Media and terrorism
Kamala Sarup
March 15, 2009
How can media do that with "terrorism," an abstraction meaning the sum of terrorist acts over time?
Media sometimes slants the news to favor terrorists, which is biased or untruthful reporting. Unbiased or truthful reporting means reporting the facts about terrorists and terrorism, not just selecting those facts that fit the reporter's and editor's prejudices, while ignoring the rest. Reporting distortions of the truth confuses people and causes them to take erroneous actions based on faulty information.
Likewise, reporting faulty interpretations of the facts, using illogical cause-effect relationships, is harmful for the same reason. A lot of the media does that all the time, in part so their readers will continue to read them and so advertisers will continue to finance them. Academics who write in professional journals are a little more truthful compared to the media, because they are under the scrutiny of their peers and not under advertising pressure.
Finally, it's hard for me to find an unbiased book on the subject of terrorism or geopolitics and economics; that is, a book that provides all the facts, as well as logical interpretations of them.
It's difficult for ordinary people to get at the truth through the media, but most of us have no alternative. If we are ambitious, all we can do is read a lot of books and journals and listen to the media, doing our best to get at the truth.
If the media was able to remain somewhat objective, that would be the only way that people could see what is happening in society, including issues related to terrorism and violence. The more objective the media, the better, because what one media source fails to report, a competitor will.
The only justification for forbidding a particular media source to publish is when it loses it objectivity so much that its articles are lies by any standard, or at least gross distortions of the truth.
Media sometimes slants the news to favor terrorists, which is biased or untruthful reporting. Unbiased or truthful reporting means reporting the facts about terrorists and terrorism, not just selecting those facts that fit the reporter's and editor's prejudices, while ignoring the rest. Reporting distortions of the truth confuses people and causes them to take erroneous actions based on faulty information.
Likewise, reporting faulty interpretations of the facts, using illogical cause-effect relationships, is harmful for the same reason. A lot of the media does that all the time, in part so their readers will continue to read them and so advertisers will continue to finance them. Academics who write in professional journals are a little more truthful compared to the media, because they are under the scrutiny of their peers and not under advertising pressure.
Finally, it's hard for me to find an unbiased book on the subject of terrorism or geopolitics and economics; that is, a book that provides all the facts, as well as logical interpretations of them.
It's difficult for ordinary people to get at the truth through the media, but most of us have no alternative. If we are ambitious, all we can do is read a lot of books and journals and listen to the media, doing our best to get at the truth.
If the media was able to remain somewhat objective, that would be the only way that people could see what is happening in society, including issues related to terrorism and violence. The more objective the media, the better, because what one media source fails to report, a competitor will.
The only justification for forbidding a particular media source to publish is when it loses it objectivity so much that its articles are lies by any standard, or at least gross distortions of the truth.
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