A Mutually Beneficial Spiral Of Death

Here's a report on a study by two economists on terrorism and the media coverage it generates. It shows that there is a disgusting symbiotic relationship between the two.

"Both the media and terrorists benefit from terrorist incidents," their study contends. Terrorists get free publicity for themselves and their cause. The media, meanwhile, make money "as reports of terror attacks increase newspaper sales and the number of television viewers."

The researchers counted direct references to terrorism between 1998 and 2005 in the New York Times and Neue Zuercher Zeitung, a respected Swiss newspaper. They also collected data on terrorist attacks around the world during that period. Using a statistical procedure called the Granger Causality Test, they attempted to determine whether more coverage directly led to more attacks.

The results, they said, were unequivocal: Coverage caused more attacks, and attacks caused more coverage — a mutually beneficial spiral of death that they say has increased because of a heightened interest in terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.

They suggest it would be helpful to stop naming the perpetrators of the terrorist acts. That would at least take the publicity factor away. That would seem to be a reasonable step. How about it, media? 

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  By Blackhawk, June 15, 2006 @ 3:12 pm

  Makes sense. Kind of like when TV stopped showing the idiots disrupting games, like streakers. TV used to focus on them and comment on how annoying and disruptive they were. Then TV stations grew up: like children, if you give them their reward (media exposure), they keep doing it, even if you say bad things about them and the police fine them.

  So now, when idiots like this try to disrupt games, TV stations deliberately focus on anything else, and the commenters make only a brief announcement to the viewing audience why play is disrupted, then they talk about anything else but the idiot disrupting the game.

  That pretty much got rid of the clowns who disrupt games for TV exposure.

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  By David, June 15, 2006 @ 11:27 pm

  Better: name them, but do NOT use the disingenuous, cheesy non-names absolving the terrorists of their crimes. “Insurgents” is not the same as “scum-sucking, vile, mother-mutilating pig rapists” you know…

  Calling perpetrators of vicious murders “youths” instead of “cretinous followers of the Butcher of Medina, may he rot in hell forever” is simply giving a bye to their horrendous savagry.

  Absent calling these offspring of [unmentionable acts] with dogs by their real labels, ignoring them in the media (while allowing proper military actions to exterminate these abortions that should have been) would be a Better Thing than we have…

Other Links to this Post

1. Ninth State — June 15, 2006 @ 10:38 am

2. Blue Crab Boulevard » Blog Archive » A Lose-Lose Proposition — July 23, 2006 @ 2:26 pm

3. Blue Crab Boulevard » Blog Archive » Some Ideas — October 25, 2006 @ 5:09 am