{"id":93169,"date":"2017-06-05T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=93169"},"modified":"2017-05-30T19:58:45","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T18:58:45","slug":"the-terror-news-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/06\/the-terror-news-cycle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Terror News Cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

24 May 2017 – <\/em>On the BBC\u2019s Today<\/em> programme yesterday, some nine hours after the horror of the Manchester bombing, Nick Robinson was speaking to Chris Phillips, a counter-terrorism expert. \u2018Terrorists don\u2019t care who they kill,\u2019 Phillips said. \u2018It\u2019s the number of bodybags that determines success.\u2019 \u2018And the publicity,\u2019 Robinson interjected. \u2018And the publicity,\u2019 Phillips agreed. The Today<\/em> programme then dutifully devoted its entire three hours of programming to coverage of the bombing (apart from a few minutes on weather and sport). This was before the perpetrator had been identified and before the security services had been able to assess whether or not the attack was an isolated incident. Coverage mostly consisted of commentators speculating on motives, along with a series of harrowing eyewitness accounts that helped to amplify the main objectives of terrorism: to create fear and to sow division.<\/p>\n

This was followed by the next stage of the terror news cycle: journalists searching for victims, gathering outside hospitals and, in the case of one Telegraph<\/em> reporter, putting business cards through doors<\/a> in the hope of securing a statement from a man who was yet to find out whether his brother was still alive.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t speak to the behaviour of all journalists and all news outlets, some of whom have focused not on speculation but on concrete acts of solidarity<\/a> in response to the bombing and the tremendous rally<\/a> on Tuesday evening in Manchester. But the media\u2019s appetite for content is bound to overwhelm their more sober instincts to avoid intrusion and respect the need for privacy. In a news system desperate for attention and committed to scoops, sensitive reporting is a luxury that few can afford.<\/p>\n

There are also papers and commentators who lose no time in using atrocities to whip up anger and to identify potential scapegoats. The Sun<\/em>, for example, ran a leader<\/a> the morning after the bombing that claimed \u2018innocent people were murdered specifically because Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell sucked up to the IRA.\u2019<\/p>\n

Katie Hopkins tweeted<\/a> in response to the Manchester attack that \u2018We need a final solution,\u2019 then wrote a piece in the Mail<\/em><\/a> in which she mocked calls for unity and belittled the many acts of kindness that followed the bombing.<\/p>\n

Allison Pearson said on Twitter that we need to introduce a state of emergency and intern \u2018thousands of terrorist suspects\u2019. In the Telegraph<\/em> she called for \u2018drastic action\u2019 to protect children and to \u2018tackle the alarming apartheid in our midst. Most Muslims,\u2019 she wrote, \u2018are decent, law-abiding people, but they need to have a bigger stake in the nation in which they live.\u2019<\/p>\n

We are often told to ignore \u2018extreme\u2019 voices \u2013 to dismiss them as unrepresentative \u2013 but, given their prominence in leading newspapers, where is the line between \u2018extreme\u2019 and \u2018mainstream\u2019 political discourse?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth asking what the point is of 24\/7 reporting of terror attacks. Is it to provide blanket coverage of despair and horror, which is what the attackers are said to want? Is it to construct a \u2018national sentiment\u2019, to lay the basis for further securitisation? Or should it be to provide explanation \u2013 or at least some degree of context \u2013 to help people understand the political circumstances in which terror thrives?<\/p>\n

This last is the approach that is largely missing from the deluge of coverage, and is often dismissed<\/a> as somehow apologising for acts of terror. But without a recognition of geopolitical dynamics and recent Western military intervention overseas, terror attacks come to be seen as entirely mysterious, spectral events. To acknowledge their connections to global events is in no way to condone the atrocities.<\/p>\n

What are we to make of the fact that Salman Abedi, who has been named as the Manchester bomber, was of Libyan descent (though a UK national) and had just returned from Libya? \u2018Libya has become a failed state,\u2019 the BBC\u2019s security correspondent Frank Gardner declared<\/a> on the Today<\/em> programme after the bombing, as if this were an inexplicable and mysterious process, with no reference to the West\u2019s disastrous intervention in the country.<\/p>\n

What are we to make of the fact that the BBC\u2019s leading news programmes dedicated only 63 seconds<\/a>, out of nearly 13 hours of broadcasting following the terror attacks in Paris in November 2015, to the \u2018blowback\u2019 thesis, the idea that there is a connection between Western intervention and the growth of groups such as Islamic State? The thesis is hardly the invention of left-wing conspirators; its adherents include the UK\u2019s Joint Intelligence Committee<\/a> and Eliza Manningham-Buller<\/a>, the former head of MI5.<\/p>\n

None of this is to argue that journalists should avoid reporting on terror attacks. But knee-jerk responses that intensify public fear do nothing to contribute to our ability to combat terrorism and, indeed, satisfy the objectives of those who detonate the bombs.<\/p>\n

We would all benefit from a slower journalism that didn\u2019t resort to tired stereotypes and sought to expand, not to contaminate, our understanding of a violent world. The trouble is that there is neither the business model nor the political will to foster such an approach.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/p>\n

Des Freedman is a professor of media and communications and at Goldsmiths, University of London.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 lrb.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We would all benefit from a slower journalism that didn\u2019t resort to tired stereotypes and sought to expand, not to contaminate, our understanding of a violent world. The trouble is that there is neither the business model nor the political will to foster such an approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}