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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stephen O who wrote (11961)	7/4/2007 8:52:42 AM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37570

I agree Stephen. It is plain for even a layman to see that this kid was executed for the pure pleasure of schadenfreude. I will never feel the same sense of safety I once felt for the RCMP.

To: Stephen O who wrote (11961)	7/5/2007 10:42:22 AM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Respond to of 37570

Don't give terrorists the attention they crave Warren Kinsella, National Post Published: Thursday, July 05, 2007 canada.com Around the time of his wildly-popular 1984 visit to every Canadian province, Pope John Paul II delivered a prescient warning about the intersection between media, poverty and terror. It's one worth recalling this week. As he did so often, the Pope denounced the First World's apparent indifference to the suffering of the Third World. And then John Paul added a portentous insight: As access to news media became more pervasive in the world's poorest nations, people would see with their own eyes how the First World lives, and rage would grow. Pope John Paul II was right. The ubiquity of the modern media has had a significant impact on the growth of terrorist movements in the Third World. The relationship works the other way, as well: Influencing the media has become a dominant strategic objective for those same terrorist movements. As former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher once famously remarked, publicity is terrorism's "oxygen." Al-Qaeda's most prized propaganda achievement -- prior to 9/11, at least -- was the lengthy 1997 interview CNN conducted with a Saudi dissident named Osama bin Laden. The news media are coveted by terrorists, because the media provide them with publicity they could not otherwise buy. News reports, terrorists believe, provide them with legitimacy -- and they also give them a way to demoralize their enemy. The mass media's attention is particularly coveted because -- through them -- the greatest number of eyes and ears can be reached most efficiently. One of the unintended consequences of terror, then, is what it tells us about ourselves. It provides insights into the way the news media work, and the ways in which they don't. For the past few days, for example, it has been interesting to observe the media's astonished reaction to the news that medical doctors formed part of the Glasgow and London terror cells. "British terror probe focuses on doctors," declared one Forbes headline. "Doctors arrested in failed British car bomb case," headlined Newsday. Why, one is moved to ask, is a physician's alleged involvement in mass murder so implausible and, therefore, newsworthy? Jack Kevorkian and Josef Mengele, amongst others, suggest that we probably shouldn't be so very surprised. But the novel doctors-cum-terrorists angle provided the Islamist terrorists with what they most desire -- news coverage. You don't need to be John Paul or Margaret Thatcher to know that they will recruit a few more MDs for the next go-round. Here at home, however, our own media are less easily manipulated. Sure, the Tyendinaga Mohawk Nation's plans to shut down Ontario's Highway 401 caused inconvenience on June 29 -- just as their musings about carrying guns garnered some news coverage, and caused consternation. But if Tyendinaga resident hothead Shawn Brant was counting on an extreme overreaction in the media, he didn't get it. Apart from such despicable commentary as that found on the conservative blog called "Girl on the Right" -- wherein the site's owner actually declared that Natives "do absolutely nothing except smoke, drink and f* their daughters" -- it was difficult to find many Canadian media sources falling into Brant's trap. They did not rise to the bait, and demand that the federal or provincial governments ruthlessly crush dissent on the First Nations' Day of Action. This is not to suggest that the Tyendinaga Mohawks are terrorists, of course. Nor can we legally use that term to describe the doctors arrested in the London and Glasgow plots, either -- not until a court determines otherwise. But if we are right, and extremists and terrorists need the oxygen of publicity, then the news media clearly needs to choke off the air supply. It can do that by promulgating some voluntary press guidelines, as not a few experts have suggested: -Limiting information that can harm hostages Email to a friend Printer friendly Font: **-Limiting information about police and military movements during rescues -Not airing, or at least limiting, unedited on-air interviews with terrorist figures -Avoiding unfounded speculation and heated rhetoric -Refusing to broadcast or print information that may cause panic and thereby aid the terrorists Abiding by these tenets will not make the news media an accessory to government policy, or impinge upon freedom of the press. Instead, it will help professional journalists to avoid the two things they most fear -- getting facts wrong, and getting used. Will smarter news coverage of terror result in fewer terrorist incidents? Will it make the Third World less angry at the First World? Maybe, maybe not. Until we know for certain, John Paul II might say, it's something to pray for. - Warren Kinsella blogs for the National Post and at www.warrenkinsella.com. © National Post 2007