Page 192 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 171

PRESSURE-GROUP POLITICS
setting up spectacular acts of violence. Pickard argues that ‘labelling per-
petrators of terrorism as seekers of publicity for its own sake is simplistic and
ignores their very significant efforts to direct news coverage, to present their
cause in favourable ways and to disassociate groups from acts that will bring
significant negative response to the cause’ (1989, p. 14).
Terrorist groups, like other political actors, have developed media
management systems, and gradually come to use ‘most of the techniques
normally employed by public relations professionals’ (ibid.), including the
issuing of press statements, videos (a practice adopted frequently by Osama
Bin Laden) and the setting up of websites, news conferences, and the pro-
duction of newspapers (such as the IRA’s An Phoblacht). One observer notes
that ‘the PR skills of such as Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison are so highly
reputed that the Sinn Féin press office is widely regarded as the Saatchi and
Saatchi of “terrorist” publicity departments’ (ibid.). The political com-
munication skills of Adams and the Sinn Féin leadership were such as to have
led, by the time of the Good Friday agreement in April 1998, to handshakes
with President Clinton in the White House, meetings with the British Prime
Minister at 10 Downing Street, and the slow emergence in the 1990s of Sinn
Féin as a legitimate (from the British state’s point of view) political force.
Poor political communication by the Loyalists, on the other hand, exem-
plified by the Orange Order’s ‘siege of Drumcree’ and their response to the
sectarian murder of three children in July 1998, steadily lowered their
prestige and credibility in the eyes of the British people and the world as a
whole, to the significant (if as yet unquantifiable) long-term advantage of
their republican opponents.
The late Yasser Arafat, in the decades before the PLO achieved inter-
national diplomatic recognition, was another ‘terrorist’ who skilfully used
the media to project and gain sympathy for the Palestinian cause (before the
suicide bombings of 2001/02 lost it again).
In the vast majority of examples, however, terrorist ‘public relations’ – or
political communication – has failed to achieve success in the pursuit of the
cause. While terrorism generates publicity because it meets many of the
requirements of modern news production, it rarely bestows the groups
responsible with legitimacy, far less media support. As Schmid and de Graaf
point out, ‘the insurgent terrorist news promoter, as source of news, has at
times considerable influence on the way the media report his actions. Yet his
opponents, the government and its security forces, are in fact the main
sources for the media’ (1982, p. 98).
We have noted elsewhere in this book that news tends to eschew
explanations and analyses of the events reported, a generalisation which is
no less true of terrorism. The audience sees the bomb exploding or the
hijacker waving his gun from the cockpit of an aircraft, but will not very
often be provided with the historical background or political context to the
events taking place, and their justification (if any). Kelly and Mitchell
acknowledge that ‘the media will help [the terrorist] attract the attention of

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