A few weeks ago, another tragic set of domestic terrorist attacks rocked the nation. First there was the mass stabbing attack in Minnesota Mall, injuring nine people. Very soon after, there was a bombing in New York and New Jersey, injuring 29 people. It is fortunate that no one died in either of these attacks and that the police were able to capture the bomber alive. Such attacks have become much too commonplace — just looking at the number of domestic terrorist attacks in the last few years is heartbreaking. As the number of attacks has increased, a concerning patterns in the media’s coverage of these events has emerged: an obsession with terrorists themselves. The media and public’s infatuation with perpetrators of terrorist attacks hurts a great deal more than it helps.
It is not hard to see Americans love to learn about terrorists. Someone can simply type in “New York Bombing” into the Google news search and most of the top results are articles about the attacker. The media plays off the popular attention and publishes articles not only talking about the current terrorists, but comparing him to a previous terrorist. The fact that people are concerned with whether a terrorist is gay shows how interested in these people they are on a personal level.
It is not inherently bad that people are interested in terrorists — the curiosity of many comes from a desire to understand an action that is unfathomable to them. There is also a safety concern: what does a terrorist look like, what should I watch for? This might be a petty instinct, but it is also one of the only ways normal people can regain the feeling of security that terrorists take away. Most importantly, the obsession with terrorists helps capture ones that are at large. The recent bombings are a perfect example of this — the terrorist was caught after he was recognized by an officer in New Jersey.
None of these reasons come close to justifying the negative effects that are caused by our terrorist-mania. There are many studies that have been published on the connection between terrorism and media coverage. Many of these papers come to the conclusion that the media is an enabler for terrorism. Though these papers point the finger at the media, it is ultimately public desire that pushes the media to cover terrorists in such deep detail. The public provides a perverse incentive for people to attack in order to gain fame and a form of immortality. An individual will feel much more confident about conducting a lone wolf attack if he sees the massive amounts of coverage that another terrorist receives.
The terrorism obsession also leads to the reinforcement of stereotypes. The vast majority of terrorist attacks are undertaken by Islamic terrorists and it is undeniable that there are certain movements in Islam that promote violence. But when the only time people see Islam mentioned is in the context of a terrorist attack, a biased and false picture of the world starts to form. Focusing on the individual terrorists only exacerbates this fact — news stories about the attacker’s mosque and connections to other Muslims falsely make Islamic extremism seem to be present in most Muslim communities.
The lives of innocent people have been damaged thanks to our fascination with terrorists. After a terrorist attack, people often engage in a witchhunt in an effort to find the perpetrator. The problem is that witch hunts have the tendency to accuse the wrong person. After the Boston bombing the public went as far as blaming a dead kid for the attacks. False accusations can often ruin people’s lives, yet we keep jumping at the chance to blame someone for an attack. Leave the investigations for the people who are trained to do them.
I am not arguing there should or could be no coverage of the perpetrators of terrorist attacks. Journalists should, and will, do their job of investigating the facts about and behind each attack. What we need desperately is moderation. The media and public needs to stop putting these monsters on a pedestal and examining their every detail. They don’t deserve our attention, and we’re hurting ourselves by giving it to them. We only really have to make a simple change to start — don’t display their picture. If I was able to write a whole article about terrorism without mentioning a terrorist by name, I’m sure we can all talk about terrorist attacks without showing their face.
Bobby Doyle is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at b.doyle@cavalierdaily.com.
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