fred swenson research paper

Terrorism and Mass Media 1

The Link Between Terrorists Organizations’ Effectiveness and Their Success in

Understanding the Value of Mass Media for Disseminating Their Message

Fredrick Swenson

Comm 457 Spring 2013

Professor Kenneth Hacker, Ph.D.

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Introduction

One of the difficulties in attempting to analyze the relationship between the media

and terrorists is that there is no clear consensus on the premium terrorist organizations

place on getting the exact sort of publicity they want, or whether they will settle for

anything that gets them in the public eye. However, there is more evidence to suggest that

the former rather than the latter is the case. Terrorists attempt to achieve sympathy for

their cause by getting the press to not only report what they do but also to explain their

purported reasons for doing it in as favorable terms as possible. (Martin, 1986; Perl

1997). Media must be aware of terrorists’ intent to manipulate and give the impression of

having greater strength than they actually possess, and strive to remain neutral and

accurate in their treatment of both the terrorists’ actions and their motives (Shosani, A.,

Slone, M. 2008). This paper will also provide an analysis of how major terrorist

organizations have, through a systematic gauging of the effects of their actions on their

intended audiences, have become what we term “learning organizations”. The primary

means for both achieving the desired shock effect and evaluating the success of their acts

is through media coverage of their actions. The effects created by the fear of being a

victim of terrorism are a subject we will also investigate. We will examine some specific

techniques used by terrorists, investigate whether a symbiotic relationship exists between

the press and terrorists, and explore the moral and ethical dilemmas reporters can find

themselves in when attempting to choose the amount and style of coverage they will

devote to terrorism. An example of a triumph of soft power over hard power will receive

a brief look as well. Finally, will we look at some proposed tactics for shutting off

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terrorists’ access to the media, and some factors which could make their employment

difficult.

We should first look at what terrorism is and what terrorism is not. In its simplest

definition it’s ‘A’ acting against ‘C’ to coerce ‘B’ to do or say something ‘A’ wants.

(Martin, 1986). The identity of the victim(s) is usually not a primary concern (Martin,

1986), nor is there evidence to suggest that terrorists actually strive to inflict casualties

(Camphuijsen, 2012). Their record for actually forcibly changing the governments they

oppose is not particularly impressive; their main success lies in seeking out and

exploiting forums to broadcast their message; if they can do it without causing casualties,

that is not a problem. (Wilkinson, 1997). In the case of the identity of victims there are

exceptions, of which the taking and subsequent murder of Israeli athletes during the 1972

Munich Olympics is a particularly flagrant and vicious example (Martin 1986). Martin

also notes that in their communique from Munich on Voice of the Arabs Broadcasting,

Black September attempted to distance themselves from being identified as terrorists,

instead portraying themselves as “Freedom Fighters”. They declared that the “Israeli

Nazis were the real terrorists”. (This sick attempt at irony is hard to overlook; attempting

to create a linkage between Israel and the Third Reich, which murdered what historians

put at somewhere around 6 million Jews during the Holocaust is too despicable to merit

further comment). This type of rhetoric is standard in the terrorist playbook and has

continued to this day. Overly cooperative and sometimes lazy media outlets can make

pitching these sick ideologies even easier by simply passing on these statements virtually

verbatim (Camphuijsen, 2012; Perl 1997).

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Looking to our example of soft power versus hard power, in the 2006 Hizbollah-

IDF conflict in Lebanon, despite some tactical errors and occasions of

uncharacteristically poor soldiering at the small unit level, the Israelis defeated Hizballah

militarily, yet were soundly beaten in the Information War. (Bynam, 2011). Hizbollah

won their victory in a number of different ways. During the war, they restricted press and

human rights organizations’ access to areas where they could control what images and

narratives were reported. They even dragged bodies from one location to another and

Photoshopped images to give the impression of increased civilian casualties. Everything

was done to increase the impact of anti-Israeli propaganda. After the cease-fire, Hizbollah

commenced to reinvent itself as a servant of the people by providing much needed

municipal services, participating in elections, establishing hospitals and schools, and in

general acting as a quasi-government with a level of corruption that was marginally less

corrupt than what the country had been used to. (Not that that is really saying much).

Some of the tactics and techniques terrorists have employed to gain greater

exposure for and impact from their actions include the use of symbols such as dates. An

example could be the September 11th, 2012 attack on the United States embassy in

Benghazi, which some analysts believed was meant to be a reminder of the horrific Twin

Towers attack which occurred on September 11th, 2001. Another technique is to ensure

that the audiences’ sympathies are directed toward the terrorists and their cause and not

towards the suffering of the victims. Sometimes the hope of gaining publicity for the

group can lead terrorists to commit acts that are unlikely to result in any short-term

coercive results, but which they hope will generate long-term strategic gain. They have

also been known to claim credit for acts they did not commit, just to keep the public

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aware of their existence and capabilities. They have studied their enemies and learned

their characteristics and practices; their awareness of the devotion of American and

European television audiences to entertainment, especially sporting events, even leads

them to eschew scheduling operations that will compete with these diversions for their

audiences’ attentions. (Martin, 1986).

Terrorists also attempt to put themselves in the place of rightful authority in place

of existing governments by accusing those governments of being the agents of oppression

and shifting the blame for the unfavorable condition of the people they claim to represent.

They believe and claim that violent terrorism is a necessary evil to draw the world’s

attention to their cause (Perl, 1991).

However, there is one line that terrorists have yet to cross, and that is the

employment of weapons of mass destruction; nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC).

The probable reason that they have been so disinclined is that use of such weapons would

almost certainly result in an all-out assault on their organizations that would make the

“War on Terror” that began after the Twin Towers attack look like a field training

exercise. Populations of every nation that perceived themselves as at-risk for terrorist

attacks would demand a “Final Solution” for terrorism from their governments. It would

be a no-holds-barred, total war scenario.

We will now begin to examine the relationship between the press and terrorists,

and whether or not there is evidence of symbiosis. Margaret Thatcher recognized the

linkage between the effectiveness of terrorism and press coverage of terrorist incidents,

but her proposal to solve the problem of publicity fueling the fires of terrorism by

essentially telling journalists to ignore it and not report it was more than a little

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disingenuous and unworkable in practice. However, her oft-quoted metaphor “Publicity is

the oxygen of terrorism” did help to maintain her reputation as Britain’s Iron Lady, and

demonstrated the seriousness with which Mrs. Thatcher took the issue of not giving

terrorists any advantages. This underlines the point that public perception is a major

terrorist target and the media are central in shaping it. For terrorism, the role of the media

is critical.

Both Biernatzki (Biernatzki, 2002) and Lumbasa (Lumbasa, 2011) assert that

there is evidence for symbiosis; Lumbasa somewhat more strongly. Camphuijsen

(Camphuijsen 2012) suggests that there is a type of “feedback loop” in operation; when

terrorists see that their actions are drawing the desired media attention, they begin to plan

and commit more acts. The press then sees the increased audience size which is the result

of their coverage of terrorism, and is faced with a moral and ethical dilemma about their

policies for covering terrorism. Will they devote more resources to covering terrorism in

the hope of increasing audience share for their news operations and risk inciting more

terrorist actions, or will they exercise restraint for the sake of public safety and stability?

They must also face the fear that, “If we don’t cover it, our competitors will”. We will

address this later in the paper when we describe some of the solutions involving

cooperation between government and the media being advanced to resolve the media’s

conflict of interest. (Perl, 1997).

One of Bernatzki’s points is that terrorists have come to realize the importance of

the presence of the media to the success of their operations and plan for and expect their

participation. However, in states which do not enjoy freedom of the press, terrorism is

virtually worthless. If acts of terrorism would be censored and not brought to the public’s

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attention, what would be the point of committing terrorism? (Martin, 1986). But in what

seems like a paradox, Lumbasa observes that today’s information technology, the most

obvious example being the internet, has granted terrorists broader access to audiences and

reduced their reliance on traditional media. Almost without exception, terrorists and other

hate groups host websites of uniformly high creativity and quality for the purposes of

pitching their views and ideologies and even engaging in fundraising efforts. Citing a

briefing paper from the Council on Foreign Relations (Kaplan, 2006), Lumbasa describes

how al Qaeda has even entered the movie-making industry, producing propaganda videos

which are then posted online.

As in other sectors of our study, we find that there are conflicting views about the

relation between the media and terrorism. Some researchers believe reporters will be

more inclined to lose their objectivity, especially when reporting on particularly horrific

terrorist attacks producing large numbers of injuries and deaths and extensive damage.

(Lepre, C.R.; Luther, C.A. (2006). They argue that this may be due in part to the media’s

near non-existent state of education on coverage of terrorism, which the shock of the

events of September 11th 2001 revealed. It was a dramatic wake-up call. For the first time

since December 7th, 1941 a sneak attack had been directed at United States citizens on

United States soil. This sense of anger and outrage against an enemy who had perpetrated

such an act could not help but find its way into the minds of the representatives of the

media, many of whom were themselves residents of that center of media attention and

operations, New York City. Nevertheless, even with the ensuing flood of scholarly

papers on the subject, there was initially little real world how-to information that found

its way into the classrooms of American journalism schools. But gradually, schools like

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Boston University, Northwestern University, The University of Missouri, Syracuse

University, and The University of Southern California began offering both continuing

courses as well as one-time special topic classes on terrorism in general and journalistic

approaches to covering terrorism including journalism ethics in the field of reporting on

terrorism. So there has been some raising of awareness about the complexity of the

subject, and that can benefit not only the media’s ability to cover terrorist events in a

more than one dimensional manner, but will help to draw the ethical lines much more

clearly.

Moving to the topic of fear of terrorism and its effects, it has been found that there

is a correlation between excessive exposure to media violence and levels of fear and

anxiety (Nellis, Savage, 2012), which was also confirmed by Slone’s controlled

experimental study of 237 viewers exposed to terrorist images and threats through the

media (Slone 2000). Their work, along with other qualitative and quantitative research in

communications studies suggests that people subjected to intense and frequent doses of

violence in media tend to develop distorted and unrealistic worldviews. A uniform

relationship between the amount of exposure and the level of perceived threat and fear

was discovered. There was, however, some deviation between groups; non-whites,

females, and persons who were either directly affected by a terrorist act or were close to

someone who had been (this is called “resonance”) were more anxious and fearful of

future attacks. It was also found that there was a tendency to be somewhat more

concerned about future danger to others than risk to oneself.

Different conclusions were reached in another study. (Rubin, A. M., Haridakis,

P., Hullman, G., Sun, S., Chikombero, P. M., and Pornsakulvanich, V.,

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2003) where results went against findings of studies that found a link

between exposure and fear and anxiety. However, there was also

evidence that people who had a predisposition for viewing coverage of

terrorism were more likely to be fearful and feel less safe. In other

words, even though they probably knew that viewing coverage of

violent acts of terrorism was likely to increase their fear and anxiety

levels, they were drawn to it like moths to a flame. This is possibly

explained by the resonance phenomenon mentioned earlier. Prior

direct or tangential exposure to terrorism may elicit a desire to stay

informed about potential terrorist threats in the hopes of avoiding

future direct exposure and danger to themselves and people they care

about.

There is also a correlation between the effects of crime news reporting and

reporting on terrorism. However, this does not track exactly. There are some differences;

fear of terrorism manifests primarily in aversion to air travel and approval of policies that

can lead to some surrender of civil liberties in exchange for increased security, and

people affected by fear of terrorism will also generally advocate for more aggressive

foreign policies to suppress terrorism (Gadarian, 2010). Fear of crime generally manifests

in increasing support for policies of law and order, including increased revenues for law

enforcement. But victims of crime also tend to exhibit an increased fear of terrorism,

possibly a crossover version of the resonance effect.

Efforts by governments to combat terrorism have been continually hampered by

freedom of the press issues. This is especially true when it involves attempts to take down

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websites. Even if it passes legal muster, this is usually just a temporary solution. New

sites can be developed and brought online almost overnight by skilled webmasters.

Unless they are apprehended and taken out of play, the game will just go on. And even if

they are captured, it is not that difficult for a replacement to acquire the knowledge

necessary to get a website up and running. The technical knowledge required is minimal.

Setting up phony websites holds more promise for causing real damage to terrorist

organizations. Fake bomb making instructions can be posted which can lead to bomb

makers or bomb planters blowing themselves up. Terrorist fighters can be led into traps

by planting false information about locations of United States or Allied forces and their

routes and schedules of movement (Kaplan, 2009).

Perl (Perl, 1997) offers additional options for taking the fight to the terrorists, but

he too acknowledges the difficulty of knowing just how close to tread to the fine line

separating a free from a controlled press. Among his recommendations are:

1. Conduct joint training sessions between government and the press, with one major

objective being the establishment of voluntary reporting guidelines that do not

compromise either operational security or the press’s right to make informed and ethical

decisions about how they will handle their responsibilities to report accurately and with

balance.

2. Create a central terrorism information control center.

3. Encourage pool reporting.

4. Monitor attacks on journalists and attempts to restrict access to areas of interest.

Conclusion

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In this paper we have learned that, despite claims that the connection between

press reporting of terrorism activities and the effects of these activities on governments

and populations has been severed, the link is undeniable. The press still faces the

challenge of discerning what is a truly fair, ethical, and balanced approach to covering

stories on terrorism. Reporters, editors, and management must take their responsibility for

maintaining journalistic integrity seriously in the face of competitive pressures and the

potential for conflicts of interest. We have also cataloged some specific terrorist tactics

and techniques designed to enable them to achieve their goals. We have learned that

terrorist organizations truly are learning organizations, willing and able to adapt to

changing conditions and environments in order to continue the pursuit of their objectives.

We have seen that terrorists remain cognizant of their need for the media to transmit their

message to their intended audiences, and will tailor the timing of operations and other

parameters to ensure that the media will be available to report their actions, and that

audiences will be in place to consume the resulting media product. It has also been shown

that terrorists have been as quick as any segment of the world’s population to grasp the

potential and importance of the “new media” and have not been slack in incorporating it

into their operations. The initial failure of schools of journalism to grasp the distinction

between reporting on terrorism and reporting on “ordinary” crime has been noted, as was

the steep learning curve they faced in considering how best to prepare the next generation

of journalists for the realities of life after September 11th, 2001. Finally, the challenges to

governments and law enforcement to find effective means to detect and suppress terrorist

operations were noted, along with recommendations on how these challenges can be met.

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If the war on terror is to be won, the media must commit to an accurate and

faithful accounting of the motives and actions of terrorists, so that their self-applied

veneer of pseudo-respectability as champions of the oppressed can be stripped away and

they can be revealed as the vengeful, power seeking opportunists they really are.

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