États-unis: Un écho du 11 septembre

By its particularly intense coverage at the beginning, the American press gave great importance to the attacks of Madrid. The dominating framing is a parallel with September 11, justifying an approach made of empathy and a strongfeeling of solidarity in a dramatic context. But after the results of the Spanish legislative elections, when it became obvious that the Spanish population elected a politician openly hostile to the participation of his country in the war in Iraq, the coverage changed. The American press passed from solidarity to censure. The New York Post, especially, presented Zapatero's victory as proof that the terrorists had succeeded. This anti-Zapatero orientation was justified by a patriotic framing articulating in an indissociable way the total fight against terrorism and the war carried out by the United States in Iraq, in accordance with the doctrine of the Bush administration. However, other leading U.S. newspapers (The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor and USA Today) also save voice to critiques of Bush's simplistic rhetoric.