can say anything I want about any topic I want in the classroom, nor does it mean I am free to violate standards of academic integrity regarding standards of evidence etc etc in my research.) I think the way those two get confused is dangerous, and the way that tends to get played out is in calls for eliminating tenure. I worked very, very hard for a long time to get tenure, and I’m at a University where we continue to be evaluated both as teachers and as reseachers forever after (which I think is now the norm, by the way.) Tenure provides very important protections in all kinds of ways, and I think that it’s easy to pull out examples of particular comments that can be used to make the system look bad, but you can do that with individuals in any profession.

Simon Owens: Do any of your students read your blog? Has there been much response to it from your fellow faculty?

Cori Dauber: I don’t tell my students about the blog; I’d prefer they not know about it. Inevitably some of them always find it by the end of the semester, either because they google relevant terms for papers or because someone else they read will link to me. But I like the freedom of knowing that I can use a sharper “voice” if I want to than I would generally find appropriate with them. My colleagues know about it, of course, (I do after all list it every year on my annual review form!) and I think some of them look at it from time to time, but I’m in a department where people have very wide-ranging interests, and there aren’t really many people who follow the same issues I do. There’s a general sense that it’s kind of a neat thing to do and an exciting use of a brand new communications medium (which is a reaction you’d expect from a Comm department) and I think a sense that it’s a pretty cool way to pursue what gets defined around here as “public intellectual” activity.

Simon Owens: As someone who specializes in how the media portrays the military, do you find that they tend to have a positive or negative view?

Cori Dauber: Hmm. If “the military” means the people, the troops, overwhelmingly positive. Sometimes that tips a little too far in one direction, and I think there’s an undertone of treating them almost as victims, which is something they themselves are uncomfortable with. But I would say there’s a split between the way the people are treated and the way “the military” the institution is treated. If we’re talking about “the Pentagon,” or its official representatives, I think there tends to be enormous skepticism, bordering sometimes on cynicism. To be clear, a certain degree of skepticism towards official institutions and representatives is entirely appropriate from the press: it is after all what we pay them for. The question you need to ask is, is the press being as skeptical towards this institution as they would be towards, say, the Department of Agriculture or Transportation or more so, and is that difference warrented? Part of the problem, I think, is that they were more skeptical at the beginning of, say, Afghanistan, and it wasn’t warrented: the military had worked for twenty-five years after Vietnam to prove it wasn’t, to earn back the trust lost during Vietnam. The question is whether that trust has been lost again during Iraq and who lost it (over the question, I believe, of whether there were enough troops.) That’s something I’m working on in my own research. If it was known more troops were needed, but the consistent answer to the press was “we’re fine, we’re fine,” then twenty-five years of work was undone by a few individuals, as far as press relations goes.

Simon Owens: Many critics claim that “The War on Terror” is a bad label because the administration is able to use war-cry rhetoric with an abstract concept (like “The War on Drugs” or “The War on Poverty” for instance). Do you agree with this notion?

Cori Dauber: No. I think it’s a bad label because it’s a war against Islamists, or Islamo-fascism, and the War on Terror label attempts to duck that, but I don’t think this thing is ginned up. I agree it’s too abstract, but your question seems to presume (”war-cry rhetoric”) the argument some make that this is being labelled a war when it really isn’t, that it’s a war only in a metaphorical sense. I think this really is a war, not that rhetoric is being used to make us afraid of something that isn’t there. They’re there, alright, and they’re very, very dangerous. I did a powerpoint presentation at one point of post-9/11 attacks (excluding Iraq and Israel) conducted by al Queda-affiliated or associated groups, as best as we know. It was a damn long power point.

Simon Owens: What are five blogs that you would recommend to supplement the reading of your own?

Cori Dauber: I think Memeorandum is a great portal blog to get a wide view of what’s being discussed in the blogosphere and by whom. (I think Instapundit is a great portal for the same reason but it’s structured differently and gets you different types of information.)

On questions of terrorism and insurgency, I would look at Counterterrorismblog.org, which is a group blog pulling together the work of a number of experts and now also Bill Roggio, who’s reporting from Afghanistan, and also Terrorismunveiled.com (whose author, I admit, claims me as inspiration, although I think in many ways her analysis surpasses mine.)

I would also look at Countercolumn which is written by a Florida National Guard officer, who’s been deployed to Ramadi and has that perspective to inform his writing. His press critique is unique — and important — because he picks up the mistakes made in the mainstream press because they don’t know enough about the military. (And sometimes it’s awfully distressing to see the mistakes they continue to make almost five years after we went to war in Afghanistan and three years after Iraq started.)