THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 239, November 11, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA'S UNBALANCED COVERAGE OF TERRORISM:
GIVING TERROR A BOOST
By Daniel Mandel
SANITIZING THE TERRORISTS, TAINTING THE VICTIMS OF TERRORISM, & DESCRIBING COUNTERTERRORISM IN HIGHLY CRITICAL
& JUDGEMENTAL LANGUAGE: HOW UNBALANCED NEWS COVERAGE BY THE "POLITICALLY CORRECT" MAINSTREAM
MEDIA IN THE U.S.A. PROVIDES AID & COMFORT TO THE ISLAMIC TERRORIST ENEMIES OF AMERICA & WESTERN CIVILIZATION
FULL STORY:
Do the media give aid and comfort to terrorists by giving their violence maximum exposure and impact at times, while sanitizing the
perpetrators and tainting their victims at other times?
It is standard procedure for many media outlets to describe the perpetrators of terrorist acts -- the premeditated slaughter of civilians
-- with a range of euphemisms, "militants" being the most common.
Thus, The New York Times can headline a report on the killing of a hostage as "Iraq Militants Said to Behead a Truck Driver
From Bulgaria." Similarly, terrorists killed in a military strike can be described in another as "Israeli Airstrike Kills 2 Hamas Militants,
Wounds 6 Bystanders." Sometimes words are substituted, with government statements about "wanted terrorists" being transformed
into "wanted militants."
Conversely, highly judgmental language is used when describing counterterrorism: "murder" and "assassination" have been popular
when describing Israeli targeting of terrorist chieftains, bombers and dispatchers, even when no civilians are harmed.
How to justify these choices? Media organizations allege professional objectivity. The Reuters news agency has argued that
"terrorist" is an "emotive term" unbecoming to "impartial journalists." The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. takes a similar view:
"Terrorist" is a subjective term, while "militant" is an objective one. The former, so the argument runs, is reportage; the second is
editorializing.
These rationalizations are based on the assumption, willful or otherwise, that violence committed on behalf of an approved cause
cannot be terrorist. The platitude is well known to everyone: "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter."
In fact, being a freedom fighter, however defined, does not foreclose on the possibility that one is a terrorist. The Israeli terrorism
scholar Boaz Ganor has put it well:
"When you deliberately choose to attack civilians, you cannot say any more, 'I am not a terrorist
because I am a freedom fighter.' Maybe you are a freedom fighter, but you are also definitely a
terrorist."
Why, therefore, do the media persist in sanitizing terrorism and tainting counterterrorism? Out of bias and fear. Contrary to what is
normally claimed, a bias is at work in which the nature of the attacks matters less than the identity of the parties carrying them out. This
illegitimate practice started with the media disfavoring Israel and favoring Palestinians. It has not stopped there.
The same media outlets that indulge this practice also defend it vigorously. Thus, when CanWest Global Communications Corp.,
Canada's largest newspaper chain, altered news agency copy to restore the word "terrorist" to reports describing terrorist acts,
Reuters, a leading purveyor of euphemistic reportage on terror, complained.
Revealingly, the global managing editor for Reuters, David Schlesinger, observed that naming terrorists as such could
"endanger its reporters in volatile areas." As journalist Jonathan Tobin wryly observed, "Reuters is worried that the people it
won't call terrorists will terrorize them." The resultant bias dictates a spurious moral neutralism that actually favors terrorists.
Without TV or the Internet, the hideous broadcasting of appeals from innocent hostages of Iraqi terrorists, followed by their
televised merciless beheadings, could not succeed as a tactic to wage psychological warfare against the West. This, of course,
redoubles pressure on governments to concede to blackmail and almost ensures the murder of hostages when they don't.
Far from reviewing gravely the journalistic ethics involved, media outlets, particularly in Europe, compete for the distinction of being
the first to break the gruesome images of exhibition killings. This only ensures the taking of more hostages and thus the taking of
more innocent lives.
Clearly, the media fail in their mission when they allege superior detachment, while, in reality, they become obliging accomplices of
terrorists. Terrorists might well continue killing, whatever the nature of the reportage. But they should receive no help from journalists.
And if they do, the media cannot expect immunity from criticism.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The News Media & Political Bias
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
The Middle East & the Arabs
The Israeli-Arab Conflict
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Daniel Mandel is Associate Director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the author of H. V. Evatt and the
Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist.
The foregoing article by Daniel Mandel was originally published in the Baltimore Sun, November 5, 2004, and can be found on
the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
November 5, 2004
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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