{"id":309,"date":"2006-07-11T07:35:30","date_gmt":"2006-07-11T13:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/?p=309"},"modified":"2006-07-11T08:11:12","modified_gmt":"2006-07-11T14:11:12","slug":"is-global-television-coverage-the-real-cause-of-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/2006\/07\/11\/is-global-television-coverage-the-real-cause-of-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"Is global television coverage the real cause of terrorism?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I’ve been thinking about why terrorism is such a hot topic these days.\u00a0 I mean, bombs aren’t new; they’ve been around for centuries.\u00a0 Religious fanatics obviously aren’t new; they’ve been around for millenia.\u00a0 Fear isn’t new; it’s been around since the Dawn of Mankind.\u00a0 People who are desperate or angry enough to die for a cause they believe in aren’t new, either.\u00a0 So, what is it about today’s world that makes terrorism such a Big Deal?\u00a0 As I see it, there is only one important factor that exists today that hasn’t existed before:\u00a0 a global\u00a0television industry hungry for sensational news stories.<\/p>\n<p>What gives terrorists the power to capture world attention?\u00a0 It’s not the ability to blow things up; it’s the ability to capture worldwide television air time.\u00a0 Just like soccer’s World Cup or BrAngelina’s baby born in Africa, terrorists get their\u00a0notoriety from the free publicity given to them by the world’s media giants.\u00a0 Turn back the calendar a few decades and even the attack on Pearl Harbor probably didn’t get the sort of immediate, graphic, global television coverage that, say, last year’s London subway bombing received.<\/p>\n<p>So, what is the best way to stop terrorism?\u00a0 It’s probably not by trying to identify terrorists before they strike.\u00a0 Instead, what if the world’s big media giants just stopped reporting terrorist attacks?\u00a0 Would people blow themselves up knowing that those they wanted to terrorize would not even know about it?\u00a0 Unlikely.<\/p>\n<p>This is why the so-called “War on Terrorism” is not just going to prove futile; it’s going to prove counterproductive.\u00a0 A “war” just attracts more media coverage…and media coverage attracts terrorists the way a light attracts moths:\u00a0 turn up the light and you just attract more moths.\u00a0 Accordingly, no matter how many dollars and lives are sacrificed in the “War on Terrorism,” we can predict that\u00a0terrorist attacks will not only continue, but will likely get worse:\u00a0 because the media (not the public) is addicted to them and no one is going to put a stop to that.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, this raises a much deeper question:\u00a0 is society better off censoring its press or accepting an increased risk of terrorist attacks?\u00a0 Most people, including this author, would prefer to accept a higher risks in exchange for a free press.\u00a0 But we should, at least, remember that we’re doing so.\u00a0 And so should the media conglomerates, which are just as free to reduce their reporting of attacks\u00a0as they are to increase it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I’ve been thinking about why terrorism is such a hot topic these days.\u00a0 I mean, bombs aren’t new; they’ve been around for centuries.\u00a0 Religious fanatics obviously aren’t new; they’ve been around for millenia.\u00a0 Fear isn’t new; it’s been around since the Dawn of Mankind.\u00a0 People who are desperate or angry enough to die for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,18,5],"tags":[6450,69,6435],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-culture","category-iraq-and-afghanistan","category-media","tag-american-culture","tag-iraq","tag-media","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}