{"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&#8217;ve been thinking about why terrorism is such a hot topic these days.\u00a0 I mean, bombs aren&#8217;t new; they&#8217;ve been around for centuries.\u00a0 Religious fanatics obviously aren&#8217;t new; they&#8217;ve been around for millenia.\u00a0 Fear isn&#8217;t new; it&#8217;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&#8217;t new, either.\u00a0 So, what is it about today&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s not the ability to blow things up; it&#8217;s the ability to capture worldwide television air time.\u00a0 Just like soccer&#8217;s World Cup or BrAngelina&#8217;s baby born in Africa, terrorists get their\u00a0notoriety from the free publicity given to them by the world&#8217;s media giants.\u00a0 Turn back the calendar a few decades and even the attack on Pearl Harbor probably didn&#8217;t get the sort of immediate, graphic, global television coverage that, say, last year&#8217;s London subway bombing received.<\/p>\n<p>So, what is the best way to stop terrorism?\u00a0 It&#8217;s probably not by trying to identify terrorists before they strike.\u00a0 Instead, what if the world&#8217;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 &#8220;War on Terrorism&#8221; is not just going to prove futile; it&#8217;s going to prove counterproductive.\u00a0 A &#8220;war&#8221; just attracts more media coverage&#8230;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 &#8220;War on Terrorism,&#8221; 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&#8217;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&#8217;ve been thinking about why terrorism is such a hot topic these days.\u00a0 I mean, bombs aren&#8217;t new; they&#8217;ve been around for centuries.\u00a0 Religious fanatics obviously aren&#8217;t new; they&#8217;ve been around for millenia.\u00a0 Fear isn&#8217;t new; it&#8217;s been around since the Dawn of Mankind.\u00a0 People who are desperate or angry enough to die for a [&hellip;]<\/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}]}}