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I've made this into its own topic, because it is really about the way we publicize events in general, rather than the specific (recent) incident.




From a related article:

"Our response to these incidents must not be to overreact. This week is the anniversary of the Islamic State outrage at Brussels airport, when 32 people lost their lives in a coordinated assault on Belgium’s transport system. It followed earlier attacks in Paris.

The reaction then was extraordinary. Europe’s media and politicians were close to hysterical. For days, BBC reporters on the spot repeated the words panic, threat and menace by the hour. France’s President François Hollande declared that “all of Europe has been attacked”. Prime minister David Cameron announced that “the UK faces a very real terror threat”. Donald Trump declared to cheering supporters that “Belgium and France are literally disintegrating”. Isis could not have asked for a greater megaphone.

The terrorist is helpless without the assistance of the media and those who feed it with words and deeds. In his thoughtful manual, Terrorism: How to Respond, academic Richard English points out that the so-called threat to democracy, about which politicians like to talk at such times, lies not in any bloodshed and damage. It is the more real danger “of provoking ill-judged, extravagant and counterproductive state responses”. But this puts those who choose to be “provoked” in a peculiar and compromising position. Only if the media respond in a certain way can the terrorists achieve whatever spurious ends they may have." -- Simon Jenkins

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/22/westminster-attack-tragedy-not-threat-democracy

Agree 100%. If we were a rational people, we would have more fear for Coca Cola than ISIS.

But we aren't rational. Our media hypes the gak out of heinous, deplorable, statistically impossible to happen to you acts and we run into the arms of posturing blowhards who are exploiting our fear for personal gain.

Could a comparison between modern terrorism and the Second World War Blitz be made?

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Could a comparison between modern terrorism and the Second World War Blitz be made?

Certainly you can compare the stoicism of Londoners facing adversity in both cases.

But a sustained state of war between established nations is not really analogous to attacks of opportunity by radicalised individuals.

Personally, I feel somewhat divided. On one hand I agree with him, I think that the way terrorist incidents and spree killings are reported might be irresponsible, as there is some evidence that the media attention serves only to encourage future attacks by individuals seeking exactly that kind of attention. On the other hand, there does exist a great public interest in these events, and it is difficult to criticise the news media for covering stories that people want to know about. I don't think the BBC could be seen to be "covering up" such a story by not reporting it. Of course, there are other types of stories, such as alleged hate crimes, where the media has been accused by "certain groups" of down-playing the issue. Perhaps, from a certain perspective, that's just the responsible thing to do, but it's obviously an awkward position to be in, especially in the face of competition.

For my part, I will admit that I took a great interest in the latest incident. I kept an eye on the news all day Wednesday. Throughout the day, facts were slow to trickle through, and I did start become concious of the way existing facts and footage, were being presented in an increasingly dramatic way. Now, after more of the story has come to light, I realise that the incident, while sad, really doesn't affect me, and perhaps my interest is nothing more than rubbernecking.

If I were to draw a comparison, I might draw parallels with the way the paparazzi and tabloids mercilessly hound celebrities. While I have zero interest in celebrity gossip myself, I realise that there is a huge market for that kind of news. Obviously, if a market exists then there will be a lot of competition to satisfy that market, and to make these stories sound as sensational and scandalous as possible, regardless of the damage it might do.

I've always seen incidents like this as an echo chamber.

But you also can't ignore things like this, people would probably get offended if there is an atmosphere of not caring.

But then they also rattle on for days as well, and it does give these kind of people a platform.

This attacker will be remembered for years, and that probably isn't a good thing.

Fear is business, and media is business. Simple logic there.

 d-usa wrote:
Fear is business, and media is business. Simple logic there.

While that explains the 24 news channels, the BBC is a state run entity and (in theory) does not need to chase clicks for ad revenue.

I know two people from my childhood who have gone on to work in the field of journalism, and they were both attention hungry drama queens. Coincidence? Probably.

Does the BBC rely on ratings at all, and is there any kind of competition with private news channels in the UK? I honestly don't know.

I also don't know about the UK political routines, but I know in the US having fear and a scary easily identifiable bad guy is good for the business of politics. When you have anyone that serves as a good "us vs them" routine, it's easy to use fear to get compliance and acceptance from the population for unpopular legislation.

With that said, I do listen to some BBC on the radio, and even though they are state run they never really come across as being any kind of mouthpiece for the government.

 d-usa wrote:
Does the BBC rely on ratings at all, and is there any kind of competition with private news channels in the UK? I honestly don't know.

They do and they don't. The BBC often relies on ratings to justify the spending of public money (to show programs are in the the public interest). If they continue to air programs which don't receive good ratings then they leave themselves open to criticism, and I suppose that could eventually lead to funding being withdrawn.

I have a few problems with this approach. First of all let me state that while terrorism is horrific, it is not exactly a huge problem in Europe.

With that out of the way. I don't see the problem with news agencies reporting on something that people have an interest in. We spend a lot of time on plane crashes as well for example, but people get so irrational about terrorism they don't acknowledge that the risks are almost insignificant when it comes to what causes you might die from in Europe. Furthermore, when the media reported on our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq we had some of the worst attacks in Europe when it came to lives lost. On the same trend we had the majority of people (thousands) leaving for Syria when the media reported on the successes of IS. Should they not have reported about those successes? Meanwhile the spotlight and criticism of over reporting in the media of terror attacks isn't exactly the problem. Its the politicizing and fear mongering that follows the reporting of terror attacks to draw in those sweet sweet viewers and voters. Were discussing a problem in Europe that falls under single digits when it comes to 'copycat' behaviour and attention seeking. I don't think over publication is the problem, what comes after is the problem.

As a Brit and an ex-Londoner I can tell you that whatever hysteria the press and politicians might be whipping up, it hasn't seriously affected ordinary people.

People will be worried, of course. I was a bit nervy after the 7/7 bombings, but we all just got on with things.

Its a difficult balance​. On one hand it is absolutely​ harmful to our society when the media essentially deifies certain acts. But on the other hand freedom of expression is an absolute must for any free society, and there is no way to enforce responsible journalism without essentially evoking censorship.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
As a Brit and an ex-Londoner I can tell you that whatever hysteria the press and politicians might be whipping up, it hasn't seriously affected ordinary people.

People will be worried, of course. I was a bit nervy after the 7/7 bombings, but we all just got on with things.

I get where you're coming from. But for the sake of argument if you will, based on your post history I don't exactly peg you as the person that is in the 'hysteria' demographic these media outlets and politicians go for. Yet the hysteria gets amplified to a ridiculous degree on the political stage so as to seem tough and then we get things like the Burkini ban in France, the Muslim ban in the US or the "just less Muslims!'' of Geert Wilders. While most of us don't care (the look I put a French flag on Facebook, Baghdad what? crowd) or are seriously affected by terrorism, we still have to waste time in politics combating these ridiculous notions of "Muslim bad!"

The Burkini Ban in France is in France, not the UK. The Muslim Ban in the USA is in the USA, not the UK (and it's been defeated so far.)

I think the British have a somewhat more mature attitude towards foreigners.

The Burkini Ban in France is in France, not the UK. The Muslim Ban in the USA is in the USA, not the UK (and it's been defeated so far.)

I think the British have a somewhat more mature attitude towards foreigners.

With all do respect, are you saying the British have a better attitude to foreigners than mainland Europe and the US? Brexit for a part also was about EU nationals going to the UK to work. The UKIP poster episode etc. I don't know how other EU nationals on this board feel but in my direct social environment the main feeling was that Brexit was also a rejection of EU nationals/us Europeans by the UK (of course this is a bit of a hasty conclusion, but the Netherlands are still quite in favour of the EU). And isn't the UK government rejecting (or it seems to be popular to reject it amongst the electorate, can't remember which) the freedom of movement from the EU in the Brexit negotiations? Saying the British overall are 'somewhat more mature' towards foreigners is a very blanket statement to make.

Nevertheless, as this is going a bit more into just British attitudes, I was implying the more general consequences that can occur, not saying something like this would happen in the UK. Of course its frustrating when things like this happen in the USA or France, but I don't think its evidence of a majority of the electorate being less mature and more of an expression of how the system works.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I think the British have a somewhat more mature attitude towards foreigners.

Meh. Apparently some of your foreigners have to fight for Great Britain to judge everyone, including foreigners, based on the same laws. You can call that “a more mature attitude”, but that doesn't sound great to me. And it's not like you don't have xenophobes too…

My brain suffered after clicking that link.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I think the British have a somewhat more mature attitude towards foreigners.

Meh. Apparently some of your foreigners have to fight for Great Britain to judge everyone, including foreigners, based on the same laws. You can call that “a more mature attitude”, but that doesn't sound great to me. And it's not like you don't have xenophobes too…

The argument wasn't "there are no xenophobes or issues in the UK" so finding those things doesn't really invalidate his argument. One can have both those and a generally more mature attitude toward foreigners.

Perhaps the solution is for people to not panic disproportionately to events.











Maybe we can work on that after we cure aging.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Perhaps the solution is for people to not panic disproportionately to events.

As was mentioned earlier, the US media companies profit too much off of this thing. I remember after a number of school shootings in the US, a few cable news channels had "experts" on the air for those 2 hour Anderson/Wolf/O'Reilly "How Do We Save the Children?" specials, and each one, specifically the ones trained in psychology/psychiatry said the same thing: stop giving the perpetrators their 15 minutes.

The problem is, media companies thrive on putting the full name, mug shot, body count, means and methods, etc. of the perpetrators on screen. That gak drives ratings, viewership, and therefore money. I'm not by any means suggesting that we simply not report on events such as terror attacks or school shootings, I'm saying that we need to change how they are reported.

I personally think that there is definitely a way to report on major/significant events that do not stir up panic, or resort to fear-mongering. But while I don't know UK politics in anything other than an academic sense, I know that in the US, media is a powerful political tool. As others have said, the media helps create/drive the "Us vs. Them" ideals, which in turn make it easier to hate a person/group for very little reason.