Page 193 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

will help [the terrorist] attract the attention of an audience but it will
not let him transmit his message. By sapping terrorism of its political
content, the media turn the crusader into a psychopath’ (1984, p.287).
For these reasons, much media coverage of terrorism may be viewed
as self-defeating.
As noted above, one goal of terrorist activity may be to provoke
state repression, or to demoralise a population and force a change
in policy. Media coverage can provide success in these terms, as the
Provisional IRA and others have shown. Kelly and Mitchell are
correct, however, to assert that no media system will provide
terrorism against its own state with legitimation. For the
establishment, moreover, even publicity is frowned upon. When in
1985 the British Home Secretary warned journalists against
providing republican terrorists with the ‘oxygen of publicity’ he
4
was implying that any coverage of such activities—negative or
otherwise—was harmful to the mainstream political process. In so
far as coverage of spectacular terrorist acts assists the groups
responsible to shape the political agenda, he was probably correct.
Media organisations, however, have been reluctant to censor
themselves on these grounds, arguing that denial or avoidance of
the issues which generate terrorism is— apart from being an
unacceptable restriction of the media’s fourth estate role—ultimately
counter-productive to the resolution of those issues.

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