when millions of people
are seeking reliable infor-
mation in a fog of rumour
and claim alongside
counterclaim.”
Ground Rules
When faced with a terrorist attack, the media’s reflex is to try to name the perpetrator as quickly as possible. The risk is rushing into accusations that are founded on similarities with other attacks, the credulous acceptance of official theories and even prejudices. In many cases, media have extrapolated facts from insufficient clues and formulated theories that turned out to be false. In March 2012, after French soldiers of foreign origin were killed in Montauban, France, some media first privileged a far-right connection, whereas the perpe- trator of the crimes, Mohamed Merah, claimed a radical Islamic view. Similarly, when Oklahoma City, United States, was attacked in 1995, many media im- mediately underlined the Arab connection, describing “two suspects of Mid- dle Eastern appearance with dark hair and beards.” The perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, was actually white and belonged to the far right.5 Some media even
gave the names of four American-Arab “suspects”, without carefully checking their information, despite the severity of the accusations.
The consequences of such a mistake can be disastrous for the persons and communities thus stigmatised. In the days following the Oklahoma City attack, Hamzi Moghrabi, chair of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, processed dozens of cases of harassment and threats towards people “of Arab appearance” throughout the U.S. Some media justified themselves declaring that they had only used the indications provided by investigators.6 However,
one source of error is excessive deference to the authorities, as if they knew the truth. During the Madrid attacks in 2004, the media first transmitted the Spanish government’s position, accusing ETA. The assumption had its logic, as the separatist, armed Basque organization was still active. It should not, however, have eclipsed the other possibility, which was that Islamist extremists were behind the attack, as the Spanish government had backed the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Most media rushed to correct the mistake as soon as leads were confirmed, but the episode marked a fracture between journalists and the word of the State.
Journalists specialising in terrorism mainly rely on sources within the institu- tions and organizations concerned. For obvious reasons, these sources most frequently need to remain anonymous. However, they are rarely neutral or dis- interested. The information they disclose can thus hold half-truths, or even lies in the service of political causes. In Packaging Terrorism, Susan Moeller, pro- fessor at the University of Maryland, gives a good summary of the dangers involved for journalism: “Media over-rely on official (and former official) sources for both breaking information and analysis – and do too little vetting and public disclosure of their conflicts of interest. They present the officials’ statements as fact, too rarely offering independent discussion or confirmation of those state- ments. They often let officials speak anonymously.”7
5 http://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=1980 6 http://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=1980 7 Susan Moeller, op. cit., p. 61.
‘Tips’ and leaks must be taken with extreme circumspection, because they can be false. It is sometimes very tempting for media or individual journalists to give the impression that they are close to the police investigation teams. The downside is that they can serve as instruments for strategies and manoeuvres that are beyond them. The sphere of counter-terrorism complies with the de- mands of the realm of intelligence, and it is guided more by dissimulation and disinformation than by information ethics. This means it is more important than ever for journalists to have many, varied sources at their disposal, whether they are institutions, universities or civil society. They can thus check everything, especially the information that seems so striking and exclusive that they would love nothing better than to publish it.
Editorial teams should take certain precautions to reduce the risks posed by anonymous sources: the journalist should, in particular, justify this process to the chief editors, and explain to the public why the source wished to remain anonymous. Some media require that their journalist disclose the identity of the anonymous source to a superior among the editing staff.
After an attack, official declarations, condolences and expressions of grief or indignation must also be checked with the ‘hypocrisy detector’. The Hispanic site, Fusion, did this following the attacks against Orlando’s LGBT community in 2016, by reminding their readers of the discriminatory and stigmatising decla- rations made by anti-LGBT politicians suddenly desperate to exhibit their “com- passion” for the victims.8
The same circumspection must be applied for experts. More even than for oth- er subjects, the task of explaining and framing terrorism is regularly entrusted not to media editorial teams but external experts, in the form of interviews or opinion articles. These often bring a true wealth of information, but caution is still required. The media should be wary of the peremptory declarations of TV celebrities claiming to know and understand everything. Experts can make mistakes, because they are the prisoners of theories developed too far from the reality of the situation. They may also frame their input so as to promote a political agenda: theirs, that of the institution they work for, or that of the foun- dations, ministries or intelligence agencies, etc., that fund them. They can ex- aggerate the threat because their professional economic model depends on it. It is thus crucial to check the quality and independence of their expertise. The media must specify the qualifications of these experts, the institution they be- long to (left-wing or right-wing, linked to a university or a ministry, etc.), and en- sure they lift any ambiguities in the questions that are set to them. It is thus es- sential for the media to question experts in a contradictory way, as they would other news players, witnesses, or politicians, and not treat them as scientists who know the truth and seem infallible and therefore incontestable.9
8 http://fusion.net/story/3122969/Orlando-pulse-massacre-politicians-react-hypocrisy/ 9 http://www.slate.fr/story/110375/faux-experts-terrorisme
Ground Rules
Covering terrorist violence also requires keeping a sense of proportion. Reason must be the rule, in the volume of the journalistic coverage – too much infor- mation can cause just as much anxiety as too little information – in its “sound level” and in its portrayal of violence. The portrayal of violence is a media clas- sic, fuelled by news programmes, but also by many films, TV series, and video games. “When it bleeds, it leads” is a common adage. The media practically go on auto-pilot, almost automatically contributing to the amplification of the terrorist impact, and even its exaggera-
tion. They must be aware of this, and constantly assess their treatment of in- formation to re-establish a sense of re- straint and balance if necessary. (See:
Confronting fear, page 38)
The media must learn to measure their “tone”, not to feed the “noise ma- chine”, not to contribute to spreading
anxiety or fueling anger and not to make the terrorism phenomenon or its play- ers seem larger than they really are. More than ever, the public expects the me- dia to be its anchors and save it from being sucked into the whirlwinds of news. Are terrorists really being viewed as stars, as some government officials some- times denounce? Generally, the terms used to refer to the perpetrators of ter- rorist attacks are terms of condemnation and rejection: the media speak of kill- ers, barbarians, monsters and assassins. However, a certain way of describing terrorists can also unconsciously indicate or elicit a kind of admiration. When we inconsiderately speak of the “mastermind” behind attacks, or of “sophis- ticated” attacks, are we not running the risk of glorifying the killers and pre- senting them as exceptional beings, asked National Public Radio (US).10 (See: Words, page 52)
Some portraits of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as “Carlos the Jackal”, the Venezuelan terrorist involved in many attacks in the 1970s, Osama bin Laden, Anders Behring Breivik and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have sometimes verged on fascination.11
When televisions played and replayed a video of one of the terrorists involved in the Paris attacks on 13 November 2015, crowing at the wheel of a 4x4 and dragging corpses that were victims of the Islamic State, did they not uncon- sciously fuel the sordid attraction of terrorism?12 The titles of reports and books
about terrorists also give an idea of the permanent risk of descending the ‘slip- pery slope’. Media claim to be indignant at the inhumanity of the killers while
10 http://www.wnyc.org/story/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-terrorism-edition/ 11 http://www.wnyc.org/story/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-terrorism-edition/ 12 http://www.francetvinfo.fr/faits-divers/terrorisme/attaques-du-13-novembre-a-paris/qui- est-abdelhamid-abaaoud-le-cerveau-presume-des-attentats-de-paris_1178553.html