Terrorism
Terrorism is a major problem facing our nation and when the media report terrorist actions they just enhance the problem to a larger scale. "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 (Terrorism 3). 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 (Terrorism 3). 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. The bombings of the World Trade Center in New York is a current example 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 12 to 15 percent per year (Sobel 4). The media cause many problems besides helping terrorists. They inspire more ter
Terrorists commit acts at specific places and in certain ways to gain large publicity. When a terrorist has publicity as his main goal, he is known as a "modern" terrorist; this type of terrorism has been around for a long time, but not until around 1968 was it widely known (Sobel 38). As new media technologies have been invented, terrorist groups have been able to publicize their views to a bigger audience than they had ever imagined possible. Terrorists stage an event that will gain news coverage and then try to get their views publicized by threatening drastic actions. This strategy of terrorism is causing the media to produce many serious problems. One problem with the media's coverage of terrorism is that it can instigate future acts of terrorism. This is called the "contagion hypothesis" (Terrorism 2). This is caused mostly because the actual acts of terrorism usually receive more media attention than the punishments. People only see the successes of terrorism, not the consequences. If more attention was put on the punishments, it could prevent similar acts of terrorism by showing the consequences. In a study of newspapers in the United States and Europe, it was found "that stories focusing on the punishment of terrorists receive less then 5 percent as many column inches of space as stories pertaining to the actual crimes with which the terrorists are charged." Also, the incidents were on the front page, while the charges were near the back (Terrorism 3). This factor can be seen in hijackings. They usually occur in "clusters", the terrorists see the success of other terrorists and then gain enough courage to perform similar attacks (Sobel 40). Besides contributing to the expansion of terrorist activities, the media may also cause the acts to be bigger. This is called the "immunization effect." It can be seen in Robert G. Bell's study on skyjackings. He found that a "saturation of media coverage led to public apathy robbing the terrorist act of its publicity effect" (Nicholls 119). This is where the public begins to accept terrorism because the media show it to them all of the time. Terrorists then have
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Approximate Word count = 1430
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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