The Media During The 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis

During the 1979 Iranian Hostage crisis the American people relied highly on the American media systems to relay the information they craved about the events leading up to and during the crisis. The media itself did not generate much good news to the American people. The media during this crisis enhanced many of the American people’s feelings that were already felt towards their leaders and their ability to handle foreign affairs in relation to American interests overseas. The media covered this crisis by telling the stories of those captured. Allowing the American citizens to relate to each individual by letting them know they are just like them and would envelop the people into the crisis and make it seem that everyone was in it together.
They would later interpret this crisis as another check on the laundry list of the United States government’s failures that started after Vietnam and Watergate and revved up during the failures of foreign policy during the 1970’s and the early revolution against the greedy, dictatorial Shah of Iran.
In November of 1979 when the Hostage crisis in Iran was in its beginning stages, the United States citizens woke up on November fourth to an unfamiliar world with sixty-six Americans taken hostage in the American embassy in Iran.
The American media during this time was just as concerned about the crisis as the American people but their main focus other than to relay the information, was to gain as many viewers as possible in doing this they enhanced the range of emotions the American people had about this hostage crisis. To do this their strategy was to focus on the psyche of the American citizen about this issue and to find ways to in a sense bring in the country of America and have them feel if they are being held hostage by this crisis in Iran as well. Within days of the hostages being taken the news media had taken to the streets conducting interviews of everyday Americans on the street, showing the anger and heartbreak of the American citizens toward this situation in Iran. The news media also would begin the late night coverage of the crisis with the amount of days the hostages had been held and with a picture of one the hostage blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs. They also took this crisis and reported on the private side to each hostage looking into their families, emotions, rather than what their job was in the embassy. This method of reporting made the American people see that it was every day Americans not government representatives being
bullied and held captive by foreigners and that the United States was a victim of these terrorists that hate us and seem to have no true reason why.
The American public was very emotional, and angry in their feelings towards the images the media were displaying on the television.
The images portrayed on the media consisted of the Iranian students who had taken the embassy, burning American flags, having the likeness of the president being defaced and desecrated, all the while shouting anti-American chants the only thing the American people could do and did was sit there and watch in horror and anger and ask why would these people feel this way about the United States. Even with those violent, and anger inducing images being displayed by the media to draw in an audience, the American people during the first few weeks of the crisis had a mindset of helping both the hostages and their families. This urgent sense of help within the American people and the way the media brought the country itself into the crisis caused the American people to form a sense of a national community. This national community was truly visible six weeks into the crisis when an article was published about a wife of the embassy chargé by the name of Penne Laingen. Penne did what a hit 1973 song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Oak Tree,” did and tied a yellow ribbon around the tree in her yard with hopes her husband will be home to untie that ribbon. Following this article the American public began to do the same thing tying yellow ribbons around “trees, telephone poles… and other inanimate objects.” Americans went on to make pins, and bumper
stickers of those same yellow ribbons. It even went as far as tying a giant yellow ribbon around the entire stadium during the Super Bowl following the crisis. Even the White House joined in the support of the families by upon the request of the families of those captured to have the signature White House Christmas tree decorated with fifty yellow ribbons one for every American the American people believed to be inside the walls of the embassy.
During the first two months of the crisis the American people responded by rallying around the president. This behavior would be short lived for Carter and would only last a short time in 1980. Around March 1980, the hostage crisis had become another failure of the government’s foreign policy and another failure of the Carter administration added to the long laundry list of failures the American public had experienced. This worsened by the military action taken in April of 1980 that failed miserably leaving eight American Delta Force operators dead. Months following the failed military operation the American people craved leadership that would be able to stand up and do something and get these people home while “growing numb” of Carters failures overseas and at home. With Carters approval rating diminishing quickly the hopes of re-election was slim to none and the Republican Party nominating Ronald Reagan for the 1980 election. But, even though Reagan had not held any form of political office for five years the American people believed that from that absence of politics during the 1970’s he was more an ideal president than the seemingly impotent Carter. Many American people believed that Carter should had not been tough enough with foreign policy and that he was too weak with the way he had done things in this technical act of war by the Iranian students. But the decision of the American people was clear in November of 1980 when Ronald Reagan won the presidential election. The American people believed more in Reagan for after being in office for only two months had Reagan done what the Jimmy Carter had failed to do for most of his presidency