Hostage Crisis: The Six American Diplomacy

President Carter had consistently argued that the Islamic students likely took hostage all the missing diplomats for negotiation purposes. For this reason, reports about the rescue of the six by the Canadian government would ignite a media explosion with the news that the Carter administration was either inept or was lying to the public. Apparently, the public, as well as the media, were caught by surprise when they were rescued. According to Nacos, the reporter’s descriptions, background information, transitional texts, and anchorage comments during the hostage crisis depicted government’s failure to tame the situation (29). It means that the government came under significant scrutiny for its failed attempts to rescue the hostages through military or diplomatic means. Although the Reagan administration hoped for a reprieve after the six were rescued, the situation of the remaining fifty-two Americans lingered in people’s minds and the media made it impossible to sway the debate to a message of hope. Moreover, the media depicted the six rescued diplomats as heroes who had courageously fought to preserve their freedom. When the six diplomats escaped from the United States embassy in Tehran, it was a gesture of the ability of the American people to value their freedom more than their lives. Unlike the fifty-two hostages who were captured and could not escape, the six diplomats risked their lives if they were caught. For this reason, the …show more content…
Typically, the media relies on both reliable and an unauthenticated information to run their cover headlines. However, the media focused on the unreliable nature and failure of government machinery to rescue the six as well as the other fifty-two diplomats. However, the six diplomats were depicted as heroes and appeared on the cover pages of newspapers and frontlines in