London Terror Attack: I Endorse Simon Jenkins’ Mature and Responsible Assessment of the Media’s Dangerous and Irresponsible Coverage
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Note: This article is largely derived from comments I made on Facebook yesterday — but I realise not everyone who reads my work is necessarily on Facebook, hence my reworked posting here.
In what I intend to be my only comment on Wednesday’s attack in London, which was terrible because people lost their lives or were horribly wounded, I recommend the clip below of Simon Jenkins talking sense on Newsnight about how the media irresponsibly creates frenzies of publicity around incidents of terrorism.
It feeds racism and Islamophobia, it feeds a climate of relentless fear, when there is no justification for such fears, and it gives the terrorists what they want — the oxygen of publicity, the very climate of fear the media stirs up, and, they hope, the disruption of normal, everyday life.
I recall, growing up, when there was a deadly terrorist attack, it was considered inappropriate to indulge in wall-to-wall coverage for days, but now it is the norm, and the more it continues the more I fear subsequently hearing about peaceful, law-abiding Muslims up and down the country being subjected to harassment and abuse as through there is any connection between themselves and the mentally troubled individuals who undertook these kinds of attacks, when no such analogy whatsoever can be legitimately drawn. Read the rest of this entry »
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