Book Review: Covering Bin Laden: Global Media and the World’s Most Wanted Man by Susan Jeffords and Fahed Al-Sumait, eds

Abstract

Covering Bin Laden: Global Media and the World's Most Wanted Man. Susan Jeffords and Fahed Al-Sumait, eds. Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2015. 259 pp. $95 hbk. $30 pbk.Edited by Susan Jeffords, a professor at the University of Washington, and Fahed Al-Sumait, an assistant professor at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait, Covering Bin Laden: Global Media and the World's Most Wanted Man interrogates global media representations of Osama bin Laden-the most-wanted figure in the war against terror. The editors provide two grounds to justify why the book focuses on bin Laden's depictions in the global media: (a) media is instrumental in the war against terror, and (b) global audiences heavily rely on the media for terrorism-related information.Importantly, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach by drawing conversation from various fields-for example, political science, media studies, cultural studies, and comparative literature. This, as the editors point out, encourages readers to consider the complexity of debates surrounding bin Laden's role in terrorism. Three things make the release of the book timely: First, it is published at a time when terrorism is pervasive in human life. Second, the volume comes following the killing of bin Laden-a timely thing to excite readers. Third, bin Laden's name is synonymous with terrorism. This last point is the volume's central strand-bin Laden's representations as seen through the prism of global media.The 259-page book is divided into three parts, in addition to introduction and epilogue. The introduction captures the book's broader theme-the symbiotic relationship between the media and terrorism-putting into sharp focus the role of media in the war against terror. This theme is echoed in the epilogue.Part I has three chapters that focus on defining political actors. Essays in this section underscore the reasoning that there is no knowable narrative about bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, and terrorism. Taking this cue, in his chapter, Richard Jackson argues that bin Laden's death is meaningless because since his demise counterterrorism programs haven't been reduced. Supporting this surprising observation, Richard asks hard questions: Does it signal the destruction of Al-Qaeda? Does it mean the War on Terror has been won? Does it represent the administration of justice for the 9/11 victims? Chapter 2 by Aditi Bhatia conceptualizes the global war of terrorism from a rhetorical perspective-a metaphorical contest between bin Laden and George W. Bush. To analyze the rhetorical battles, Bhatia uses binary opposition: good versus bad, civilization versus barbarism, and moral justice versus retribution. Andrew Hill's chapter scrutinizes bin Laden's video and audio appearances after the 9/11 attacks.Chapters 4 through 7 in Part II mirror bin Laden's framing in the global news media. Courtney Radsch's essay explores the symbiotic relationship between bin Laden and Al-Jazeera channel. …