Europhobia

Monday, August 01, 2005

The Media and Terrorism - good stuff, a nice follow-up to that Simon Jenkins article from yesterday.

7 Comments:

Anonymous said...: Are you joking? From your link:

"What if you didn't know about the attacks of 7th July or 11th September? Of course many people actually witnessed these attacks but what if that information had not been disseminated by the media? There'd be a symbiotic breakdown if you will. There's a strong argument that this would reduce the likelihood of further terrorist attacks."

This has to be some of the stupidest "reasoning" yet on this topic. "If we don't talk about them they will go away". I mean, on top of stupid, how arrogant can you get? We're so frikkin' morally advanced and powerful that the terrorists will respond to the silent treatment?

So who's next in the aren’t-we-wise-and-superior blame game, Nosemonkey? Islamist slaughters, one after another after another, and you moan about the media, the BNP, the police... Please wake up.; 8/01/2005 12:37:00 pm
Nosemonkey said...: Calm down, dear - it's only a blog post (and one, it seems worth pointing out, that was not written by me).

The basic point runs thusly:

1) Terrorists try to spread terror
2) In order to spread terror, people need to know about their actions
3) The media covers their actions obsessively and replays them in endless comment pieces and through constant repeats of the footage
4) This means their actions are known about more, remembered more, and therefore cause more terror
5) Therefore the media helps the terrorists do their job

It is also fairly obviously merely a bit of musing - not a serious suggestion that we should ban the media from covering terrorist attacks.

It is also worth pointing out that it is - despite what many on the interwebnets and in the government seem to want us to believe - not that tricky to be able to hold two separate thoughts in one's head at any given moment in time.

To wit:

1) I am perfectly capable of knowing and remembering that it was the terrorists like wot killed people while still looking around for exacerbating factors.

2) The act of looking for and identifying exacerbating factors does not diminish the initial cause, nor does it lessen the culpability of the people who planned and set off the bombs in any way.

3) It merely enables a greater understanding of our present situation than that being put across in some quarters, which seems merely to be "THE TERRORISTS ATTACK US BECAUSE THEY'RE EVIL!!!111!!oneoneone!!!1!"; 8/01/2005 12:52:00 pm
Anonymous said...: "Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend."

Margaret; 8/01/2005 03:10:00 pm
Eric S said...: NM said: "THE TERRORISTS ATTACK US BECAUSE THEY'RE EVIL!!!111!!oneoneone!!!1!""

*sigh* That nearly made me spit up my morning coffee! Damn you, Nosemonkey, damn you!

I think you're correct about the way the media responds, and also in the way the government provides information. I've seen so many parallels between the USA post-9/11 and Britain post-7/7. A dire warning is issued, raising the 'terror alert' level and telling everyone to simultaneously 'keep alert' and 'just go about your business normally'. Riiiiiight.

The media then jumps on the story, and drags out an endless series of 'experts' to tell us exactly nothing about anything. "Terrorists may strike again, probably without warning", or "My research indicates that terrorists are interested in targeting transportation infrastructure like subways and aircraft". Gee...ya think? Never would have guessed it.

Which, of course, is why so many of us lurk in the blogosphere.; 8/01/2005 03:36:00 pm
Anonymous said...: I honestly believe that this panic attitude and the "keep the horror in public view" behaviour was learnt from the Americans. In the wake of 9/11, they maintain a "wallow in the past" attitude, mainly whipped up repeatedly by the administration in power, so that the current administration can maintain that power. Now the UK gov't and police are using the same tactic, and of course, much of the media is happy to oblige, as it sells papers.

Fear is a wonderful tool for controlling large populations. It makes the implementation of manditory ID and the curtailment of civil liberties possible, all in the name of public safety and national security. The APPEARANCE of safety WITHOUT actual safety is all that those measures will bring.

With the current mindsets in both the US and the UK, their repective governments are becoming more effective terrorists than anyone with a rucksack bomb could hope to be.
Anon in FL; 8/01/2005 05:28:00 pm
Anonymous said...: I honestly believe that this panic attitude and the "keep the horror in public view" behaviour was learnt from the Americans. In the wake of 9/11, they maintain a "wallow in the past" attitude, mainly whipped up repeatedly by the administration in power, so that the current administration can maintain that power. Now the UK gov't and police are using the same tactic, and of course, much of the media is happy to oblige, as it sells papers.

Fear is a wonderful tool for controlling large populations. It makes the implementation of manditory ID and the curtailment of civil liberties possible, all in the name of public safety and national security. The APPEARANCE of safety WITHOUT actual safety is all that those measures will bring.

With the current mindsets in both the US and the UK, their repective governments are becoming more effective terrorists than anyone with a rucksack bomb could hope to be.
Anon in FL; 8/01/2005 05:29:00 pm
Anonymous said...: One of the second set of bombers reportedly spent days watching atrocity footage from Iraq/Chechnya/wherever over and over again.

If that's true, that footage was presumably given to him by people who had done this kind of thing before, and who's intention was that he would act in the way he did.

None of the bombers were Iraqis, Chechnyans or Palestinians.

Some of the people most traumatised by 9/11 were not those who witnessed it, or narrowly escaped, but farmers in Ohio who spent the largest amount of time watching TV images of the planes and the buildings.

When your eyes tell you something different from your inner ear, you get seasickness.

What do you get when your media tells you something different from your everyday experience?

soru; 8/02/2005 01:21:00 pm