Terrorism And The Media

8 Pages 1987 Words

"If the media were not there to report terrorist acts and to explain their political and social significance...terrorism as such would cease to exist," said John O'Sullivan, an editor of the Times of London. This is also the way many other people feel about the recent increase in terrorist activity; they feel that the media is causing it. The media is doing this by fulfilling the terrorists' need for publicity. Terrorists need media publicity in order to get their views spread to the public. Because of this need for publicity, terrorists are committing their acts of terrorism in areas where a lot of publicity will be gained, the United States and Western Europe are the most recent targets.

The bombings of the federal building in Oklahoma City and the Olympic Centennial Park in Atlanta are current examples of terrorists seeking publicity in the United States. Terrorists' need for publicity has been around for a long time, but new media technologies are causing the problem to grow faster than ever. Terrorism is growing at an impressive rate of twelve to fifteen percent per year. The media cause many problems besides helping terrorists. They inspire more terrorism to happen, cause terrorist attacks to be bigger, cause problems with authorities, and cause ineffective laws to be passed. To solve these problems, government censorship and self-regulation have been suggested. Government censorship involves the government controlling what the media can report, there has been controversy over this because it could take away many American freedoms. Self-regulation involves the media controlling themselves. Because of the way the media are currently covering terrorist even!
ts, many serious problems are occurring. If the media do not voluntarily change their ways, government regulations could be enacted. Although debates over how to solve the problems are relatively new, terrorists' use of publicity has been around for many years. When a ter...