John Tierney’s op-ed earlier this week suggested that news organizations are playing into the hands of terrorists by reporting, or at least overreporting and sensationalizing, their terrorist acts. We’ve been saying the same thing for months now. It’s not a comfortable thing to say—that too much information is a bad thing—but we must acknowledge that terror is the only weapon terrorists have, and the modern mass media is the only delivery vehicle they have, in their efforts to affect real change (or chaos).
More important, Tierney touches very briefly on the real problem with reporting these sorts of things. It is one thing to help cultivate the fear that is the goal of these murderers, it is another to help them in the process of recruiting even more to their ranks.
By way of example, Tierney mentions how Rudy Giuliani manipulated the press during his tenure as mayor—Giuliani ordered police officials to stop meeting news deadlines in press conferences and press releases. This had the palliative effect of helping New Yorkers believe their city was not quite as dangerous as the local news seemed to be portraying it every night. In some senses, one could argue that he was helping the public “get real” about the negligable odds of being victimized on the mean streets of Manhattan. Needless to say, New York actually became a safer place during that time, and crime decreased dramatically (or at least it was displaced to the borroughs—that’s the standard, mandatory line for liberal Rudy-hating city-dwellers, anyway).
This all connects opaquely but directly with Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point.” Recall that Gladwell discussed the “broken window” theory of crime under Giuliani (which has since been adapted in almost every major city in the nation); he also discussed suicide cults in Southeast Asia. Suicide, as extreme as it is, can be a fad just as virulent as Hushpuppies or Urban Vinyls.
The point is that media coverage of terrorist acts, particularly suicide bombings, helps sustain the cult of suicide among Islamic fundamentalists. One thing non-Islamic westerners cannot understand is this apparent erosion of the most fundamental human value we all assume is inherent to the species—the sanctity of human life itself, and the universal compulsion to protect our children. Islamic fundamentalists, with the help of modern media, have managed to break through that barrier, and their children are lining up to kill themselves (and anyone else they can get close to) in the service of God and dogma.
It is probably the most frightening development in the history of human consciousness, and the media is the machine that is planting its seeds.
Leave a Reply