USC Annenberg's Norman Lear Center has released a new report, Primetime War on Drugs & Terror, which provides a surprising portrait of the War on Terror and the War on Drugs as seen in TV dramas.
This just-completed study says that America's most popular shows stayed closer to reality than common stereotypes about what terrorists and drug users look like and what drugs Americans are abusing. But these ripped-from-the-headlines crime shows largely left out the basic mechanisms of the justice system: the reading of Miranda rights, and the presence of lawyers at interrogations, trials and punishment.
Watch Joe Sabia's video, "PRIMETIME TERROR," which provides a visual summary of the findings about depictions of the War on Terror on TV dramas.
The study analyzed 49 hours of 10 top-rated TV series with storylines including terrorism or drugs that aired in 2010. Shows included NCIS, CSI: Miami, 24, Law & Order: SVU, House and The Good Wife.
"On the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and the start of the War on Terror, and on the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's declaring the War on Drugs, we wanted to see how popular culture portrayed those wars, and how those depictions squared with public opinion and with the facts," said Martin Kaplan, USC Annenberg professor and director of the school's Norman Lear Center, which studies the impact of media and entertainment on society.
Added Lear Center managing director and director of research Johanna Blakley, who co-authored the report with Sheena Nahm, "Overall these storylines present a complex portrait of how these wars are being waged, but not how they're being won. Arrests, trials and convictions were the bread and butter of pre-9/11 crime shows. Now, we're far more likely to see drug and terror suspects committing crimes than to see them tried or sentenced."
