Is the media helping Iraq hostage takers?

[Cowperson]

Interesting ethical question facing editors around the world. Are they helping hostage takers in Iraq?

Was Margaret Thatcher right to decry "the oxygen of publicity?"

A former editor with his take:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3702574.stm

Cowperson

[troutman]

I would worry that if the media ignored hostage-takings, the terrorists would resort to more brutal methods to obtain their objectives; methods that the media could not ignore.

[CaptainCrunch]

I don't think there's any other way around it. the media has no choice but to report the news, the public has a complete right to know.

My esteemed collegue the troutman is right . . . partially. If they weren't reporting these kidnappings and executions, the Terrorists would have to become far more extreme. However they run the risk of the public becoming desensitized to what they're doing now so they are eventually going to have to do something more extreme to keep themselves in the media's focus.

How soon until we see a video taped flaying, or live burning.

The media would only really be aiding these butchers if they gave them the airtime to convey thier views, or if the mainstream media was actually showing the executions, so any aid that they're giving is accidental and can't be helped unless the media is willing to compromise thier standards and ethics.

[Cowperson]

Originally posted by CaptainCrunch@Sep 30 2004, 05:10 PM
I don't think there's any other way around it. the media has no choice but to report the news, the public has a complete right to know.

My esteemed collegue the troutman is right . . . partially. If they weren't reporting these kidnappings and executions, the Terrorists would have to become far more extreme. However they run the risk of the public becoming desensitized to what they're doing now so they are eventually going to have to do something more extreme to keep themselves in the media's focus.

How soon until we see a video taped flaying, or live burning.

The media would only really be aiding these butchers if they gave them the airtime to convey thier views, or if the mainstream media was actually showing the executions, so any aid that they're giving is accidental and can't be helped unless the media is willing to compromise thier standards and ethics.

I posted a story a few weeks ago which indicated the Breslan school massacre was in part a reaction to the fact western television audiences are becoming increasingly hard to shock.

Hence an escalation in the shock value.

Yet we see that editors DO shield audiences - for reasons of audience taste for the most part - from the worst of war even though a network like al-Jazeera makes a living off the most brutal of images that are accepted culturally by its audience.

Most networks, as one example, provided a link to the video of the first American beheading in Iraq (Nick Berg) although not broadcasting the images directly, essentially giving the viewer a choice to deliberately seek it out.

Lately, I don't think networks are providing such links. No more shock value?

This particular article above is likely a reaction to the lingering fate of the British hostage in Iraq and the images that periodically come out of his pleas for help.

Is the media simply lengthening his agony by giving the kidnappers an international forum even though they'll kill him in the end anyway?

As a sidenote, CNN the other day had a special on how soldiers adjust from returning from a killing mode. They open with a sequence showing American soldiers laughing it up as they shoot to death an injured Iraqi Fedaheen lying on the ground on a street corner. No censorship there. And I wasn't shocked.

Cowperson

[octothorp]

Terrorism wasn't a very effective method of intimidation before the establishment of a mass media. The closest thing anyone could achieve was putting a victim up on a spike for as many people to see as possible, but the reach of such an act was pretty insignificant. But over the course of the 20th century, media became an increasingly powerful tool for terrorist organizations--the current efforts (9/11 and onward) are unquestionably the most sophisticated and media-savvy terrorist acts of all time.

People who educate themselves and stay ontop of the media should be able to see through the terrorism, though; America is, despite the dead of 9/11, still one of the safest places in the world, and that the number of people being killed by hostage-takers in Iraq is really an almost insignificant amount--a tragedy, yes, but no more of a tragedy than any other human death. One conceptual way to win the war on terror would be to educate everyone to the extent that they understand how little we really have to fear from terrorists.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally posted by octothorp@Sep 30 2004, 06:03 PM
Terrorism wasn't a very effective method of intimidation before the establishment of a mass media. The closest thing anyone could achieve was putting a victim up on a spike for as many people to see as possible, but the reach of such an act was pretty insignificant. But over the course of the 20th century, media became an increasingly powerful tool for terrorist organizations--the current efforts (9/11 and onward) are unquestionably the most sophisticated and media-savvy terrorist acts of all time.

People who educate themselves and stay ontop of the media should be able to see through the terrorism, though; America is, despite the dead of 9/11, still one of the safest places in the world, and that the number of people being killed by hostage-takers in Iraq is really an almost insignificant amount--a tragedy, yes, but no more of a tragedy than any other human death. One conceptual way to win the war on terror would be to educate everyone to the extent that they understand how little we really have to fear from terrorists.

I don't know why Octothorp, but your post reminded me of a Stalin quote

1 death is a tragedy a million is a statistic.

Not saying your Stalin, however I am saying your right

The news of any kind of mass murder is reported as a mass murder

the news of an individual murder is reported with the persons name, what they did for a living what happened to him, pictures of him with his kid etc

Basically we're creating a news environment that is more concerned with a cutting edge story that we can get presonal with, as oppossed to a 500 people die in a car bombing.

It dosen't help matters much that the media puts extra emphasis on national deaths while moving foreign deaths to page 36 under the sears ads for fat chicks.

Terrorists now days are very media savvy, they know how it works. They know that its best to commit thier acts later in the week so they can get a friday/weekend exposure. Heck the Palestines even bring thier own cameramen and directors to thier battles with the Israeli army.

On the term of sensitivity, I think its inverse of what everyone is thinking. Its not that people are horrified of beheadings, or burning alive, its twofold that they're not being showed out of decency which lowers the inpact value. We see it everyday on the discovery channel, and since it didn't happen to ourselves or somebody close to us, we're more willing to gloss over it as its happening so often.

Like I mentioned before, if the press started seeking out statements from these terrorists, and giving them a forum to work from, then they would be aiding thier cause, much like the Chechyen's tried to garner sympathy through the international press before the school hostage taking. And much like Arafat using the press and the nobel peace prize to futher his cause. but in this case they're not. Any benefit is unintentional and short lasting.