The hostage crisis lasted for 444 days, and mainstream television and print media capitalized on each day to deliver story lines, images, and narratives that drove the fear of Islam and a new encroaching Muslim threat into the private confines of every American home. Although the Soviet Union still stood as the primary geopolitical threat to the United States throughout the duration of the hostage crisis, coverage of the crisis alerted Americans to the threat that would eventually supplant it. Indeed, “the Islamic revolution of Iran and the hostage crisis became emblematic of the ‘threat of Islam,’” which news coverage readily and regularly delivered to an American public that could not turn away from its television screens. As Nathan Lean tells in his compelling book The Islamophobia Industry, reporting on the hostage crisis netted considerable revenues for television news networks and newspapers, and in CNN’s case established it as a major cable news station and commodity.

XREF: Connects to broader media-framing theory and how corporate news incentives shape public fear, echoing work by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. QUESTION: To what extent does current coverage of Middle East events reproduce this same dynamic?

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 250