Page 191 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 170

COMMUNICATING POLITICS
whose interests it claims to represent to be portrayed as victims. The IRA
bombings of pubs in Birmingham in the 1970s led both to the introduction
of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the miscarriages of justice experienced
by the ‘Birmingham Six’ and others. Both generated much adverse publicity
for the British police and legal system. Similarly, the 1988 ban on broadcast
statements by supporters of republican violence such as Sinn Fein generated
much negative publicity for the British government, at home and abroad.
To achieve these goals, terrorists must gain access to the media, and in this
they are assisted by the inherent newsworthiness of their activities. Such acts
are normally spectacular, providing journalists with dramatic visual material.
They are explosive (literally) and often incorporate elements of great drama.
The 1978 siege of the Iranian embassy in London and the holding of an
American airliner at Beirut airport in 1985 are examples of unfolding dramas
which commanded headline news throughout their duration. The destruc-
tion of the World Trade Center was the most dramatic demonstration of this
quality of terrorism yet seen. On that day, thanks to the presence of tele-
vision, video and still cameras, the entire world felt compelled to watch the
deaths of nearly 3,000 people (McNair, 2006). The siege of Beslan in
September 2004 had a similarly macabre fascination to those millions who
watched it unfold live on TV.
The grammar of television news, then, means that terrorism has news
value, and can be used as a means of attracting media and thus public
attention to a political cause be it that of the Palestinians, the Chechnyans,
or the Kashmiri separatists. In itself, however, publicity may not further a
political objective and may, for obvious reasons in the case of terrorism,
present an obstacle to it. Atrocities such as occurred on September 11 2001,
the Real IRA’s murder of 29 people in the Irish town of Omagh in 1999 or
ETA’s killing of a six-year-old child in August 2002, may temporarily
command the news agenda, but are likely to bring revulsion, isolation and,
in the case of al-Quaida and the Taliban who harboured it, eventual destruc-
tion to the terrorist organisation. For all that September 11 was an audacious
and professionally executed act of political communication it seemed likely,
as this book went to press, to result only in awakening Western public
opinion to the dangers posed by what journalist Christopher Hitchens has
called ‘Islamic fascism’ and to hasten the end of regimes such as Saddam
Hussein’s in Iraq. While the provocation of a ‘war of civilisations’ between
the secular Western world and the quasi-medieval Muslim countries which
harboured al-Quaida was one of the stated objectives of Osama Bin Laden’s
terrorism, it was difficult to see, at present, how such a war could possibly
go in the latter’s favour. The use of terrorism in New York and Washington,
as in Omagh and other places, is likely to result only in a tightening of anti-
terrorist activity by democratic governments and the erosion of whatever
public support for the terrorists’ cause may have existed.
This fact requires terrorist organisations, like other political actors, to
engage in more sophisticated strategies of news management than merely

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